Dear Everybody:
No matter what Trump does, the big news today (and every day for the foreseeable future) is the release (sort of) of the Epstein files:
--According to CBS News, at least 16 newly-released files have since disappeared from the Justice Department’s website, including one that shows a photo of President Trump standing five girls, two of them in bikinis, with his arms around them. The Department of Justice has not responded to a request for comment about the discrepancy, and "it’s unclear why the files are missing a day after they were initially released."
--Other missing files included photos of a room with what appeared to be a massage table and nude photos and paintings. And financial records, which obviously can’t have been redacted to protect the victims and may indicate that Trump was involved in more financial dealings with Epstein than we know about.
--One in particular, an image of Epstein’s secretary’s message pad has the name of the caller and the phone number blacked out. The message, which isn’t, is "I have a female for him." The redacted part can ONLY be the name and number of a perpetrator and sex trafficker.
--Some of the most consequential records about Epstein--the FBI’s interviews with survivors, internal DOJ memos examining charging decisions, and the original multi-count indictment in the first Epstein case--are nowhere to be found.
--Will Stockhour: "The redactions are meant to protect him (Trump), not the young women he raped. The only way to see the severely redacted Epstein files is to believe that under all that black are either compromising pictures of President Pedophile or his name linking him to other criminals and criminal acts."
--Dem Rep Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie are drafting articles of impeachment and filing inherent contempt charges against Pam Bondi and the DOJ for their failure to follow the law and release all the documents.
--Ro Khanna: "The problem here is that there are rich and powerful people who either engaged in this abuse, covered it up, or were on the island. What the American people want to know is who are these people? Instead of holding them accountable, Pam Bondi is now breaking the law."
--Todd Blanche is now claiming that prior laws override the law passed demanding the release of the Epstein files.
What IS in the documents:
--A 1996 case in which one of Epstein’s victims, Maria Farmer, accused him of stealing photographs of her sisters, ages 16 and 12, which she had taken for her own personal use, and selling them to men. She swore in the report that Epstein had asked her to take pictures of young girls at swimming pools and threatened to "burn her house down" if she told anyone about the photos. The FBI not only ignored the report, but claimed it didn’t exist. She is now completely vindicated as her own hand-written deposition in the case has been released.
--Maria Farmer also said that she saw Trump in 1995 in Epstein’s Manhattan office. He came into the office and began hovering over her, leering at her and looking at her legs. Then Epstein entered the room, and said, "No, no. She’s not here for you." (Trump has denied her account.)
--One document that has Trump’s name redacted, but which was already released unredacted to Congress reads: "Donald Trump liked flicking and sucking her nipples until they were raw...I also know she had sexual relations with Trump at Jeffrey’s New York mansion on regular occasions as I once met Jen for coffee, just before she was going to meet Trump and Epstein together at his mansion." In the copy released by the DOJ, Trump’s name is blacked out wherever it appears.
--Meidas Touch: "Trump’s name was in the original release. Now it’s blacked out."
--rugbymom: "It’s important that the first reporting on the ‘released’ files is full of ‘OMG, 100 pages of completely blocked-out text!’ We lost the Mueller Report fight because Bill Barr’s dishonest ‘summary’ took hold quickly and the narrative he set stuck even once the full report was out. That gambit doesn’t seem to be working this time, nor should it."
In Trump Destroys Washington, DC news:
--Not content with his Walk of Fame photos, in which Trump replaced Biden’s photo with a picture of an autopen, Trump has now put up plaques describing each President--which he wrote himself.
--It was of course just another chance to trash his enemies, including, apparently, every Democratic president:
--Biden, of course, got the most spiteful plaque: "Taking office as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States, Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction."
--But Obama was a close second: Not only does Trump pointedly call him Barack HUSSEIN Obama, he calls him "one of the most divisive political figures in American history" and passed "the highly ineffective Unaffordable Care Act. He crippled small businesses with crushing regulation and environmental red tape, devastated American coal miners, and weaponized the IRS and Federal bureaucracies against his political opponents."
--But the other Democratic Presidents were trashed, too. Truman, for instance, came up with a "so-called Fair Deal."
--JFK "suffered a painful setback from his failed Bay of Pigs invasion."
--Clinton was famous for the "scandals that plagued his presidency", and added the jibe: "In 2016, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, lost the Presidency to Donald J. Trump!!"
--George W. Bush "started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which should not have happened."
--Trump reserved his praise for his hero, Andrew Jackson, who "was unjustifiably treated unfairly by the Press, but not as viciously as President Abraham Lincoln and President Donald J. Trump would, in the future be."
--And did you know Ronald Reagan was "a fan of President Donald J. Trump long before Trump’s 2016 White House run?"
--Karoline Leavitt: "The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each President and the legacy they left behind. As a student of history, many were written directly by the President himself." (You don’t say! And since when is he a "student of history?" Or "eloquent?")
--Fox News’s Jesse Watters brushed it off as "Trump having a little fun," but even Fox’s Brian Kilmeade thought he went too far. "I am not for the trolling."
--Huffington Post: "It’s all rather reminiscent of the President’s social media posts, just presented in the format of a historical exhibit at the highest level of the federal government."
--History professor Michael Allen: "The newly installed plaques are the equivalent of drawing mustaches on other people’s portraits...beneath the dignity of the office he holds on behalf of the American people."
--Brian Karem: "The pettiness is beyond comparison. The grammar is horrible...this is the type of graffiti you find scrawled on the walls at an interstate bathroom rest stop."
--Ron Filipkowski: "Classless, disgusting, and full of lies. What else would you expect from Trump?"
--Charlie Sykes said the plaques were "beyond the wildest excesses of parody."
--New York Times’ Peter Baker: "In effect, he bronzed some of his cartoonish social media juvenalia and bolted it to the taxpayer-owned building where two Roosevelts, JFK, and Ronald Reagan once lived."
--The internet is livid, calling the plaques "inflammatory and insulting," and saying, "The only thing worse than a narcissistic sociopath is an unbelievably petty..."
--Mike: "Every day Trump shows us a little bit more of his ugly soul. The plaques on the President’s wall are today's illustration of this petty, disgusting man. It’s a good thing, really, as the exposure is turning more and more against him.
In the Turning Point USA convention news:
--The fractures in the right that the death of Charlie Kirk has produced were on full display at the convention, with right-wing speakers attacking other right-wing speakers, and Kirk’s widow warning, "we’ve seen fractures, we’ve seen bridges being burned that shouldn’t be burnt."
--Some wit on the internet christened the organization "Turning Spit USA."
--The name-calling continued in the speeches. Ben Shapiro called Nick Fuentes "an evil troll" and said Tucker Carlson’s building him up was an "act of moral imbecility." He said Candace Owens "has been vomiting all sorts of hideous and conspiratorial nonsense" and Megyn Kelly is "guilty of cowardice" for refusing to condemn Owens. Steve Bannon called Ben Shapiro "a cancer" and Megyn Kelly belittled Shapiro and said their friendship is over.
--A lot of the fighting was over Israel and anti-semitism and whether support for Israel conflicts with Trump’s "America First" platform.
--There’s also a huge schism in the organization over Charlie Kirk’s death, with one side insisting he was killed by the left--or the CIA--or Israel.
--The look of the convention is definitely that of a megachurch. When Ericka Kirk came out, it was to swelling music and huge pyrotechnic fountains of fireworks, and she was wearing an all-glitter pantsuit.
--Randy Haverstein: "Normally if you die, you just hope your wife doesn’t remarry within the first three months, but I never even considered fireworks."
--A meme online said, "Erick Kirk is going through the normal five stages of grief: pyrotechnics, merch, podcasting, grifting, and acceptance."
--To make matters worse, while introducing one of her colleagues, Ericka Kirk said, "Despite the devastating loss of Charlie Kir, my incredible...Caleb has persisted with the same grift...gift...grit." (Freudian slip, much?)
--In the creepiest aspect of the convention, they have a tent made up to look exactly like the "Prove Me Wrong" tent where Charlie Kirk was shot and people are taking selfies of themselves in it.
--Trump will not be the keynote speaker. In recent years he has been. This year it’s Don, Jr. and JD Vance, who Ericka Kirk just endorsed for President in 2028.
In other news:
--A California January 6er who was pardoned by Trump was sentenced to nearly 7 years in federal prison on a charge of receiving child pornography. (Pretty soon they’re all going to be back in jail.)
--The Jim Beam distillery in Kentucky is shutting down temporarily due to an overstock in their warehouses that is happening because sales have slowed radically, ESPECIALLY IN CANADA.
In good news:
--The Pulitzer Prize Board was sued by Trump for giving the prize to the reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post for their Russiagate reporting, and they’ve used the discovery in the suit to demand Trump’s tax returns, financial records, and medical/psychological files. (Great going, guys!)
--The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that former state school superintendent Ryan Walers illegally forced new K-12 social studies standards to promote Christianity in public schools in violation of the First Amendment.
--Dem Rep Haley Stevens formally filed articles of impeachment against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for endangering the country’s health.
In Christmas news:
--In 1955, Sears put an ad in the newspaper in Colorado Springs that showed a picture of Santa and the words, "Hey, Kiddies, Call Me Direct! At ME2--6681." Unfortunately, that was the number not of the North Pole but of Colonel Harry Shoup, the head of NORAD. It was his secret military hotline. And a little girl called him and asked, "Is this Santa?"
--Col. Shoup reportedly yelled at her, thinking it was a prank--or worse--and then realized it was a child when she started to cry. He then played along, saying "ho ho ho" a lot and asking her what she wanted for Christmas, and then got her mother on the line to find out what the heck was going on.
--The incident set him thinking, and he and NORAD instituted their Official Santa Tracker, which has been in operation ever since. It offers official updates every Christmas Eve, updates you’ve probably heard, like: "This is the commander at the Combat Alert Center and we have an unidentified flying object on our radar. It looks like a sleigh."
Best satire of the week, from Governor Gavin Newsom: "I HOPE EVERYONE HAS A GREAT HOLIDAY WEEKEND EXCEPT OUR CLINICALLY ILL FELON PRESIDENT, STEPHEN MILLER, JD VANCE, JD’S COUCH, JD’S FUTON, KASH KAN’T KATCH ‘EM PATEL, KOSPLAY KRISTI, LYIN’ LEAVITT, SECRETARY BRAINWORM, AND MIKE ‘ALWAYS ON HIS KNEES’ JOHNSON. GCN."
Best comment of the day, from Rick Wilson: "Be of good cheer. His reign will end. You could feel it this week."
Finally, today is the winter solstice--at 3:03 p.m. EST--making this officially the shortest day of the year. From now on, there will be more and more light, both literally and (I hope) figuratively. For all of us who hate the darkness, YAY!
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis