You know, the Mother Jones piece on Giuliani being the subject of a whistleblower investigation regarding whether he either knowingly or unwittingly became a laundromat for Russian disinformation against Joe Biden really takes me back to exactly when any rational person would have thought this was happening in 2019, when the first impeachment was going on. If you think about TrumpWorld a lot, and I do, you really only find yourself going "Dmitry Firtash or Pavel Fuchs?"
Saturday, September 2, 2023
Guiliani and the TrumpWorld Rabbit Hole
Wednesday, September 7, 2022
Things that Make No Sense
I can't really remember which one of the Trump hangers-on who opined something on Twitter to the effect of "What if the documents Trump took to Mar-A-Lago had information that was exculpatory about the Russia investigation?" (If your Twitter-fu is better than mine--please help me dig up who that was. I thought it was Mulvaney, but that wasn't it.) And it struck me, that was just stupid.EXCLUSIVE: Trump told his White House team he needed to protect Russiagate documents ... which he called his 'evidence' of a deep state plot against him.https://t.co/MBHBkGWFcB
— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) September 8, 2022
Sunday, October 18, 2020
TWGB: Trump Reads Marks and Angles
I keep saying Trump is basically a con-artist because his mode is definitely not that of a legitimate business man. He's business as performance art. The hair! The tan! The offensively not tailored suits! The third world dictator gilded glitz of his Trump Tower penthouse, and the marble and tile of his Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago. His rallies that cheer all his weird pronouncements, even his peculiar idea of dancing (and Ellen should sue, also she is a better dancer).
It's a con. Things that give him some kind of brand and play up his schtick are a con. Trump University was a con. Trump's supposed charitable foundation was a big con. The wall was a con. His business model is a con. This is a con--and Trump knows it.
But cons sometimes work, kids. Don't forget that. And if you get away with a con once, what really stops you from trying it again? Conscience? Morality? Of course not! This is TrumpWorld. So, if "But her emails..." worked once (they weren't even her emails, but Podesta's, for crying out loud!) then why wouldn't "But Hunter Biden's emails..." do the same job?
(Not that Team Trump has given up on Hillary Clinton's emails even still. At this point, they have to be considered some kind of completists.)
Thursday, September 24, 2020
A Republic, If You Can Keep It
Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power; without that, there is Belarus. Any suggestion that a president might not respect this Constitutional guarantee is both unthinkable and unacceptable.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) September 24, 2020
This is from the sole Senate Republican who voted against Trump regarding the impeachment. Romney Tweeted this in response to Trump's failure to guarantee that he would stand by the results of the election, basically implying that if it went against him he would try to invalidate it (just as he peremptorily has been doing by talking trash about mail-in ballots and "rigging").
The Founders always knew that the idea of a democratic republic was a bit dodgy, and we are merely blessed that our first president had the outstanding wisdom to know when to say goodbye. But Trump seems a little stuck on the idea that maybe he can litigate the will of the people. Like he can throw out ballots or appoint better electors.
But I don't consent. I cried the night I knew this idiot was somehow elected by a trick of the white men of property who inserted the electoral college nonsense into the constitution, but I understood there were enough deeply wrong people who voted for him to make this happen, so we'd just have to endure. I wanted investigations of the obvious fuckery of his campaign's apparent coordination with Wikileaks, and therefore, probably Russia, but he was our president. Nobody domed him.
I don't like his vicious militias and his bloated tick of an AG, and I don't like his impeached ass fucking up our foreign policy. I think he's been a singular failure, and that his fan club are practically cultists, believing in things unseen and in fact, unreal, just to make their idiot bigot president palatable.
The media should not try to call the pandemic election early. Of course mail-in ballots matter just like they have mattered before Trump tried to invalidate them. The media should employ all restraint to allow for a complete and fair vote, and if he tries to invalidate it--call him out! Call it a coup! Call it what it is! And if the vote is against him--talk about the will of the people and don't "both-sides" this shit.
He said he might not even talk to the American people again if we voted against him. I want him to make that good. I genuinely wish to never hear from this fool again. It would be better for our Republic that way.
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
TWGB: This Never Was A Hoax
What we find is, in short, there was plenty of reason for a counter-intelligence investigation into the potential manipulation of a US presidential election by a hostile foreign power (not that Donald "Love Letters to Dictators" Trump understood it as such) and real concern about the many contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. along with the obvious business connections Trump had in Russia, despite his vehement denials about both (which only made things more suspicious). It would have been derelict not to have investigated.
And now, here we are--the Senate Intelligence Select Committee produces this (with intriguing redactions) report covering what I've been trying to cover with TrumpWorld Grab-Bags. The conclusion appears to be that, well, it looked bad because it was bad. This information was available to to certain senators since before the impeachment hearings, and even if it wasn't source material, news reports made these same conclusions likely--the Russians were trying it and the Trumpers were onboard.
Sunday, July 12, 2020
TWGB: Some Paragraphs on a Commuted Sentence
And lets not golf clap too hard for Bill Barr, who says he didn't think Trump's clemency order regarding Stone was a great idea--it's not a great idea, but he doesn't think that for "rule of law" reasons--it's optics. It looks bad--because...have I said this before? It is bad. Barr previously did urge for reduced sentencing but called the prosecution of Stone "righteous". What Trump has done undermines the DOJ. It practically screams: If you are of use to this president, he has got you covered.
So let's talk about what's wrong with the statement the White House put out about the rationale--and how impolitic and purely political it happens to be. The statement leans heavily towards Trump's regular assertion that the entirety of the Russia investigation was a "hoax", but the entirety of it is not, even if the actual collusion with the Trump campaign part were. The DNC hack and the subsequent leaks by Wikileaks (regardless of any extent to which Roger Stone might have had advance knowledge and shared it with Trump himself) were real, as was the disinfo scheme that promulgated fake news on social media. Special Counsel Mueller made a rare op-ed to reiterate the legitimacy of this investigation.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
In Case You Missed it
President Trump actually told everybody that he thought former Vice-President Joe Biden should get the electric chair for some random made-up thing he thinks happened based on Russian disinfo (and is wholly wrong) and his own disapproval of the sheer gall of anybody to run against what is supposed to be our favorite president.
He said that out loud where the people could hear. The electric chair. Because this whole "innocent until proven guilty thing"? That's not his bag. His idea of due process is "do process people I don't like in a blender until liquid."
Trump's wheeling and dealing with Mulvaney withholding the Ukrainian military aid and having a very urgent phone call with President Zelensky has House Dems looking way more seriously at impeachment, because of the extortion of a foreign government (who are basically at war with Russia so, also what is Trump's entire deal, here?) over help with his election thing he was very apparently doing. So Trump is out here doing the most impeachable shit imaginable, but he's going to offhandedly say, no, but Biden is the real treason, you guys.
Just like "But her emails," while he was getting all the help by Russia trickling DNC dirt via WikiLeaks?
Yeah, we saw this movie before. This man is not fit to be president. Even if his semi-treasonous and altogether Constitution-violating shit was together, his mouth gives him away. If he wants to say Biden deserves the electric chair for his corruption-adjacency, whatever are we to make of Trump's hydra of office abuse?
I shudder to think about saying out loud what the conduct he has displayed deserves using the electric chair on this scale. My personal morality would only feature very non-luxurious accommodations, for a long time, for his infractions.
Friday, April 12, 2019
Stay Bull Jean Yuss 3: Turns on a Dime
Trump earlier today said he knows "nothing" about WikiLeaks. And just moments ago, Trump said: "I don't know much about it" when asked about WikiLeaks.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) April 11, 2019
On the campaign trail, he said this ---> pic.twitter.com/UvAGvdveJ4
I have a few thoughts that I might work into a longer piece but the immediately remarkable thing to me post-Assange arrest is how Trump's public comments went from "I love WikiLeaks" to "I don't know much about it". Sure, it's about whatever his current use for Assange is (he had a use for him, then he didn't--nota bene, Trump allies, there's a pattern). But the way he does it is just stark.
He doesn't know much about it. Maybe he could ask his son what he knows about it. Maybe he knew at one time something about it, but hasn't thought about WikiLeaks for a minute.
Who knows? It is a mystery, huh?
Saturday, February 16, 2019
TWGB: Everyone's Lying For Some Reason
Special counsel prosecutors say they have communications of Roger Stone with WikiLeaks https://t.co/baHXXYHiMi pic.twitter.com/Z4NTwaa9Sg— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) February 15, 2019
There's a weird common thread that runs through all the Trump World Grab-Bag posts: people just keep lying about things. Michael Flynn lied about contacting Russia. Jeff Session lied about it, too. Michael Cohen seems to have lied about things having to do with Russia because Trump told him to. It hasn't become an issue just yet, but Don Trump Jr. has apparently lied to Congress.
It's been established now that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, lied about certain particulars involving the Trump campaign and this voided his plea agreement. He's now looking at about 20 years or so in prison, which for a man his age, is basically a life sentence. Roger Stone sort of told on himself about contacting Wikileaks, and seemed kind of forthcoming about the depth of his WikiLeaks contacts, but this picture looks to be complicated.
The big, operant question here is, "Why does everyone around Trump lie?" Just recently, two of Trump's other attorneys were openly suspected of having lied about details regarding Michael Cohen's hush money deals, and this sounds pretty much in line with how Trump wants his circle to operate. With "alternative facts".
Pretty much everyone around Trump lies. For some reason.
And even regarding the congressional investigations, we already know Rep. Devin Nunes didn't always tell the truth (actually, he straight up lied) about matters dealing with the Russia investigation. But for that matter, it looks like Senator Richard Burr is also falling short of accuracy, with claims (picked up by the White House) that he sees no evidence of collusion. But Burr is basically lying about how accessible Christopher Steele has been, and Burr, just like Nunes, can be connected to the Trump campaign.
It's not a curiosity or a coincidence when you see this pattern of lying. It looks like a coordinated cover-up, and that means that the parties involved know very well what it is they don't want to be known because it's real and it's bad. It's Manafort is willing to void his plea agreement bad. It's Cohen goes to jail bad. It's Roger Stone's last ratfuck bad. It's respectable people will possibly become anathema bad.
My mantra all along has been "It looks bad because it is bad." Lying can temporarily make things look like they are not bad. But badness will out.
Sunday, January 27, 2019
TWGB: Roger Stone's Time in the Barrel
The Friday morning fortuitously-filmed arrest of Roger Stone was a great start to a very awkward day in Trump World, but in all honesty, Roger Stone had been hinting that his ass was due for an indictment or a half dozen or so for a good long while. I don't doubt the CNN claim that good reporting was the reason they had Stone's Florida abode staked out, because the day before, four indictments were filed after a rare bit of Mueller Grand Jury activity. (This is why my last post indicated that I knew I needed to clear my tabs in advance of Friday news, because I am not a reporter, but neither am I ever unplugged--RW journos claiming a tip-off for CNN exclusively for some reason are just mad they got scooped or trying to neg the Mueller investigation and the FBI for reasons that are not entirely wholesome.)
But let's get down to the barebones details--in August of 2016, Stone was caught bragging on his knowledge about what Wikileaks might drop. Even this little blog wondered if pimping the Wikileaks thing wasn't just meta-ratfucking from a person who only pretended he wasn't still working for the Trump campaign, and there's been good reason to think Roger Stone always was still "on the bus". We've got glimmers of what folks like Randy Credico, Jerome Corsi, and Steve Bannon might have given up, but in any event, the so far collected private communications of Roger Jason Stone are amazeballs nasty.
Look, you can tell me perjury is bad and suborning perjury in others is bad, but literally going full "Wicked Witch of the West" and telling someone straight up "I will get your little dog too!" is just some crazy witness-tampering obvious almost fictional villain batshit evil. I will tell you right now, you get an entire posse of two dozen or so entirely for-free FBI just for threatening a man's little floofdog if I was running this arrest operation (complete with warrant for assorted whatever collection).
Which is about what happened, and which could be arguably overkill for some piddly "process crimes"--except let's be honest about what Stone has been doing here. Back to referencing the barebones details, if one is threatening violence, and frankly talking about abusing or leveraging other people to get certain results in a legal matter, that doesn't make them look good. To my mind, that says, you have to look at why they are engaging in these sorts of crimes that specifically try to effect the legal outcome of the Mueller investigation.
I think it's hard to say he'd have been doing these things if there wasn't some truth to the connection(s) between Wikileaks and the Trump Campaign, and their apparent foreknowledge that the info WikiLeaks had was from a Russian-sponsored cyber attack. Although the indictment itself doesn't throw all the info Mueller has out there (and it shouldn't and for obvious reasons) we can nonetheless understand that Stone wouldn't have been indicted unless he was already screwed by what Mueller had in writing regardless of what Stone, a notoriously unreliable witness, might offer.
Which makes Stone's talk about not flipping fascinating--because this is something Trump has stated he really likes about Stone--he isn't gonna talk. But that sort of implies that there is a something he shouldn't be talking about, n'est-ce pas? The more Stone crows on various news outlets about what he will and won't do, the more it looks a bit like he's either pimping himself out for a pardon or trying to make himself look like a martyr for his legal GoFundMe. (And he isn't, based on his real estate, necessarily a poor man. He's just poor in his political choices, morality, and well, everything else that makes one human.) Also his head is shaped very amusingly and his hair looks to be sewn-in--which probably adds to the sympathy some are wasting on this peculiarly buff-backed Nixon tattoo-sporting reprobate. But when I hear the RW Tweeters go on about poor old Rog, at age 66, the fact that he looks like Abe Simpson is all about his life choices and he seems to be the reason weirdos like Loomer, Prosobiec and a score of other internet simple trash exist.
Miss me with any sympathy for this devil.
(Although, and to give him his due, his back tattoo is really quite good and the artist should be praised. It's awkwardly placed and sized, which is entirely Stone's choices, and the tattoo artist can't be faulted for that. But photo-representations of human faces are notoriously tricky when rendered as skin art, and entire websites exist of bad tattoo art to prove that. The Nixon tattoo is actually scaled well, and the features are proportioned correctly and do not look like a bad caricature. A piece of art like this would probably be better served on a bicep or, as a back piece, be larger. Located where it is, it's not somehow tattoo-correct. I guess a similarly-sized Nixon tramp-stamp would be far worse, of course. Maybe he could have it elaborated upon with borders of US flags or some shit when he goes to his eventual incarceration--because none of these minions even know how stingy Trump is gonna be with these pardons. He will want proofs of loyalty beyond your wildest indulgence. He's a narcissist. He can't help it.)
Saturday, November 17, 2018
Not Too Jaded, This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Raiding the TrumpWorld Grab-Bag
Friday, February 16, 2018
This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag Tries to Keep Up
Monday, January 29, 2018
In TrumpWorld, Grab-Bag Investigates You!
I wouldn't wonder what lessons the DOJ in general and the FBI specifically are taking from this politicized display regarding their office and the approach it shows regarding the rule of law. It might not be what the authors of this deplorable exercise had in mind, though.
In other news, we are sad to hear that Julian Assange is in bad shape because he lacks Vitamin D and the courage to just suck it up and deal with the thing where he took off his condom and tried it. It's rumored he also doesn't smell great and sent DMs to Sean Hannity parody accounts. Which does not only suggest Assange's mind has gone a little soft, but also that he and Hannity have possibly had a previous correspondence or so.
Anyway, what I am saying is, the history of dirt against Trump seems to have been spot on, and the dirt against Clinton and the DNC seems to have been spotty. Trump and his admirers striking out against the investigation seems to me not like they see wrongdoing there, but like they are afraid it will be found with their team.
I'm just saying, as I always do: It looks bad because it is bad.
Sunday, November 19, 2017
The TrumpWorld Grab-Bag That Wore It Well
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
The Sins of the TrumpWorld Grab-Bags
Sunday, September 17, 2017
With TrumpWorld Grab-Bags Like These...
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Sunday, May 7, 2017
Congratulations to Emmanuel Macron!
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
And Now it Looks Worse
.@AP finds Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked for Russian billionaire to advance Putin’s interests https://t.co/qLx17POZkY' pic.twitter.com/ivBYmyoWEZ
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 22, 2017
In case anyone's memory needs to be refreshed, Paul Manafort was Donald Trump's campaign manager and also consulted with the transition. It seems like he had an interesting plan in the hopper that would be pretty beneficial to the Putin government:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics, The Associated Press has learned. The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests.
Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.
That's, um. Well. Pretty much the sort of thing that sounds like proposing to have operatives fiddle with elections through massaging news coverage. If only we could connect him to the Trump Campa...
Oh.
So, I said I believe that this all looked bad because it is bad? I also do not think it will start looking better.
UPDATE: And this presser by Rep. Nunes only seems to reiterate that the Trump campaign wasn't directly wiretapped, but that they seemed to be in contact an awful lot with people who (quite lawfully) were under surveillance. Great try though!
UPDATE 2: I wonder if what Rep. Nunes is talking about was classified? And why he has to run'long and brief POTUS on it right sharpish. Not at all like you'd think an investigation would work, right?
TWGB: It's Raining Shoes!
It certainly has been a minute, hasn't it? So, what brings me out of self-imposed blogging exile, if not something very relevant to my...











