ANOTHER GOP REP STEPS DOWN
Dear Everybody:
There are several big news stories today:
--Another GOP Rep, Troy Nehls, is stepping down. Unfortunately, he’s not resigning, just retiring at the end of his term, but still they will have to run a non-incumbent, which is good.
--Both the House and Senate Armed Service committees have announced they’re going to do full investigations of Pete Hegseth’s blowing the guys in the water apart. And it’s not just the Dems—the Republicans are in full cry about this, too. Meanwhile, Hegseth is doubling-down, saying, “We have not yet begun to kill narco-terrorists,” a line which will almost certainly be used in his murder trial. (Literally ALL the military and legal analysts are saying this is either a war crime or straight-up murder, and the codes of military conduct are really clear on all this.
--Trump has lost 7 full points in his approval rating among REPUBLICANS in the last month in the latest Gallup poll.
In Kash Patel news:
--Kash Patel may just have blown one of our oldest and most important intelligence relationships--with Britain’s MI-5.
--MI-5 relies on the FBI for high-tech surveillance tools, the kind that protect them from foreign surveillance at embassies, etc., like the new embassy the Chinese are currently building in London, so they asked Patel specifically not to fire the guy who is the expert on that surveillance.
--Patel assured them he wouldn’t, but he had already eliminated the guy’s position and moved him to another job. MI-5 is furious and talking about throwing the US out of the Five Eyes top-top-top secret intelligence alliance.
--Kash Patel also managed to alienate the British on his trip to London by demanding to land at a different airport than the one he was supposed to land at for security reasons, bringing along his girlfriend, bringing an armed escort with him, even though British escorts are forbidden to carry arms, thus provoking an emergency meeting on how to deal with it.
--And he arrived at a formal meeting in a green hooded sweatshirt and a trucker hat.
In Trump Dementia Watch news:
--On Trump’s Middle East trip last month, he told an imaginary story about the first time he met Egypt’s Sisi. Trump said he was supposed to meet Hillary Clinton, too, but "he liked me so much he never even got to see Hillary." (Sisi actually met with Clinton for 70 minutes.)
--Trump on the Israel-Gaza ceasefire: "Israel can say that ‘we killed 50,000,’ and so you’d say it’s a whole net set of people. And it is. They get replaced by other people. Young people."
--When Trump had his press conference with MBS, MBS said he had had a great relationship with every US President. Trump said, "But does Trump blow em all away? Trump doesn’t give a fist pump. I grab that hand." (Trump reached over and shook MBS’s hand vigorously. "I don’t care where that hand has been."
--Trump, talking about that time he made French fries at McDonald’s: "I’ve been on that line many times. Actually, that line was incredible in the commercial, right? But it wasn’t a commercial. It was about, but they have the line. The people had no idea. So, I made the French fries. The guy was really good. He had a great wrist. He was, nyee, Sir, he was going like sui..."
--Trump, talking to a meeting of McDonald’s employees: "I’ll bet they use real sugar in your Coca-Cola. You know, they didn’t in the US. I said to the head of Coca-Cola, you got to go to sugar. They do in other countries. And you know what? They went to sugar. Isn’t that nice? I said, ‘You got to go to sugar.’ Just like I said why is the Gulf of Mexico called the Gulf of Mexico? I said, We’re changing the name. And now it’s the Gulf of America. Has nothing to do with McDonald’s but maybe it does because it’s very nice cycle."
--JV Last: "Coca-Cola has not reverted to sugar."
--Trump: "Our nation now is the most respected nation anywhere in the world. Europeans respect your President. They call me the President of Europe, which is an honor." (Note: No, they don’t.)
--Trump: "I met with two pollsters. They said, Sir, if George Washington and Abraham Lincoln came back from the dead and they aligned, you’d be beating them by 25 points."
--Trump: "The one pilot said skedaddle and that thing just turned in its side---pppph. And it’s so unbelievable. And that knocked out Iran’s nuclear capabilities."
--Trump: "It’s an amazing story. They hit and then they said skedaddle, the word skedaddle. And that plane went like this, you know, when it drops a bomb, it goes down very steeply because that gives it a better angle. The very, very heavy bombs. And they go boom. And as soon as those things, the one pilot, the first said skedaddle. I mean it’s just so unbelievable."
--Trump: "I gave them unlimited water. Biden came back with a rigged election and he restricted the water again. But I came back and immediately restarted it again. So now you have unlimited water to clean your damn dishes."
--JV Last: "Trump has a playlist of grievances and stories in his head. What seems to be happening here is that Trump can’t tell his stories apart. He starts talking about flow restrictions on faucets, which brings him to water, but the word water triggers another of his obsessions--water supply issues and delivery to farms in the American West. And Trump’s brain now mashes these two stories together into a single, unintelligible blob."
--Angele: "This is all simply terrifying. He’s an angry insane little evil man."
--Mercy Ormont: "The people now holding Trump’s leash have a tiger by the tail. They may still want to make use of the tiger, or they may have figured out that this tiger is becoming increasingly erratic, but either way they don’t know how to let go of the tail."
--Daily Kos: "Like all malignant narcissists, he always tells on himself. He undermines the cover up every time they try to create one. This is why they will all go down to defeat--his own pathology will bring him down (along with the Republicans who have propped him up.)
--A paper sign saying "Oval Office" was spotted outside the White House right next to the Oval Office. Claude Taylor, an ex White House staffer, said: "It’s pretty clear to me they are marking the path from the Residence to the Oval Office like they do in memory care facilities."
We’re also finding out about a lot of other people from the Epstein emails, and none of it is good:
--Mitt Romney, the NRCC, Lee Zeldin, George Budr, the McCain-Palin campaign all took money from Epstein.
--Peter Thiel emailed Epstein: "You’ve got a bad rap, but I love your passion for ideas. I have a theory that a Swedish girl with Asperger’s who wants us to save the planet might be the AntiChrist. What say you, Jeffrey?" Epstein replied: "Hmmm. Swedish, you say? Is she hot?" --Michael Woolf, Epstein’s biographer who all this time has been telling us he’s giving us the straight scoop on Epstein, now turns out to have been one of his best friends, with the two of them plotting on how they can get Trump elected and/or take him down.
--Woolf claims it was standard practice for a biographer, but journalist Will Bunch responded, "In my 44 years as a journalist, I’m pretty sure I never advised a source on how to blackmail the President of the United States."
--Bannon was besties with Epstein, too, and lived in his house for awhile as they plotted together against Trump and figured out ways to use him.
--Meanwhile, Bannon was telling MAGA: "Trump’s not perfect; he’s an imperfect instrument, but one infused by divine Providence. Without him, we’d have nothing. So stay focused. This is 12 o’clock high; we’re on a bombing run. Don’t lose sight of the mission."
--Epstein and Larry Summers, who was President of Harvard then, were also good buddies, with Larry Summers confiding to Epstein: "I’m trying to figure out why the American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard, but hit on a few women ten years ago and you can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT."
--Larry Summers sought Epstein’s romantic advice.
--Summers to Epstein: "I observed that half the IQ in the world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51% of the population."
--Summers won’t be teaching any classes at Harvard for the rest of the semester and he has resigned from the board of Open AI as a result of his recently revealed involvement with Epstein.
There’s great news from Egypt, where the Grand Egyptian Museum has now opened:
--The museum has 100,000 Egyptian artifacts, including King Tutanhkamen’s golden throne and his gold burial mask.
--It’s huge, which means you can now see all the things that there never was room for before either in the museum or in the traveling exhibitions, including an 11-meter tall 3200-year-old statue of Ramses II, the six chariots that Tut was buried with, and the 4500-year-old funerary boat of Khufu, which is 42 meters long.
--One of the coolest things will be a display of King Tut’s tomb just as it looked when Howard Carter first opened it in 192_.
--Ashley: "This place is one of the best places I’ve ever visited. I’m really proud that we built in the past and we built for the future, and you will witness a great day in Egypt, a day made by the hands of Egypt. You are in the embrace of Egypt."
In resistance news:
--Lowering the Gaiter: "A bright spot from a friend in Philly: ‘The Proud Boys...planned a rally a block from my house today. The "belly of the beast" rally because apparently that’s where I live, the belly of the antifa beast. Whatever the fuck that means. 2 hours before it was supposed to start, the park starts filling up with my neighbors. A drum line shows up. A brass band plays. The anarchists are giving away vegetables and nachos and some artists are selling jewelry. Black leaders give speeches. We chant Breonna Taylor’s name. And all the other names. No right-wing rally ever coalesces. There was never room for a critical mass to congregate. A lost-looking man or two walks to the park, doesn’t see their people, turns around. A right-wing vlogger trying to debate people is surrounded and walked to the edge of the park. Someone spotted with a handgun is chased through the park to their car by over 100 people. The ice cream truck music plays the whole time. The usual guys set their chess tables and start playing, the crowd of neighbors starts to break up. Nazis, we will replace you. We will displace you. We will be louder and more numerous. We anti-fascists are full of music and love and nachos. We will always replace you."
--Lee J. Carter: "The history of Nazis holding rallies in left-wing areas of Weimar Germany, instigating street fights, and then telling the press that only they could save German from the ‘violent communists’ seems like an important thing for people to be studying right now."
In other news:
--The Trump administration is going after the Mayor of DC for accepting the gift of a trip to Qatar, accusing her of corruption. Qatar is of course the country which gave Trump that $400 million dollar plane.
--George Conway: "Umm, do federal prosecutors REALLY want to take the position that it’s not okay to receive something of value from...Qatar?"
--Consumer confidence is at the lowest level since the 1970s.
In good news:
--Pope Leo XIV spoke out on immigration, saying, "Scripture emphasizes the question that will be posed at the end of the world: "How did you receive the foreigner, did you receive him and welcome him or not. I think there is a deep reflection that needs to be made about what is happening..."
Best comment of the day, from Judge Learned Hand in 1944: "I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon the constitution, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes, believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies then, no constitution, no law, no court can ever do much to help it. While it lives there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it."
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis