Dear Everybody:
Trump posted this Christmas message to all of us yesterday:
-- "Merry Christmas to all, including the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein, gave him bundles of money, went to his Island, attended his parties, and thought he was the greatest guy on earth, only to ‘drop him like a dog’ when things got too HOT, falsely claimed they had nothing to do with him, didn’t know him, said he was a disgusting person, and then blame, of course, President Donald J. Trump, who was actually the only one who did drop Epstein, and long before it became fashionable to do so. When their names get brought out in the ongoing Radical Left Witch Hunt (plus one lowlife ‘Republican,’ Massie!) and it is revealed that they are Democrats, there will be a lot of explaining to do, much like there was when it was made public that the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax was a fictitious story--a total Scam--and had nothing to do with TRUMP. The Failing New York Times, among many others, was forced to apologize for their bad and faulting Election ‘Reporting,’ even to the point of losing many subscribers due to their highly inaccurate (FAKE!) coverage. Now the same losers are at it again, only this time so many of their friends, mostly innocent, will be badly hurt and reputationally tarnished. But sadly, that’s the way it is in the World of Corrupt Democrat Politics!!! Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas!"
--JasonS: "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States."
--George Conway: "Why is Donald Trump calling himself a ‘sleazebag?’"
--EmmaLib: "Once again, Trump is confessing or projecting his relationship with his old (dead and gone) pal, Jeffrey."
--ga6th: "Wow. He is telling on himself here."
--dnezzysmith: "He says he dropped Epstein before it was ‘fashionable’ (weird choice of words), but is mad at others being disloyal and dropping Epstein ‘like a dog,’ as if he deserved better."
--profeggnog: "Methinks he doth protest too much."
--Dreadful: "Hoo boy, is he SCARED!"
Apparently Santa didn’t deliver what Trump wanted for Christmas, because he spent his morning on a wild rant, posting and reposting assorted vile things:
--He said Obama should be put in jail, demanded the ACA be destroyed, claimed he had won all sorts of elections, and reposted a Roseanne Barr video in which she claimed the Democrats caused COVID so they could rig the election by mail-in voting. He defamed Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman, even though Rudy Giuliani already lost a defamation suit to them once and trashed Somali immigrants and went on and on about how the 2020 election was stolen from him.
--He also posted a jolly Christmas message--NOT!-- "Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country..." (I won’t make you guys suffer by posting the rest of the very long post. It’s pretty much what you’d expect.)
--Ari Cohn: "What a pathetic loser."
--IdiotsforPalin: "I think the fat fuck knows the end is near. He appears totally desperate, lashing out in every post. Sending out 100 posts in less than 24 hours. He’s like a cage rat in the corner."
--Cathy Bradley: "The orange fool is having a psychotic episode, all day and all night telling on himself. Next will be a total mental breakdown that even meds can’t stop."
Trump wasn’t the only one posting nasty stuff:
--The DHS spent the days leading up to Christmas posting messages that told immigrants to "Self-Deport before Christmas.
--They also posted ICE messages that could have been written by the Nazis, praising "Christmas deportations" and saying "ICE never sleeps."
--On their official Department of Homeland Security website they posted, "Merry Christmas, America. We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior."
--A bunch of people called them out on their violation of the Establishment Clause. Typos of the New York Times: "When the government blatantly violates the Establishment Clause by social media post, what is the remedy? A court order? Deletion?"
--Bill Kristol: "Un-American. And, if I may say, un-Christian."
--Jonathan Cohn: "Christian nationalism in a tweet."
--Baptist minister Brian Kaylor: "Yesterday I wrote about DHS’s war on Christmas as they co-opt this holy season to justify anti-immigrant policies. Well, Department of Herod Security has new video doing this, suggesting Christmas is about Jesus AND Trump’s America. That’s NOT what Christmas is about. The Savior born to all the world didn’t come to celebrate the ‘miracle’ of a human empire."
--The Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee announced that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was definitely a Republican.
--Stephen Miller went off on a rant after he watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with his kids: "Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinite migrants from the third world."
--Joe Calvello: "Frank Sinatra was the son of an Italian immigrant from Sicily. Frank embraced his Italian roots and culture, and in turn, made Italian culture part of American culture."
--Mike Young: "Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, icons of ‘classic America,’ were literally sons of Italian immigrants. Dean didn’t speak English until school."
--Zaid Jilani: "You have mental issues if you watch Christmas movies and all you can think about is your hatred of immigrants."
--And an Indiana GOP state senator Chris Garten posted a bizarre series of videos showing him beating up Santa Claus. "When you find out the North Pole is trying to bring more bureaucratic overreach and unfunded mandates down the chimney disguised as ‘Christmas cheer.’ Not on my watch." (Who ARE these people?)
--Middle Pillar: "They just can’t seem to stop themselves. They overflow with hatred...even on a holiday promoting peace."
This was after Trump and Melania spent the Christmas Eve answering phone calls from little kids--or, actually Melania answered the phone calls. Trump sat on the other side of the tree, slumped in his chair, and kept talking over her when he wasn’t saying completely inappropriate things to the kids:
--Trump: "Great numbers, great financials. I don’t think the kids are too interested in that." (You got that right, bucko.)
--Trump (to a 4-year-old girl from Oklahoma): "Oklahoma was very good to me in the election. So I love Oklahoma. Don’t ever leave Oklahoma."
--Trump: "The country is doing well. We saved our country."
--Trump: "Pennsylvania is great, we won Pennsylvania, actually three times. We won it in a landslide."
--Trump: "We want to make sure that Santa is being good. Santa’s a very good person. We want to make sure he’s not infiltrated, that we’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa."
--When a little boy said he didn’t want coal in his stocking, Trump said,"You mean clean, beautiful coal. I had to do that. I’m sorry. Please remember at all costs that coal is clean and beautiful."
--Trump (talking to the reporters and talking over Melania while she’s on the phone with a kid: "You like the room, everybody? No ceiling height problem."
--Trump: "How elegant is the first lady? Look at you. I’m not supposed--" (Note: Melania cut him off at that point with "Anybody else? Are they calling?"
--Ron Filipkowski: "Little kid just wants to hear about Santa and Trump wants to talk about himself again."
--But the absolute low point of the evening was when Trump talked to a little girl on the phone. He asked her, "How old are you?" and when she said, "Eight," he said, "You sound so beautiful and cute."
Which brings us right back to the Epstein files:
--The files that have been released are an unholy mess. In some, the victims’ names HAVEN’T been redacted, while in others the names of perpetrators and lawyers and prosecutors HAVE been redacted.
--In good news, internet sleuths have found that some of the redactions were carelessly (or maybe intentionally carelessly) done and that simply copying and pasting the document will reveal what’s underneath the redactions.
--Here’s some of what they were able to read: "1) Epstein and Maxwell paid witnesses off, and their attorneys off. 2) Epstein threatened to harm victims. 3) Epstein helped release damaging stories about victims. 4) Epstein instructed participant-witnesses (co-conspirators) to destroy evidence. 203. Defendants also attempted to conceal their criminal sex trafficking and abuse conducct by paying large sums of money to participant-witnesses, including by paying for their attorneys’ fees and case costs in litigation related to this conduct. 204. Epstein also threatened harm to victims and helped release damaging stories about them to damage their credibility when they tried to go public with their stories of being trafficked and sexually abused. 205. Epstein also instructed one or more Epstein Enterprise participant-witnesses to destroy evidence relevant to ongoing court proceedings involving Defendants’ criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct."
--One thing this material proves is that the DOJ is redacting stuff they weren’t supposed to--only victims’ names and identifying information, which this clearly isn’t. They are redacting stuff to cover up Epstein’s crimes--and by implication, Trump’s?
--The other thing it shows is that there were definitely co-conspirators, even though Pam Bondi and Kash Patel both said there weren’t, and that they found no evidence at all that the victims were trafficked to other men. Obviously a lie, and a big one.
--Another redacted file that was unredacted was a US-Virgin Islands court document in a case in which Epstein’s estate had to surrender $110 million dollars to the Virgin Islands plus proceeds from the sale of the island, a case which is connected to another Epstein case:
--Mark Lippman--"A few days later the AG filed a case alleging that JP Morgan Chase had facilitated Epstein’s criminal activities. The Governor of the Virgin Islands promptly fired her without naming a reason. The case was redesignated as a federal matter and transferred to the Southern District of New York...Elon Musk was subpoenaed in that case to provide copies of all communications he had with or about Epstein. But the case was dismissed when JP Morgan Chase reached a settlement with the Virgin Islands where they paid $75 million without having to admit or acknowledge guilt in the matter...When the Virgin Islands sued JP Morgan Chase alleging that they participated in the cover up, JP Morgan Chase counter-sued, alleging that the Virgin Islands participated in the cover up. And they submitted evidence to support their allegation. That investigation went away, and JP Morgan Chase’s case against the Virgin Islands was withdrawn when they settled." (They’re ALL in it up to their necks.)
The search mechanism has been a mess, too. If you look for the word "Trump," it turns up 0 references. (It does the same thing if you look for the word "Epstein.") Which means it’s totally useless. Or so we thought.
--Until Steve Gatewood came up with a workaround: "So when you’re searching the files, if you search ‘Trump’ you get zero results. But if you search ‘Trump’ with a space at the end, you get around 600 results. Which tells me that the DOJ blocked the search, but they’re so fuckin’ old and stupid they didn’t block the search with spaces. So have fun while it lasts, everyone."
--And just in case that didn’t register, TRUMP IS IN THE FILES 600 TIMES.
And then, late on Christmas Eve, the DOJ suddenly announced that oops, they’d just found over a million pages of Epstein files that they didn’t know existed, which means gosh, there’s no way they can get it out to the public any time soon.
--"Spokespeople for the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the DOJ did not immediately respond to NBC News requests for comment about the contents of the documents and why they weren’t uncovered earlier. A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment."
--(A lot of people think this was intentional--that they’ve been sitting on these files all along with no intention of releasing them and that then they realized that information was going to get out, so they had to say they found them. And that may be the case (I certainly wouldn’t put it past them), but intentional or not, it’s going to do the one thing they DO NOT WANT TO HAVE HAPPEN, which is keeping this story in the public eye for weeks and weeks.)
--Truth Will Out: "A million sheets of standard copy paper...would form a towering stack roughly 100 meters 9328 feet) high, comparable to the Statue of Liberty, while also being incredibly heavy and wide if just piled loosely...hardly the sort of thing lost in a desk drawer or overlooked in the back of a file cabinet."
--CyberMindGrrl: ‘This is less a case of incompetence and more a case of yet more evidence of a giant cover up."
--Daily Kos: "Whether this is deliberate or not, the sheer incompetence is staggering."
--GOP strategist Matthew Barlett says the botched release has "perpetuated this news cycle, continues to give the White House and administration a massive headache of their own making, and I don’t see any remedy any time soon."
--The good news is that the Epstein survivors, thoroughly fed up with the DOJ’s covering up the names of co-conspirators, are compiling their own lists of names. They announced today, "We’ll compile our own list and seek justice on our own."
--Epstein survivor Haley Robson (who had previously said she was a Trump supporter): "I am no longer supporting this administration. I am so disgusted with this administration. I think that Pam Bondi and Kash Patel both need to resign, and I would love to see number 47 get impeached over this."
--Note: I promised I’d tell you everything that they’ve found in the files so far, and I will, but there’s so much it’s going to take at least a couple of days, maybe more. (And no, I’m not stalling like the DOJ.)
In other news:
--Trump bombed Nigeria on Christmas Day, claiming that he hit ISIS, but Nigeria’s president told Sky News that the details on who was actually hit are "sketchy."
--Mike Lindell is running against Governor and former Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Walz for governor of Minnesota.
--Trump’s faith advisor, Paula White, announced, "To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God."
In good news:
--A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to return the Venezuelan immigrants sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador.
--A federal court threw out the Trump administration’s challenge to New York’s Green Light Law permitting undocumented immigrants to obtain standard-issued drivers’ licenses.
--Researchers have developed a new material for sodium-ion batteries that may bring an affordable sustainable future within reach.
Best comment of the day, from Dem Rep Yassamin Ansari: "The walls are closing in on Donald Trump and his corrupt, criminal regime, and he’s absolutely losing his mind."
It’s Boxing Day, a day which some think was named after people giving boxes to their employees and/or the poor, and others think was made up by cats.
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis