Dear Everybody:
The big stories of the day, are, as usual, about the war in Iran and the Epstein files, but I had to put this one first because it highlights what is becoming worse with every passing days: Trump’s deteriorating mental state:
--His newest obsession is shoes. He wears a certain kind of black shoe made by Florsheim ($145.00 a pair), which is neither here nor there, but now he is forcing them on everyone around him. Cabinet meetings, lunches, and Oval Office drop-ins can abruptly turn into discussions about footwear.
--He has given the shoes to his staff, agency leaders, lawmakers, and other bigwigs, including Pete Hegseth, Tucker Carlson, Lindsey Graham, and Sean Hannity.
--He gave J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio four pairs of shoes apiece, telling them, :"Marco, JD, you guys have sissy shoes."
--He keeps asking colleagues, "Did you get the shoes?" and makes them try them on in the Oval Office. He keeps a small stack of shoe boxes in a nearby office for giving out.
--A female White House official sniggered, "All the boys have them...It’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them."
--Trump: "You can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size."
--He has also taken to guessing shoe sizes in front of them (a skill which he is VERY proud of) and nobody dares to tell him he’s wrong there, either, so whether the shoes he gives them fit is a whole other problem.
--samanthab:" "It’s such an odd story. We’re in the middle of a war, and he’s asking people about their shoe sizes?"
--Shalonabena: "Within the cankle-borne body lies an ego so large, delusional, and possessive that he imagines that his tastes, motivations, and appearance are at the apex of royalty."
--Do I need to say this is all happening while the Middle East burns? It’s literally Nero, only with black Oxfords.
--(Note: The mainstream media is reporting on this as another of those "Oh, that madcap Trump! What will he do next?" but it is clearly a sign of madness/dementia, just like his gilding everything in the Oval Office with gold, his obsession with slapping his name on everything, and his manias about windmills and Hannibal Lecter. He’s crazy, and he has the nuclear codes, and he’s embarking on wars on whims.)
Which brings us to the Iran War:
--Pete Hegseth is as batshit crazy as Trump, and he has now banned photographers from his press conferences, including the news photographers from Reuters, AP, and Getty Images, because they have been publishing "unflattering"pictures of him.
--Most of the war news centers on the Strait of Hormuz, which is still, to all intents and purposes, closed to commercial traffic because three ships were hit. Two were damaged and one caught fire and had to be evacuated. Three sailors are still missing from that ship.
--The shipping company Maersk is suspending all traffic through the Strait. MSC and CMA-CGM have suspended cargo bookings. Hapag-Lloyd introduced a war risk surcharge of $1500 US dollars per twenty-foot equivalent unit of cargo.
--The reason the Strait of Hormuz is so problematic is that it’s a 23-mile-wide choke point, and Iran forms one side of the entire distance.
--Oil isn’t the only thing that goes through the Strait. It’s also the route for a number of essential products, including especially fertilizer, which needs to get through right now for planting.
--Iran: "Strait of Hormuz will either be a Strait of peace and prosperity for all or it will be a Strait of defeat and suffering for warmongers." They said they will not allow "a single liter of oil" through the Strait.
--The Department of Defense is claiming that they have sunk nearly all of Iran’s mine-laying ships. They said the US attacked 16 mine-laying ships.
--Devin: "Well, that contradicts reports that 90% of their mine laying ships are unharmed. The ships are small, carry about three mines, easy to hide, easy to replace."
--There has been no mention of mines destroyed, just the minelayers. This may be because we don’t have any minesweepers.
--Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis: "Iran prepared with more than 5000 mines and have been thinking about it, preparing about it for decades."
--doodpatrol: "Fun fact: we don’t have any active minesweeper capabilities in the Gulf! We retired the four ships we did have in the area four months ago."
--PanicAtTheDogPark: "A) We have no minesweepers. Literally. The closest are in Japan. The rest are scrapped. Per Trump’s order. B) In a pinch any number of vessels (including Zodiacs) can set a mine, just not a lot of them at once."
--Energy Secretary Chris Wright posted that the US Navy had escorted a ship through the Strait, which sent markets soaring, and then deleted it. Trump keeps telling the Navy he wants them to escort the ships, and they keep telling him "no."
--On Monday Trump said, "When the time comes the US Navy and their partners will escort tankers through the strait, if needed. I hope it’s not going to be needed, but if it’s needed, we’ll escort them right through."
--Trump was just asked at his rally today, "Are you encouraging oil company CEOs to use the Strait of Hormuz?" His reply: "Yeah, I think they should. I think they should use the strait. Look, we took out just about all of their mine ships." (Notice that he said "mine ships," not "mines."
--Anthony in TX: "’Just about’ is doing olympic-level heavy lifting here."
--Heidi Reinberg: "And even then I wouldn’t believe him. If I were another country, my answer would be, ‘I will if you will.’"
--Dem Senator Chris Murphy says the Trump administration "has no plan for the Strait" and did "not know how to get it safely back open."
--rugbymom: "It’s obvious that Trump and crew are frantic to get the strait open to commercial traffic again and have no idea how...He’s obviously trying to do something magical that will prevent the global oil and gas prices and the stock market reacting (as markets do) to the damage and chaos/uncertainty throughout the Gulf."
In Epstein/Trump files news:
--Poland has opened an official investigation into Epstein’s links to Russian intelligence.
--Dem Senator Sheldon Whitehouse: "More and more leads...all related to the suspicion that this unprecedented pedophilia scandal was co-organized by Russian intelligence servces."
--A just-unearthed video from 1992 shows Trump coming down an escalator in Trump Tower as a little girl goes up the escalator on the other side. Trump says to her, "Are you going up?" The little girl says yes. Trump then says to the person she’s with, "I’m going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?"
--Iran published a photo of a ballistic missile with writing on the nose. The writing says, "In memory of the victims of Epstein Island."
And meanwhile back at the Zorro Ranch:
--James Comer told Jesse Watters that the federal government ordered the previous investigation into the ranch to stop in 2019. (Yes, Trump was president back then, too.)
--Comer: "The federal government asked New Mexico to stop their investigation--I believe, back in 2019--of that ranch."
--Polly Sigh: "That would be Trump’s DOJ under Bill Barr."
--Norm Ornstein of the Atlantic: "A DOJ coverup, potentially of murder."
--Melanie D’Arrigo: "The cover up isn’t new, it’s ongoing."
--More details are coming out about what went on at the ranch. Epstein wanted to use it as a baby factory to seed the earth with his sperm. (That’s right, he wanted to "seed the earth" with pedophiles.)
--The ranch had a bizarre labyrinthine garden that is now a massive hole in the ground.
--Eddy Aragon, the radio host who got the email saying there were bodies of victims buried on the ranch’s property: "This is way beyond just burying bodies at Zorro Ranch. This is something far more macabre and strange than you think or have thoughts of. These are things if I were to say them would make me seem crazy or conspiratorial, and it’s not."
--He said the email was from a ranch employee who said he’s "been there and seen it all." The employee claimed he had video footage of sex crimes.
In The Grift Goes On news:
--Don, Jr., and Eric Trump now own a company that sells drones to the government, and because of the war in Iran, the government is now investing heavily in drones.
--Thom Hartmann: "The corruption is so brazen it barely qualifies as corruption any more. Trump and his lickspittles have pulled off what was previously unimaginable: the reinvention of government as a machine to generate profit for the ruling family--much like Saddam had done in Iraq and Putin has done in Russia--all right out in plain sight."
In They’re All Perverts news:
--The three Alexander brothers--Oren, Alon, and Tal--were convicted of multiple sex-trafficking charges involving scores of women. Eleven of them testified against the brothers that they had been drugged and then raped by them. Oren and Alon were two of the biggest real estate dealers, dealing in posh properties for the very rich. They used their wealth and status to lure women and then drug, assault, and rape them. Some of the women were underaged, with at least one 13-years-old who claimed she had been raped by five men, including Tal.
--Oren allegedly sent his brother Tal a text in 2021 that read, "We are on top of the game and the only thing that can bring us down is some Hoe complaining."
--They were convicted on all 19 federal charges against them. The verdict means they could be sentenced to life in prison.
--They were of course connected to Epstein and are in the files. They attended some of his sex parties, and ran in the same circles in Miami as Epstein. Their real estate clients included Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and Kanye West.
--Whispers that they had assaulted women had followed them since high school, but nobody did anything about it till now.
--These are federal charges, and people are already speculating that Trump might pardon them. Two of the brothers are up on state charges, too, though, and those can’t be pardoned.
In Scurrilous Gossip news:
--Trump appointed Charlie Kirk’s widow, Ericka Kirk, to the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors. (She has no qualifications for the post-- except that Trump really really likes her. Oops, I was wrong about her qualifications. She founded a Bible-based streetwear company.)
--Even Trump has to know she isn’t qualified, because he appointed her secretly--no ceremony, no announcement--her name just magically appeared on the list of board members.
--And speaking of women Trump really really likes, remember how I talked about Trump’s illegal US Attorney, Alina Habba, yesterday? Well, according to the Daily Mail, she’s been in the process of secretly getting a divorce--a friend said she is "a star in her own right, and it’s hard to live in that shadow." And she’s moved to a new place very close to Mar-a-lago.
In Resistance news:
-- A federal judge blocked Trump from implementing a fast-track process to dispose of the vast majority of appeals in immigration court, thereby depriving people of their due process.
--A big Chicago law firm is asking for a special counsel to investigate and prosecute the federal agents who terrorized Chicago last fall.
In historical news:
--The Beatles, and especially Paul McCartney, who not only wrote many of the songs we consider standards today--"Yesterday," "Here Comes the Sun," "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "All You Need is Love," "Eleanor Rigby," and my personal favorite, "Here, There, and Everywhere" --but went to form another important band, Wings, and to write film scores, an oratorio, and a ballet, changed the face of music forever, and on this day in 1997, Queen Elizabeth II acknowledged that fact by knighting Paul McCartney "for his services to music."
--Paul, or I should say, "Sir Paul," has always been a class act. He proved it on this occasion, too, dedicating the honor to fellow Beatles John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, and the people of Liverpool.
In other news:
--A federal judge ordered pardoned January 6th insurrectionist Jonathan Mumafo to be detained and transferred to New York for violating his supervised release (parole) in a separate threat case.
--A defunct NASA satellite is crashing back to earth in an uncontrolled re-entry. There is a small risk of falling debris. (Like that small risk of hitting a mine in the Strait of Hormuz?)
--None of the career prosecutors at the DOJ who specialize in excessive force cases are involved in the investigation of Alex Pretti’s shooting. They have all been sidelined.
In good news:
--A federal judge ruled Trump has to pay back not only the tariffs but interest on them, too. (He’s been stalling on paying the companies back and they’ve been suing him.) The interest will run to $65 million dollars a month.
--Federal judges will not extend US Attorney Brad Schimel’s interim appointment beyond next week. (He’s another one of Trump’s appointments that wasn’t able to get confirmed permanently, like Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan.)
--The state of Oregon has bought a beloved waterfall, Abiqua Falls. It had been owned by a religious abbey, who had kept it open to the public, and they sold it to the state to ensure that their tradition of public access was ensured.
Best question of the day, from WUTF: "Are they looking for the missing Epstein files in Iran?"
Best comment of the day, from Timothy Snyder: "And so the state of Trump is that he’s stuck. He is failing at fascism. He can break things, but he cannot make things. He can bluster, but he cannot triumph. He is tired, and every day is harder than the day before, and there are rivals in the wings, and elections coming."
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis