Dear Everybody:
Today’s Sunday, which means Trump’s people are all over the morning shows, spouting nonsense and trying to convince that up is down, black is white, and we have always been at war with the EU, but today it seems worse than ever:
--Host: "What is the national emergency that justifies this new slate of tariffs (against European countries who defend Greenland)?" Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: "The national emergency is avoiding a national emergency."
--Also Scott Bessent: "Make it part of the US and there will not be a conflict because the US right now, we’re the hottest country in the world..." (He sounds like someone talking about a cool new product that you should go right out and buy.)
--Host: Are your agents going to comply with the order to not use chemical agents?" Kristi Noem: "That order was a little ridiculous because the judge told us we couldn’t do what we already aren’t doing." Host: "We just saw video of chemical agents being used." Noem: "We only use them when violence is happening." (In case you didn’t notice, she totally contradicts herself in the space of two sentences.)
--Noem called protesters "organized, funded protesters" and said they committed "acts of violence against our law enforcement officers."
--One host asked Kristi Noem about the ICE agent who murdered Renee Good: "Tell me about the officer, Jonathan Ross." Noem: "Don’t say his name! I mean, for heaven’s sake, we shouldn’t have people continue to dox law enforcement!" Host: "His name is public." Noem: "I know, but that doesn’t mean it should continue to be said."
--shauna: "You heard her--put his name on marquees, put it on t-shirts. Do drone shows with his name in the middle while the other drones do the macarena about it. Light it up."
My favorite thing about Trump and his people is how they constantly betray themselves:
--Kristi Noem: "I can’t tell the people of Minnesota exactly how many dangerous criminals they have. I do know they’re extremely grateful every time we get a pedophile off the street." (In the first place, getting pedophiles off the street isn’t their job, it’s the police’s, and in the second place, are you really sure you want to bring up pedophiles? Really?)
--My other favorite thing about Trump’s people is they constantly betray who they really are. In the first place, they all talk like mobsters. Bessent: "They (European leaders) will come around and understand they need to be under the US security umbrella."
--Nick Pettigrew: "This is a mobster telling a shop owner that the police can’t protect them, only they can."
--When Bessent was asked, "Is military action on the table?" he said, "I believe the Europeans will understand that the best outcome is for the US to receive control of Greenland." ("Nice little country you got there. Pity if anything happened to it.")
--They also talk (and act) like the Nazis they are.
--Kevin Hassett praised the people at the National Economic Council who come in every day and make sure the trains are running on time." (That’s right. "THE TRAINS ARE RUNNING ON TIME. Just like Hitler.)
--This morning Scott Bessent said, "Peace through strength," which the last time I looked was one of the slogans of Big Brother in 1984 and a classic example of Doublethink.
--And there’s a new photo of Greg Bovino, head of the Border Patrol, sporting a long, double-breasted overcoat just like Goebbels and other Nazi officers used to wear. You can see it here: https://www.themirror.com/news/politics/trumps-deportation-czar-greg-bovino-1624552
In ICE/Gestapo news:
--The polls regarding ICE, Kristi Noem, and Trump are terrible and getting worse by the day, and ICE’s over-the-top violence and brutality in Minneapolis, shooting innocent women and nearly killing a baby, are making everybody recoil, so much that even Trump and his people are noticing--and getting nervous.
--Axios: "Some Trump advisors quietly are talking about ‘recalibrating’ the White House’s approach--though it’s unclear what changes Trump would embrace, if any." And they aren’t talking about actually changing any of what they’re doing. They’re just concerned about the "optics."
--Top Trump advisor: "I wouldn’t say he’s concerned about the policy. He wants deportations. He wants mass deportations. What he doesn’t want is what people are seeing. He doesn’t like the way it looks. It looks bad, so he’s expressed some discomfort at that."
--Laura Ingraham to Border Czar Tom Homan: "Are you concerned about the CNN and Quinnipiac polls that show declining public support for ICE and Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement?" Homan: "I think we need to be better at messaging what we’re doing."
--John: "I love how Homan said they needed to get better at messaging this insanity. Translated: we must absolutely stop the videotaping of our thugs while they’re murdering the lefties."
--Host: "Watch this video of a woman who says she’s disabled getting dealt with by ICE. What do you think?" GOP Rep Michael McCaul: "Well, the optics aren’t good." Host: "They smashed her windows and threw her to the ground." McCaul: "It appears to be a little overzealous, but what about the actions of murderers and drug traffickers?"
--When he was asked by a reporter whether the DOJ was investigating the guy who murdered Renee Good, Todd Blanche said, "What happened has been reviewed by millions of Americans because it was recorded. We investigate when it’s appropriate. That is not the case here. We are not going to bow to pressure. So, no, we are not investigating."
--Mark Jacob: "Todd Blanche is helping cover up a murder. Our federal government is run by monsters."
--When Todd Blanche was shown a video of ICE brutalizing a protester, he called it "made up outrage."
--The Rude Pundit: "Here’s the thing: if you lie all the time, then you won’t be believed. You gotta mix some truth in with the lies. But this administration and their media lie all the fucking time. I feel like we’re in a race between those who want to bring this madness to an end and the mad leaders who want to bring us all to heel as they completely gut the rule of law in this country."
--Michelle Goldberg: "This week Fox News warned about "organized gangs of wine moms" using "antifa tactics" against ICE...ICE’s invasion of Minneapolis started with the demonization of Somali immigrants. It took only weeks for conservative demagogues to direct their venom toward the middle-class women of the Resistance. We’re now seeing an outpouring of misogynist rage driven by political expedience and psychosexual grievance...For MAGA, ICE’s eagerness to put women in their place might be a feature."
--The National Review’s Rich Lowry described Good as a suicidal militant. "She went out of her way to confront ICE and created the predicate for the tragedy, which has been used to propagandize against ICE and mobilize more people to do what she did. Insurgencies feed off their martyrs." (Oh, so she WANTED to get shot in the face.)
--They even have a new acronym for the group. PJ Media: "The greatest threat to our nation is a group of unindicted domestic terrorists who are just AWFL: Affluent White Liberal Women." (Just as a side not, they got the acronym wrong.)
--GOP Rep Andy Ogles: "I was texting Stephen Miller this week about ways to stop the Minneapolis insurrectionists. We cannot let these rioters inspire other insurrections across the country."
--The problem of course is that these people are not paid, organized insurrectionists. They’re ordinary people who’ve been invaded and are fighting back. This morning Matt Novak posted a photo of an old man standing in his bathrobe in the snow, filming ICE agents trying to arrest somebody with the caption, "ICE has invaded these communities. Outside agitators don’t show up in their fucking bathrobes."
--There’s also a video up of a middle-aged guy who says he never protested a day in his life but has now been moved to get out there and defend his neighbors.
--Women for Survival: "Reminder for anyone who needs to hear it: to brand nonviolent protests as ‘insurrections’ is the most dangerous propaganda coming out of the White House right now."
--Jade Jurek: "Protesting is NOT an insurrection. But breaking into our Capitol and threatening to hang the Vice President of the United States definitely was."
--Keith DB: "Has it not been established that the best way to handle insurrectionists is to pardon them?"
In Trump’s World Domination Tour news:
GOP Senator Markwayne Mullin was asked on Fox: "Troops from Germany, France, Sweden, and Norway are taking part in a military exercise in Greenland. What kind of message are they sending to America?" Mullin: "Well, I don’t think this is a message to the US. This is a message to China and Russia." (No, it’s not. Those countries specifically said they’re doing it in response to Trump’s threats.)
--GOP Mike Turner: "If we’re talking about Greenland, this is not Art of the Deal, this is more of a Dating Game."
--Ted Cruz: "I believe it is overwhelmingly in America’s interest to acquire Greenland...the whole history of America has been a history of acquiring new lands and new territories." (You sure you want to talk about all those broken Indian treaties and the Trail of Tears and the Sand Creek Massacre and the Battle of Wounded Knee?)
--In the meantime, Trump seems to have forgotten all about Iran. Reporter to Trump: "You urged protesters in Iran to keep fighting in the streets and that help was on the way. Is help on the way?" Trump: "Well, we’re going to see."
--And as far as Venezuela goes, it’s all about the oil. The first US sale of Venezuela’s crude oil was to Vitol, a company whose senior member donated $6 million dollars to Trump’s re-election campaign.
--The White House was asked about it. Their response: "President Trump always does what is in the best interest of the American people...the media’s continued attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest are a tired attempt to distract from the incredible work only this president is capable of achieving."
--Ron Filipkowski: "So trump has agreed to let the Maduro regime remain in power without Maduro, in exchange for a massive amount of oil, then a Trump megadonor is selling that oil on the international market to whoever, then the proceeds of that are being deposited in a Qatari bank account, then Trump decide how he wants to spend that money, and Congress is not involved in any of it. Nothing to see here."
In Epstein news:
--19 of the Epstein victims requested that a DOJ watchdog review the agency’s work, alleging that the redactions have not adequately concealed survivors’ names and identifiers.
--Eric Christopherson: "So here’s what I suspect Venezuela was largely about: Trump stealing oil and stashing the sales of it in Qatar instead of the US treasury in case the Epstein files do get out and he’s likely to get impeached and removed from office and he has to make a run for it overseas. He’s already got half a billion in that Qatar account. How much will he have in a month’s time? (Yes, parking the money in his own private account is yet another impeachable offense.)"
--The DOJ says they have 500 people working on the files, but gosh, no, they don’t have any idea when they will have any ready to come out.
On Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize:
--On his show, Jimmy Kimmel offered to give Trump one of his awards: his Daytime Emmy, his Clio, his Webby, or his Writers Guild Award, or his 2015 Soul Train Award for White Person of the Year. Kimmel: "The choice is yours. I will personally deliver any or even all of these to the Oval Office in exchange for leaving the people of Minneapolis alone."
--Candace Lucas: "My father was a career army officer. He served in both WWII and Korea. I still have the box with medals he’d earned in combat. Someone could break into my house and take the box and the medals, but that wouldn’t make that person a war hero. It just makes that person a thief. That’s all Trump is."
In historical news:
--Mike Madrid: "In the waning months of his reign Caligula had already declared himself divine, humiliated his government officials, demanded that senators worship him, reportedly attempted to install his favorite horse Incitatus as consul, and purged anyone who failed to demonstrate sufficient enthusiasm for his increasingly erratic commands. The Roman elite, exhausted by the performance of loyalty and terrified of becoming the next target, whispered in private while applauding in public. They knew the madness couldn’t last...Caligula’s transformation from promising leader to deranged autocrat didn’t happen overnight. It was a gradual erosion of norms, each transgression slightly more outrageous than the last, each testing the boundaries of what Rome’s institutions would tolerate."
--Caligula declared himself a living god and demanded his image be placed in the Temple of Jerusalem. He held lavish parties while ordinary Romans went hungry. He inherited a full treasury from Tiberius and spent it on spectacles, on personal luxuries, on bribess to maintain loyalty, on military campaigns that went nowhere. Within a few years, Rome was broke."
--His reign lasted less than four years. He was assassinated by his own guards in a conspiracy involving officers of the Praetorian Guard and senators. After his death all the senators and nobles who had sucked up to him took credit for the death, saying they were involved in the conspiracy to kill him.
In Resistance news:
--In Minneapolis, local people are forming a barricade around the mosques of Somalis during evening prayers and at night to protect them.
In other news:
--The DHS quickly moved to deport the two men in ICE detention who witnessed a fellow detainee being choked to death by guards so they can’t testify against the guards.
--Trump is suing JP Morgan Chase for supposedly "debanking" him after the January 6 insurrection. (It’s not true. Also, interestingly, JP Morgan Chase was one of the funders of Epstein and knows A LOT about Epstein’s--and Trump’s--doings. Coincidence?)
--Elon Musk and other Trump people are calling for Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar to be put to death for saying, "The one place where we thought we would never experience this is the US goddamn States."
In good news:
--The Senate voted to approve billions of dollars in funding for federal science agencies over Trump’s objections.
--In a stunning meltdown on the House floor, a handful of GOP reps rebelled against Speaker Mike Johnson and voted against several Trump-desired bills, which led to the defeat of one labor bill and the postponement of 3 others. Mike Johnson said, "We’re totally in control of the House." (Ha!)
Best sign of the day, from outside a Minneapolis church: "Blessed are the Whistle Blowers, for they play the Music of Salvation."
Best comment of the day, from George Orwell: "All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed, they must rely exclusively on force."
Today’s fragment of poetry by Irving Berlin: "There may be trouble ahead, but while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance, let’s face the music and dance. Before the fiddlers have fled and while we still have the chance, let’s face the music and dance..."
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis