Dear Everybody:
The big news today is that not only Trump but his whole administration is crazy:
Secretary of Defense/War Pete Hegseth:
--Hegseth gave a press briefing that once again whined about the media coverage and trashed reporters instead of giving them information about the war in Iran. "It’s hard to figure out which side some of you are actually on. It’s incredibly unpatriotic."
--Hegseth also compared the reporters to the Pharisees of the Bible, actively plotting against Jesus. "Your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors."
--Ashton Pittman: "The implication here is once again that Trump is Jesus."
--EvviesD: "It’s been a week of seemingly endless religious fanaticism as Hegseth just compared journalists to the Pharisees who attacked Jesus. The US is being run by a collective cult of religious fundamentalists."
--He also read a prayer that he claimed was the Combat Search and Rescue Prayer (it wasn’t) and read a Bible verse which he claimed was Ezekiel 25:17, but was actually a made-up Bible verse Samuel L. Jackson recited in the movie PULP FICTION. It includes the lines: "And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee." Hegseth changed the speaker from God to the commander of the US mission.
--Ahmed Bada: "Blatant, blasphemous Christian Nationalism from the Trump administration who can’t stop conflating Trump with God."
--A group of Democrats in Congress, led by Rep Assamin Ansari, are moving to file articles of impeachment against Hegseth.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr:
--A new book says that RFK, Jr. once stopped the family car on a road trip to remove the private parts of a raccoon. RFK, jR.: "I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road-killed raccoon , thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be."
--Adam Cochran: "What the actual, ever-loving fuck do you mean?"
--Molly Jong-Fast: "Is this the person you want ‘going crazy’ on health?"
--At a hearing on Capitol Hill today, RFK, Jr. denied saying that black children should be "re-parented," even though his saying it was part of the Congressional Record and on tape.
Greg Phillips, the guy Trump put in charge of FEMA:
--Phillips claims that he has been teleported several times and had other supernatural experiences. He says he was teleported fifty miles from where he was to a Waffle House.
--He says he was almost hit head on in a car accident, but his dead girlfriend appeared beside him in the car and lifted the car into the air out of harm’s way. (Note: He says he had just won the car in a poker game.)
--He says he collapsed in an Indianapolis Lowe’s and came to in the McDonald’s parking lot across the street with 15,000 steps on his health app.
--He also says Satan spoke to him as he walked across Spain. When challenged about all these things, Phillips said, "God will not be mocked. I know what I experienced."
--The White House told FEMA to keep Phillips out of public view and ordered him to stop posting about teleporting.
--Professor Laura Haynes: "The level of batshit crazy in this administration is astounding."
--Erehose: "Every last one of them is a certified loon of one sort of another."
And then, of course, there’s Trump:
--Trump told Dr. Oz that Diet Coke is healthy for you because if you pour it on the grass it kills you, so it must kill cancer cells inside the body.
--He’s now claiming he won 10 wars. (It used to be 7 and then 8.) Now he is claiming he won the war between Israel and Lebanon, and, of course, the Iran war.
--And the Trump-as-Jesus thing is not going away. Today Franklin Graham chimed in clumsily with, "I do not believe President Trump would knowingly depict himself as Jesus Christ--that would of course be inappropriate...When I looked at the illustration, I didn’t jump to the same conclusion as some. There were no spiritual references--no halo, there were no crosses, no angels...I think this is a lot of to-do about nothing...I think his enemies are always foaming at the mouth at any possible opportunity to make him look bad. (Oh, so we just imagined the white robes and the red sash, the glowing golden hands, the people praying to him, the whatever those things were hovering in the sky.)
--Tucker Carlson said there are signs Trump could be the Antichrist. He said the Bible says "There will be a great rebellion against God, led by that man of lawlessness. This man will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. He will pose as god. He will mock other gods and put himself in their place." He went on to say, "This is mockery of God by a temporal leader, by a man. This is the leader of our country saying, I will take no instruction from God, because as he showed in the first meme, I am God."
--There’s new speculation about Trump’s saying he thought it was showing him as a doctor. Apparently, when Karoline Leavitt was asked about it, she said the talking point was going to be that the picture was "doctored," and he misheard or misunderstood or garbled it somehow into his being a "doctor."
--Palmer Report: "There is no mentally competent person on earth who is told to go out and claim that an image was doctored and instead mistakenly announces that he thought it was an image of a doctor...but Trump is not mentally competent. He is a dementia patient who has routinely demonstrated that he’s so far gone, he’s exactly the kind of person who would fail to recall any of what he was told to say beyond the word ‘doctored’ and then inaccurately fill in the gaps in his own memory by concluding he was supposed to say he thought he was a doctor."
Trump’s war with the Pope keeps intensifying:
--Trump: "The Pope--he doesn’t understand and he shouldn’t be talking about war because he has no idea what’s happening."
--A number of Republicans and MAGAs weighed in defending Trump and trashing the Pope. Head of Border Patrol and Bull Connor lookalike Tom Homan said, "I’m a lifelong Catholic. Baptized, first communion, confirmation. I’ve spent my whole life in the Catholic Church, but I’m disappointed that they want to weigh in on political issues like this." He said he wanted to sit down with the Pope and educate him.
--GOP Rep Troy Nehls: "Go lead your church but stay out of politics, right? We didn’t elect the pope to be the President or be the anything else. So just keep his nose in the church business and stay our of the political arena." (Note: We didn’t elect the Pope. The College of Cardinals did.)
--Billy Sunday: "Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile."
--Other people, both Catholic and non-, leaped to the Pope’s defense, with at least one pointing out exactly who the Pope was: "The Pope, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the Vatican City State, and Servant of the Servants of God."
--Joe Scarborough was stunned: "What, what, what are you, a king in medieval Europe? Warning the Pope not to talk about the Bible? You know how stupid you sound, right? A vice-president sitting on stage warning the Pope, God’s Representative on Earth for the Catholic Church, warning the Pope about what he can and cannot say about theology..."
--Daily Kos: "So there’s no separation of church and state, but any religious person who doesn’t agree with the state should shut the fuck up? This is a definition of religious liberty that we were one aware of."
--Eliot Higgins: "Is there an option of not picking a fight with the Pope, or would that be seen as disloyalty?"
--Eholbert: "The Pope should stay out of politics. Meanwhile, let’s ban abortion, put the Ten Commandments in all schools so all Republicans can violate them, let’s put in Christianity to all aspects of society, and say God everywhere."
--Bill Kristol had an interesting insight: "They’re attacking Pope Leo not simply because he’s the Pope but because he’s the first American Pope. He’s a threat to their ambition to change the meaning of America. And he’s popular here in America...Trump is not wrong to sense that the Pope poses a kind of threat to him. After all, the first Polish pope helped liberate his home country from authoritarian rule. Trump and the Trumpists are worried that the first American pope could contribute to such a development here. And they should be. The view Pope Leo is upholding--that right matters, not just right--is an American one. It’s the view not just of Augustine but of Abraham Lincoln. The Trumpists fear Pope Leo not simply because he’s defending the views and speaking to the communicants of his church. They fear him because he’s defending the principles and speaking to the citizens of his country. Of our country."
--This afternoon Trump seemed to temporize his battle with the Pope a little (for Trump), posting: "I have nothing against the Pope. His brother is MAGA all the way. I like his brother. I’m not fighting with him. I can disagree with him. I have a right to disagree with the Pope," and then saying the Pope "needs to recognize it’s a nasty world." (So not really temporizing after all.)
In Epstein/Trump news:
--Trump talked to reporters today about the Epstein files, referring to the women as "the victims or whatever," and saying they didn’t want to go under oath. (Note: Their interviews UNDER OATH were recorded as 302s.)
--Trump was asked whether he believes there should be a public hearing for more Epstein survivors. Trump: "Well, I’m ok with it. I think we’ve had a lot of, a couple of hearings. I’m okay with it. But I understand that the women didn’t want to go under oath. That’s what I heard. That the women, the victims or whatever, refuse to go under oath. Which is a little surprising."
--Aaron Parnas: "First, he’s lying--no one refused to go under oath. The survivors said it’s not their responsibility to testify in front of Congress when they’ve already spoken to the FBI. Second, ‘victims or whatever’ is one of the most derogatory things the President could say."
--Polly Sigh: "He’s also lying about them refusing to go under oath. They spoke with the FBI--including the woman who accused Trump of raping her when she was a child."
--Mike Rufkin: "A disgusting thing to say. He may have depicted himself as Jesus, but he is the devil."
--atx.nana: "Pam Bondi is the one who refused to testify under oath, not the victims."
--Trump also said, "Melania felt strongly about it because she was accused that I met her through Epstein, but it turned out to be totally false." (Note: Is it just me, or does this sound really odd? He would know how he met her, but he didn’t say, "That wasn’t true. That isn’t how I met her." He said, "It turned out to be totally false," like it was something the evidence had turned up.)
Remember that Turning Point USA event Erika Kirk and JD Vance were supposed to do?
--Erika bailed at the last minute, claiming threats against her: "I was so looking forward to tonight’s event at the University of Georgia with our vice president JD Vance, but after all our family has been thru, I take my security team’s recommendations extremely seriously."
--Observers claim the real reason she bailed was that hardly anyone attended (a 5-thousand person arena maybe a quarter full) which left Vance holding the bag and talking to the tiny crowd. Several pointed out that Vance’s Secret Service team were there for security and that if there was actually a threat, they wouldn’t have let him come.
--Candace Owens, who has been claiming that Erika murdered her husband, wrote: "Stop. This is exhausting. You pulled out because of bad ticket sales. For the same reason Turning Point Faith had to ‘reschedule’ the Pastor’s Summit and various other events quietly. People don’t believe you and don’t line up for you because you struggle to tell the truth about even the most basic facts. Where is the video of Charlie appointing you as CEO weeks before his death? The Secret Service sits above your security team. Were there actually a viable threat, the vice president would not have continued the event."
--Right-wing influencer Tommy Borum: "Vice President Vance said very clearly: Secret Service determined there was no credible threat. He said you felt insecure. Your own vanity and insecurity, with your damaged ego, is why you didn’t show up. You BALKED because you are caught in multiple lies that the public has connected."
--Jake Taylor: "Tens of people went to see Vice President JD Vance at today’s Turning Point USA event."
--Ironically, the name of the tour this was a part of was the "Make Heaven Crowded" tour.
In historical news:
--The Titanic sank at 2:20 a.m on April fifteenth, 1912. One of the women on board, Mrs. Margaret Brown of Denver, has always been considered a hero for her actions in the lifeboats that night, giving other people all her clothes and leading songs to keep their spirits up in the freezing, terrifying, dark--and even (maybe) pointing a gun at the officer in charge of the boat to make him go back and try to pick up survivors when the Titanic went down, but her real heroism started after the Carpathia arrived and took the survivors aboard.
--The survivors were wrapped in blankets after their night in the freezing cold boats and given hot soup, and then the ship’s officers set out to find out who all the survivors were, but most of them were newly-widowed immigrants who didn’t speak English. Because Molly Brown spoke a number of languages, she was invaluable in finding out the names of the women and of any relatives they might have in the states. She talked to the women and comforted them.
--She also solicited funds for them from among the passengers of the Carpathia and the wealthier survivors of the Titanic. When an insufficient number forked over the cash, she put up a large sign in the dining room of the Carpathia which read, "Names of those who haven’t yet donated to the charity campaign." Magically, by dinnertime everyone had contributed.
--When the Carpathia docked in New York, Molly Brown paid for the widows and their children to be put up in a hotel until they could make connections with relatives and then paid for their train fare to Minnesota or wherever they were going. She stayed in New York for nearly two weeks, until the last one had been safely seen on her way, and only then did she go home to Denver, where she was greeted and feted as the heroine she most definitely was.
In other news:
--There’s a new outbreak of measles in Utah along the Utah-Arizona border, with nearly 600 cases of measles (mostly children) and 49 hospitalized.
--The Tennessee General Assembly just passed the Charlie Kirk Act, a bill which restricts protest and freedom of expression on college campuses. Students who participate in campus walkouts will now be suspended or expelled. The legislature says they named it after Charlie because he stood for freedom of speech.
In good news:
--A federal judge ruled that, no, he didn’t say construction above-ground could continue on Trump’s ballroom and halted work again.
--More than a dozen GOP leaders in state legislatures across the country have opted to resign or retire over the last 14 months.
Best comment of the day, from Pope Leo XV: "Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth."
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis