Fuck Around and Find Out

Dear Everybody:

The big news today is of the Fuck Around and Find Out sort:

--Trump and the US were condemned at the United Nations during an emergency meeting of the Security Council.`

--Greenland’s Prime Minister gave a speech in which he said Trump’s threats must be taken seriously. If the US attacks another NATO country, "everything stops."

--The Danish ambassador said, "The inviolability of borders is not negotiable."

--There was no chorus of allies defending the United States. We are now totally without friends.

--Trump posted wildly through the entire meeting.

--And after the meeting, Spain and Switzerland canceled their orders for F-35 jets. Trump: "Very unfair."

--Harry Litman: "Barely three days after US forces seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the operation already looks like a geopolitical game of whack-a-mole--one improvised move after another, each raising new problems rather than resolving old ones."

Trump is also finding out that at least part of MAGA is not really on board with this:

--Time called the invasion "a dramatic break from what many in Trump’s MAGA coalition had imagined when they rallied a decade ago behind an isolationist America First agenda. Trump’s move in Venezuela cut directly against that creed."

--Marjorie Taylor Greene: "Americans’ disgust with our own government’s never-ending military aggression and support of foreign wars is justified because we are forced to pay for it."

--Candace Owens: "Trump carried out attack at the behest of globalist psychopaths."

--Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, wrote in 2019: ‘The US needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders--so we have to stop trying to change theirs."

--David Attras: "Didn’t age well."

--Megyn Kelly on boots on the ground in Venezuela: "Whose boots? Because I have a 16-year-old boy, 12-year-old boy,and 14-year-old girl who might have to fill those boots...I speak for a lot of moms and dads when I say...I will not be joining the Fox News cheerleading brigade."

--But as with so many of Trump’s actions, the Republicans trotted right after him, declaring that they were never against taking over other countries, and, like the characters in Orwell’s 1984 that "We have always been at war with East Asia."

But perhaps the biggest Fuck Around and Find Out of the day is the fact that today is the anniversary of January 6th, which, if Trump had been impeached and convicted for, we would not be in the godawful mess we’re in today.

--Five years ago today, these were the headlines of every paper: "Democracy Attacked," "Insurrection," "Under Siege," "Assault on Democracy," "Capitol Chaos", "Intolerable Attack on Democracy," but what I remember, more than the people dragging cops down the steps and beating them over the head with American flagpoles, and trying to crush cops in the doors, more than Congress cowering under chairs and hiding in their barricaded offices and fleeing for their lives, is the insurrectionists SMEARING FECES ON THE WALLS OF THE ROTUNDA! It’s the perfect metaphor for what they did to our country that day--and what they’ve been doing ever since.

--Mark Hamill: FIVE YEARS & he has not been held accountable for one of the most disgraceful events in this nation’s history. Trying to overturn a fair election in an attempted coup against his own government is the very definition of TREASON. We can never move forward until this is fully adjudicated."

--zensoul: "Always remember whose name was on the flags as they stormed our sacred Capitol."

--Paul Krugman: "Five years ago Donald Trump tried to overthrow an election he lost. He failed, and I assumed the threat was over. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine that he would make a comeback and return to the white House. But there he is. And he’s every bit as bad as his opponents and critics warned he would be.

--Charlie Sykes: "Five years ago a mob of insurrectionists--fueled with conspiracies and lies, and incited to violence by a mendacious conman clinging topowre--stormed the Capitol. It was a Day of Infamy. But now--five years later--we know that the infamy was just beginning, a cascading failure of institutions we thought would be the guardrails of our Constitutional order."

--Hakeem Jeffries; "5 years ago today, a violent mob brutally attacked the US Capitol on January 6. Their missiion to overturn a free and fair election, We will never allow extremists to whitewash their treachery."

--Jack Smith, in his sworn testimony to Congress: "Trump was the most culpable and the most responsible person for the attacks on the Capitol."

--Rambler797: "Very important to remember that January 6 was not just about the rioting. The rioting was a mass tantrum. The elector plot was calculated and subversive." --paulpro: "He pardoned the mob he sent to the Capitol."

In other Venezuela invasion news:

--Trump didn’t notify Congress before he attacked Venezuela and kidnapped Maduro, but he DID notify the New York Times, the Washington Post--and the oil companies--in advance.

--The Trump administration posted photos of Venezuelans supposedly pouring into the streets to celebrate Maduro’s capture, but now it turns out they were Venezuelans in South Florida because no one in Venezuela is celebrating. They were all hiding because their city was being bombed.

--El Pais: "Donald Trump’s decision caps a year of impulsive, personalistic foreign policy that ignores multilateral norms. Trump is not acting here as a guarantor of democracy, but rather placing force above the rule of law."

--They keep coming up with new legal rationales for why what they did wasn’t a crime. JD Vance claimed the attack was legal because Maduro has multiple indictments in the US for narcoterrorism.

--Conor Friedersdorf: "This logic would mean that the President can order an invasion of any country where a national has an outstanding arrest warrant."

--A Senior DOJ official reposted a post from right-winger Eagle Ed Martin: "Colonization is one of the greatest things that ever happened to the backwards parts of the world and the only reason most don’t know this is because they were educated by Communists who hate Western Civilization."

--A suspicious new user on the prediction market Polymarket placed a $35,000 bet on the US striking Venezuela and that US troops would arrest Maduro on his wife a few hours before the attack. The bet paid off to the tune of $400,000. Those two things were the only thing that the account, which had just been created on December 27th, bet on. (Clearly insider trading--from someone inside the Trump administration?)

--New Republic: "The timing of the account’s bets--and its creation--is certainly suspicious. According to reports, US military officials initially discussed bombing Venezuela on Christmas Day, but reversed course after deciding to pursue airstrikes against ISIS in Nigeria instead. In the days following Christmas, officials held off on the attacks due to the weather."

And more analysis of where this is all going:

--Steve Schmidt: "Donald Trump isn’t smart enough to comprehend the difference between real life and video games. What we are watching is a reality show. Donald Trump likes the killing. It seems that he’s developed an appetite for it and the adventurism that his friend Vlad finds so appealing."

--atx.nana: "Trump is a clear and present danger to all democratic countries, but especially to NATO, Canada, Mexico, and the EU. They would be completely justified, especially now, to abduct Trump and turn him over to the Hague or perhaps just ‘lose’ him. Until someone stops him, Trump won’t stop. He is fulfilling his wildest fantasies with unlimited resources and doesnt’ give a damn about any consequences."

--Simon Rosenberg: "What we cannot forget for one moment in all this is that Trump is now acting as if law, or the very concept of law, does not exist. He is acting outside and in violation of the Constitution, domestic American law, and the oaths he took, and outside, and in violation of the UN Charter, well-established international law, and Senate-ratified treaties with other nations. There is only him. He can do whatever he wants. L’etat c’est moi. An Uber Man. Along with MBS, Putin, and Xi, one of the rulesrs of the world, and anything, anything but an American president."

In Epstein news:

--The DOJ continues not only to delay the release of the Epstein files in violation of the law Congress passed, but they keep upping the number of pages in the files (kind of like Trump and his 500%, 600%, 1000%.) They said there were hundreds of thousands of pages, then suddenly found a bunch and said there were a million, now they’re saying five million, and gosh, it might take them YEARS to go through them all.

--Dem Rep Ro Khanna: "If they (the DOJ) were acting in good faith and putting out the survivors’ statements, putting out these prosecution memos, then they would have some leg to rest on. They could say, ‘well, it’s a huge file, we’re taking time.’ The point is, this doesn’t take a lot of time...they’re just not releasing it."

--A new revelation in the Epstein files is that Trump was subpoenaed in the rape case of the 13-year-old where she claimed Trump and Epstein took turns raping her. The fact that he was subpoenaed was not previously known and should be a major headline, but hey, Trump invaded Venezuela.

--Newly released files included a tip Epstein’s brother Mark filed with the FBI on February 22, 2023. In it, Mark said Trump okayed his brother’s killing. "Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in his jail cell. I have reason to believe he was killed because he was about to name names. I believe President Trump authorized his murder."

--Amanda Marcotte on the Epstein files and Trump: "The nation got a glimpse of the sexual world the president apparently inhabited, or at least stood in close proximity to, one which wasn’t glamorous but simply gross."

--exlrrp: "Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s BFF for fifteen years, used to say that one of Trump’s big tells was accusing other people of the exact thing he was guilty of. He picked that up from Roy Cohn, and it was known as the ‘You, not me’ attack."

--In a new YouGov poll, 47% of Americans say Trump is trying to cover up Epstein’s crimes. 31% say he isn’t. 46% say Trump was involved in Epstein’s crimes. 30% say he wasn’t.

--FunnySnarkJoke: "GOP says it’ll take a lot more than eyewitness testimony, photos, DNA, toxicology reports, victim statements, wire transfers, emails, flight manifests, phone records, surveillance logs, bank records, audio, video and total confessions for them to believe Trump’s Epstein ties were more than coincidental."

In They’re All Perverts news:

--Republican investor and GOP gubernatorial candidate James Fishback has been charged with sexual misconduct with an underage student. The girl, who was 17, charged that Fishback "initiated a romantic relationship" with her while she was working for his organization, which creates debate programs for middle and high school students. ‘

--Broward County School District has cut ties to Fishback, but he has contracts with four other school districts.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, there was even more bad news today:

--Pete Hegseth announced he will not pursue a court martial for Senator Mark Kelly, who spoke out saying troops should not follow illegal orders, and instead has initiated administrative actions against him, including a reduction in his rank and military pension.

--Ron Filipkowski: "Hegseth didn’t have the courage to give Mark Kelly a trial by court martial because he knew he would lose it and be humiliated. So he is taking the cowardly way out. Whatever action he takes unilaterally will discredit US military civilian leadership and be reversed in three years."

--The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it was closing up shop because Trump stopped all its funding.

--Governor Tim Walz announced he will not run for governor of Minnesota. (The good news is that he may run for Senator and that Amy Klobuchar may run for governor, but it’s still bad news and may have been prompted by the vicious smear campaign the Republicans have been running against him.)

--Trump vetoed a non-controversial, bipartisan water project bill. The bill provided critical water infrastructure for the Arkansas Valley. It unanimously passed in both the House and Senate.

--Trump vetoed it because 1) he’s mad at Colorado refusing to release election fraud criminal Tina Peters and 2) he’s mad at Lauren Boebert, who sponsored the bill, because she voted for the Epstein discharge petition.

‘ --Boebert isn’t taking it lying down: "President Trump decided to veto a completely non-controversial bipartisan bill...Why? Because nothing says ‘America First’ like denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people in Southeast Colorado, many of whom enthusiastically voted for him in all three elections...I sincerely hope this veto has nothing to do with political retaliation for calling out corruption and demanding accountability. Americans deserve leadership that puts people over politics."

--FishOutofWater: "Trump doesn’t have the numbers in Congress to make more enemies. He will continue to bully anyone who stands up to him, but Massie and the GOP women have exposed his weakness. The more he has tantrums like this over the Epstein files, the more he exposes his guilt and his weakness. We’ve reached and passed peak Trump. It’s going to be an ugly decline, but he’s a very lame duck."

--David54: "Heckuvajob, Trumpy, of throwing more media attention on your attempt to cover up the Epstein files."

--Disgusted Grandma: "Southern Colorado residents, are you happy with your vote now? Clean air gone, clean water gone, green energy gone. Boy, some would think that this asshole president doesn’t give a shit about us. But hey, at least he’s building himself a gilded ballroom."

In other news:

--The plaque honoring the police officers who were wounded during the January 6 attack has STILL not been put up in the Capitol, even though Congress passed a bill ordering it to be put up. Mike Johnson refuses to put it up, and is now demanding it be "reconsidered."

--According to Rachel Maddow, Trump wanted to pull all US troops out of NATO after a phone call with Russia, but our generals refused the order.

--The money to run the government runs out January 30, and we might be facing yet another shutdown.

In good news:

--Jimmy Kimmel won the Critics Choice Award. In his acceptance speech, he said, "Thanks, Donald Jennifer Trump."

--Mercedes Benz USA and its parent company were forced to pay $149.6 million dollars in a settlement because it modified its cars to illegally pass state emissions tests.

--Researchers reduced the accidental catching of seat turtles in fishing nets by using solar-powered fishing nets.

Best comment of the day, from Ruben Gallego: "This is a dumb administration following a dumb man into a dumb war."

Today’s bit of poetry, from T.S. Eliot’s "Journey of the Magi": "A cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of the year for a journey, and such a long journey: the ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of winter."

Keep calm and carry on,

Connie Willis