“The kidney has a very special place in the heart”

by digby

TRUMP: "You've worked so hard on the kidney. Very special — the kidney has a very special place in the heart. It's an incredible thing." pic.twitter.com/JLM3uCsO5u— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 10, 2019

Roy Edroso looks into his crystal ball and sees the future:

Donald Trump, September 11, 2019 rally in Mobile, Alabama: “I went to the September 11, eleven of the worst September in the history of the world. The towers falling like snow, though it was September. Snow in September, and they say there’s global warming. Mexico was cheering, cheering in their native Mexican, saying ‘hasta la vista,’ so terrible. Eleven hours of terrible torture in fire and carnage with duct tape over their mouths in a van. A shame. And that my friends is why we must LOCK UP THAT WALL!”

Victor David Hanson, National Review, the next day: “Trump breaks through the cant and sophistry of our modern Nabobs with simple yet elegant solecistic poeticisms. When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Trump speaks, they say, ‘MAGA, OO-rah, long live King Trump!’”

Donald Trump, December 31, 2019, New Year’s Eve speech from Mar-a-Lago:“This is a new year of wonders with men in the space, moon, dog. Dog in the moon, eyes in the head, magic, and the man, Bill, my friend, my dear friend, saying ‘See you. Sir. God bless you sir. You have made America… a great hot dog. Very hot. A dog. God bless you sir. God bless you.’ God bless, as Red Skelton, the great architect, said, and happy new year, 1964, the year we defeated the Allies.”

D.C. McAllister, PJ Media, next day: “Liberals are symbolic analysts — that is, wimps — so they just can’t see that Trump is speaking to the heart rather than the mind. And speaking as a grown-ass woman, he speaks also to my loins. With all that ‘sir’ there is a serious daddy vibe going on here, and I am feeling it. I would happily give this great man, this real man, some sir-vice sex.”

Donald Trump, February 2, 2020, impromptu press conference: “Then pull me out. I am half crazy. They won’t let me get up. They dyed my shoes. Open those shoes. Give me something. I am so sick. Give me some water, the only thing that I want.”

Rod Dreher, The American Conservative, the next day: “But what choice did Trump have? Affirm his Christian beliefs, and be mocked, vilified, and deplatformed by the homosexual Mafia? I think he was wise to go the way he did and answer all the liberals’ ‘facts’ and ‘science’ with gibberish; there’s something very Benedict Option about it. And besides, a reader I’ll call ‘Mr. X,’ because he can’t let the homosexuals who run his subdivision know he is of the Lord, points out this passage from the Book of Proverbs (I know, the Bible is rather crude compared to the arcane spiritual authorities I usually quote, but in this case I find it apposite):

The woman Folly is loud; she is seductive and knows nothing. She sits at the door of her house; she takes a seat on the highest places of the town, calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way, “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” And to him who lacks sense she says, “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

“Isn’t the White House one of ‘the highest places of the town’? And isn’t the sweet stolen water the 2016 election? I don’t say that Trump is a godly man, but if, as I have suggested, God is working through him, unworthy vessel that he is, might he be unconsciously channeling the Scriptures? Perhaps God is telling us through Trump that the Lavender Social Justice Mob has ‘dyed His shoes,’ and this has made Him sick, and He is calling for water to, in the words of Al Bundy, wash the gay away. I’m still in Paris and have to go soon to eat a ten-course meal and take pictures of it, but tomorrow I will share the wisdom of ‘Sarah T.,’ a lesbian socialist vegetarian who hates all other lesbians, socialists, and vegetarians and has much to say on this subject.”

Donald Trump, March 10, 2020, wandering Pennsylvania Avenue with his pants down: “[flutters his lips with his index finger] Be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be.[soils self].”

New York Post front page, the next day: “AMERICA IS BACK!”

This is absolutely correct. There is NOTHING he could do or say that would break the spell. I wish I understood it, but I never will.

That’s from Edroso’s newsletter, which you should sign up for, here. It’s a necessary little bit of hilarity and outrage in my day.

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Banana Republic watch

by digby

I’ve been wondering where Trump’s immigration policy ranks next to the rest of the world. The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner asked an expert:

I recently spoke by phone with Michael Garcia Bochenek, who is the senior counsel to the Children’s Rights division of Human Rights Watch. Bochenek, who previously served as the director of law and policy for Amnesty International’s London secretariat, has extensive experience visiting child detainees in the United States and around the world. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what he learned from seeing detained children abroad, the attitudes of guards at border facilities, and why America makes it so difficult for human-rights advocates to visit detained children.

As this largely self-imposed humanitarian crisis has been developing on the border, what have you made of the images and reports you have been seeing, especially given your international experience?

“Self-imposed” is really the right word, not only in terms of a manufactured emergency. This is something that, numerically speaking, isn’t very unusual, something that in terms of capacity isn’t that much of a challenge, in a country with considerable resources. Anytime we are looking at deficiencies in terms of conditions of detention, lack of access to needed programming, lack of attention to mental-health and other health services—the cause of that is not that there is not money, or there is no capacity, or there is no expertise, as has been the case in some places that I have been. It’s a policy choice. It’s a choice to inflict these kinds of conditions on people, and in this case on children.

Can you discuss those other detention centers that you have seen around the world, where the conditions stem from a lack of expertise, or the country is overwhelmed?

The closest contexts that I can think of are primarily in the juvenile and criminal settings. These are kids, and sometimes adults, who are charged with crimes or convicted of crimes and who are going through a criminal process as opposed to an administrative immigration situation. For example, kids held in Brazil, or kids held in many other Latin American countries, are often held in overcrowded conditions. There is often a severe lack of access to necessary health care. Sometimes the quality of food is an issue. Rarely, in the case of Brazil, are education or other kinds of activities wholly unavailable, although sometimes there is a significant gender difference in terms of who gets offered what. Boys might get access to sporting activities, and girls are expected to sit quietly and do needlework. There are problems in that regard.

But, significantly, it’s not really a question, in a place like Brazil, that kids should have access to education. The question that often arises there is what curriculum should they follow, given that people are coming in and out all the time. In the United States, in contrast, particularly with these immigration holding cells, there’s absolutely no pretense of offering education. Even though, in some cases, we’re talking about having kids for weeks. If there are standards with relation to activities, they’re certainly observed in the breach.

In terms of caring for detained kids, is this something that democratic countries have always been much better about? Or is that distinction not helpful?

I think the answer to that probably has less to do with the form of government and more to do with other decisions. European Union countries have very few kids in detention, whether that’s juvenile justice or immigration detention, as compared to the United States. The United States is kind of a standout in the world, in the worst sense possible, around detention. When European countries do detain kids, they often do so with lots of support services.

In fact, at one point, I taught children’s rights at Georgetown Law School, and I took the law students, who were both U.S. students and foreign students, into the D.C. juvenile-detention center. A lot of the students from countries other than Europe were shocked by how clean U.S. facilities were. The U.S. students were appalled at the conditions. And the European students couldn’t believe what they were seeing. For the European students, particularly those from Scandinavia, Germany, Holland, and so on, what they were used to from their home countries was a far more nurturing environment than what they were seeing in this institutional setting that could well have been, in their mind, an adult correctional facility. Possibly for very, very serious offenders.

So are you saying democratic traditions and values do matter, just not in the United States?

If you ask me to contrast countries that most people would describe as democratic, those are the two obvious ends of the spectrum that come to mind. But—just to name a few places where I’ve gone into detention centers—Angola, Liberia, Brazil, Mexico, and Guatemala have significant degrees of repression, or certainly have targeted people for speaking out. Including kids. But, in all of those places, there’s some recognition that kids should be held in a way that is consistent with furthering their development. There is the idea of offering them rehabilitation, the idea of giving them a second chance, even if, in practice, that isn’t available because of the conditions in which they’re held. What is often lacking is the wherewithal to carry that out.

In many of the countries that I’ve been to, they have infrastructure that’s falling apart, staff that is going unpaid for periods of time—again, largely, it seems, because of resources. And there is an effort in some of these places to put real limits on the time that kids are held. So kids in Liberia, when I was there—very, very few of them are locked up, for very little time, even though in the adult system it was very common for people to be held without charge for the maximum time that was permitted.

This makes me sick. We are a very wealthy country that spends hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for our president’s golf outings. The idea that we can’t provide decent housing and a fair and humane process for asylum seekers is just outrageous.

This is just shameful.

Oh, and by the way, border crossings are down. But that’s because they’ve got them piled up on the other side of the border in horrifying conditions, waiting for months and months to present their cases. Trump is very proud of this.

Why should they bother?
by Tom Sullivan

“What does Nancy Pelosi think she’s doing?” a friend blurted out last night in the middle of a conversation about something else.

The Netroots Nation conference begins this morning in Philadelphia. The annual gathering of progressive activists from across the country will feature presidential candidates and other national politicians along with nonprofit issues advocacy groups, campaign consultants, campaign tech specialists, political junkies and lowly bloggers. For campaign professionals, it’s a kind of political trade show.

For the rest, Netroots is at once an annual family reunion and a kind of day spa for activists on the edge of burnout and for those hoping to ward off burnout ahead of the next fights. Old friends are stunned to be living through a period in America like this one. They come, if for no other reason, to be surrounded briefly by thousands of like-minded Americans and go home feeling less alone and more empowered to fix what’s wrong.

The conversations are mainly, but not exclusively, political. Naturally, what the hell is going on in Washington, D.C. is at the front of everyone’s mind.

Sarah Jones captures at New York magazine bit of the angst over where Democrats are headed (or not) in the same words my friend used (emphasis mine):

Pelosi’s job, as Speaker in a time during which her party does not control the Senate or the White House, is to protect a Democratic majority in the House. She’s also responsible for helping maximize her party’s chances of defeating Trump. The only legible explanation for her reluctance to investigate Acosta, or censure Trump, is that she fears a backlash that would cost her moderate members their seats. But if that’s the case, she overestimates the risk. Trump is an unpopular president, and the disgraceful events of his tenure mobilized voters and flipped House districts. The forces that elevated insurgents like Ocasio-Cortez, and moderates like Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger, have shared roots: Voters reacted against Trump and demanded change. Now Pelosi seems to believe that she can simply ride 2018’s blue wave through the general election, but there may be consequences to that reticence that she does not expect. If she wants to keep her majority, she has to give people a reason to back her party — and that takes more than passing bills that go to the Senate to die. She has to give voters something to believe in, too. Why should voters give Democrats power they won’t use?

The times demand a more aggressive Democratic Party. Acosta stands accused of violating federal law to give an unrepentant sexual predator a light sentence. If Pelosi won’t even consider his impeachment, then she is complicit in the same culture of impunity allows Trump to prosper.

I have no idea why the Speaker is pursuing the cautious course she is on. Some of it may be generational caution. But securing her majority for another cycle is not enough. Merely defeating Donald Trump is not enough. Trumpism must be repudiated unquestionably. Democrats may be able to accomplish the former by turning out their base. To accomplish the latter, they need to turn out young voters. For that, Democrats need to give them a good reason to turn out.

As the North Carolina chart at the top of this page attests, voters under 40 in this country have the numbers to take power. They just just won’t exercise it like The Squad did just in 2018. Cautious Democrats may have the experience, but what they need to secure victory the country needs is fire driving them. Party veterans are not going to concede power to younger activists who aren’t prepared to exercise their most basic power. Senior Democratic leaders don’t simply need a push. The Squad needs allies to push them.

The new patriotism

by digby

A little moment of optimism in this fucked up time:

That’s how America does parades. No military, just bands and floats and joy.

The speech was good too.

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Wide open race? Could be…

by digby

Here’s a little horse race analysis. I try to keep this to a minimum right now but I thought you might find it interesting:

Earlier this year, we published a three-part series on how well primary polls conducted in the calendar year before a presidential election predict the outcome. Our analysis, which covered more than 40 years of primaries, found that early polls are somewhat predictive of who eventually wins the nomination, especially when they’re adjusted for how well known a candidate was at the time.

So now that we’re halfway through the calendar year before the 2020 election, we decided to replicate that analysis for the current electoral cycle — we used polls conducted between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2019, to calculate a candidate’s (or potential candidate’s) polling average and then adjusted it based on how well known they are (measured on a slightly subjective five-tier scale, which is represented by the black boxes in the table below, where more boxes means higher name recognition).1 This helps us better understand how the 2020 Democratic candidates stack up so far, and how this primary compares to past nomination contests. Here’s where things stand after the first six months of 2019:

How the 2020 Democratic primary field looks six months in

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half of 2019, plus an adjustment for name recognition

The article goes on to point out that name recognition isn’t necessarily all it’s cracked up to be. When people are well known they sometimes don’t have a lot of room to grow.

So:

In 2020, that likely means that while Biden has rightly been viewed as the Democratic front-runner, he’s not unbeatable. Biden is a long way, for instance, from Hillary Clinton’s position in the last presidential election, when she polled north of 60 percent in the first half of 2015, giving her better than 9 in 10 odds of winning the nomination compared to Biden’s 2 in 5 shot. Candidates such as Warren and Harris also fell into the well-known category, which means historically speaking, their chances aren’t as strong as Biden’s, but if he were to falter, they could benefit from the absence of a clear front-runner. Buttigieg’s low polling average doesn’t bode well historically, but of the candidates who aren’t as well known, he has the best chance of winning the nomination.

In other words, it’s still (almost) anyone’s game. And after the first debate, there are signs that Biden’s lead may be slipping, as multiple surveys have found his support dropping into the low 20s nationally. Meanwhile, Harris and Warren’s percentages have shifted into the mid-teens, putting them and Sanders neck-and-neck behind Biden. This tightening in the race could be quite meaningful, as candidates polling at around 20 percent in the second half of the year before the primaries historically had about a 15 percent chance of winning the nomination. So if the polls continue to trend in the wrong direction for Biden, there might be a new front-runner by the end of the year.

Of course, there will be further twists in the 2020 tale, what with more debates, campaign events and more candidates still entering the race. But if the post-debate polls approximate the new normal for the second half of 2019, watch out — the Democratic nomination race might truly be wide open.

It sure feels that way to me.

I have my favorites, of course, and some I’m not all that excited about. But honestly, I still think that this election is a referendum on Trump and either any of these top candidates can beat him — or none of them can.

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Acosta’s claim that Epstein was “intelligence” needs much more follow-up

by digby

Vicky Ward , who has written about Epstein in the past, reports at The Daily Beast that Acosta told Trump transition officials that he’d been told to back off the Epstein case at the time and that that was why he gave Epstein such a generous deal.

Here’s the passage …

Epstein’s name, I was told, had been raised by the Trump transition team when Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who’d infamously cut Epstein a non-prosecution plea deal back in 2007, was being interviewed for the job of labor secretary. The plea deal put a hard stop to a separate federal investigation of alleged sex crimes with minors and trafficking. 

“Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” Acosta had been asked. Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. (The Labor Department had no comment when asked about this.)

It’s quite hard to know what to make of this claim. As one of my colleagues just pointed out to me the dialog itself seems more out of Hollywood that something you’d hear from a former US Attorney. On it’s face this sounds like second or third hand information, which puts some question over its reliability and may explain the movie script dialog. More importantly, Acosta is hardly a reliable fact witness in this case. He has every reason to deflect responsibility for the deal he made with Epstein. Finally, it seems highly improbable that Epstein “belonged to intelligence”. 

What does seem plausible though is that Epstein had many very high profile defenders and that this somehow translated into message to back off or to make the situation go away with as little publicity and pressure on Epstein as possible. 

We can blame Acosta for the deal he cut. But that doesn’t explain why he did. Getting told to back off or hearing directly from a bunch of Epstein’s high roller friends sounds like a logical supposition. 

It certainly seems worth asking under oath what Acosta told transition officials when he was angling for and getting his current cabinet position.

He was asked about it at the press conference:

This was a pretty weird answer: “I can’t address it directly because of our guidelines.” pic.twitter.com/9SVi8HNKo2

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 10, 2019

What “guideline”?

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“The Great Alliance”

by digby

This tape provides the first hard evidence of Russia’s clandestine attempts to fund Europe’s nationalist movements, and the apparent complicity of some senior figures from the far right in those attempts pic.twitter.com/w14LAwY0Lw— Alberto Nardelli (@AlbertoNardelli) July 10, 2019

Buzzfeed:

Six men sat down for a business meeting on the morning of October 18 last year, amid the hubbub and marble-columned opulence of Moscow’s iconic Metropol Hotel, to discuss plans for a “great alliance.”

A century earlier, the grand institution was the scene of events that helped change the face of Europe and the world: Czarist forces fought from inside the hotel as they tried and failed to hold the Bolsheviks back from the Kremlin in 1917, and it was here, in suite 217, that the first Soviet Constitution was drafted after the revolution succeeded.

The six men — three Russians, three Italians — gathered beneath the spectacular painted glass ceiling in the hotel lobby last October had their eyes on history too. Their nominal purpose was an oil deal; their real goal was to undermine liberal democracies and shape a new, nationalist Europe aligned with Moscow.

BuzzFeed News has obtained an explosive audio recording of the Metropol meeting in which a close aide of Europe’s most powerful far-right leader — Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini — and the other five men can be heard negotiating the terms of a deal to covertly channel tens of millions of dollars of Russian oil money to Salvini’s Lega party.

The recording reveals the elaborate lengths the two sides were willing to go to conceal the fact that the true beneficiary of the deal would be Salvini’s party — a breach of Italian electoral law, which bans political parties from accepting large foreign donations — despite the comfort with which he and Europe’s other far-right leaders publicly parade their pro-Kremlin political sympathies.

“We want to change Europe,” said longtime Salvini aide Gianluca Savoini — who dined alongside Vladimir Putin at a government banquet to celebrate the Russian president’s visit to Rome last week. “A new Europe has to be close to Russia as before because we want to have our sovereignty,” he continued over the clinking of coffee cups and buzz of conversation around the lobby.

As well as releasing excerpts of the Metropol tape — the existence of which is being revealed for the first time today — BuzzFeed News is also publishing a transcript of the entire recording.

Salvini — described enthusiastically by the Russians on the tape as the “European Trump” — did not attend the meeting himself, but he was in Moscow at the time. The previous day he gave a speech in which he denounced sanctions against Russia as “economic, social, and cultural folly” before reportedly meeting with the Russian deputy prime minister, Dmitry Kozak, and a powerful member of Putin’s United Russia party named Vladimir Pligin.

Although BuzzFeed News has been unable to identify the Russians at the Metropol meeting, the tape contains clear indications that high-level government figures in Moscow were aware of the negotiations — including those with whom Salvini had reportedly met the previous evening. The Russian negotiators can be heard referring to “yesterday’s meeting” without specifying the attendees, saying twice that they would have to feed details back to the “deputy prime minister,” and explaining they were hoping to get the “green light” from “Mr. Pligin” the following week.

Say, does everyone remember this?

A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

Before the conversation, McCarthy and Ryan had emerged from separate talks at the Capitol with Ukrainian Prime Minister Vladi­mir Groysman, who had described a Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undercut Eastern European democratic institutions.

News had just broken the day before in The Washington Post that Russian government hackers had penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee, prompting McCarthy to shift the conversation from Russian meddling in Europe to events closer to home.

Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”

Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

No collusion!!!!

Acosta seems to be a professional sex-trafficking cover-up specialist

by digby

You have to wonder why this one man is so determined to let human traffickers get away with it.

On Jan. 2, 2018, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta released a statement commemorating the beginning of Human Trafficking Awareness Month, recommitting his department’s mission to “ending practices that harm individuals, families, and communities.”

“We must act to end exploitation and abusive labor practices at home and abroad,” the statement said.

Absent from that statement was the fact he had already tried to cut a program by nearly 80 percent inside the Department of Labor dedicated to combating human trafficking, along with child and forced labor, internationally. And two months later, he would return to Congress to advocate for a second budget to cut the program just as deeply.

His proposal came under fire from a congresswoman who noted a chapter from Acosta’s past: As U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida, Acosta granted a sweetheart deal that allowed convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein to plead to one count of prostitution and serve out 13 months of an 18-month sentence prison sentence (in which he was allowed to leave jail to go to the office most days) despite allegations he molested and trafficked countless underage girls.

Epstein was arrested in New York this week under a new set of charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy, bringing Acosta’s actions a decade ago and his record as labor secretary under new scrutiny.

The cut to the International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB)’s budget in the 2020 budget —reducing the funding level to $18.5 million, attracted the attention of Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA), who asked Acosta about the department’s responsibilities as they related to human trafficking during a hearing about his department’s funding request in April 2019.

“The problem is a large one,” Acosta told Clark. “The Department of Labor recently issued a report and it actually detailed 1,700 recommendations that could be looked at around the world to address this.”

“That is excellent,” Clark responded, with a smile. “And I know that there are hundreds of thousands of adults and children who are victims of sex and labor trafficking in the U.S. Glad you are looking at it, glad you’ve detailed a comprehensive strategy.”

Her smile disappeared.

“But you’ve also proposed a budget cut, almost 80 percent, 79 percent to ILAB where this work is done, bringing its budget from $68 million to just $18.5 million,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve come prepared to justify this cut to us, but it doesn’t go unnoticed that this isn’t the first time that you’ve ignored human trafficking.”

“How can we expect you, the Labor Secretary, to fight for American workers if you couldn’t even fight for these girls?” she asked, as Acosta initially stared at her blankly.

Knowing that the Epstein issue had come up during his confirmation battle, you’d think he would have been a little bit more careful not to open himself up to this criticism. They all seem to believe they can get away with anything.

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Please, no more billionaires who want to run the country like a business

It’s not about the cover up, it’s about the child rape

By Spocko

The Epstein case might be another way to bust Trump for one of his many serious crimes.  But it won’t be easy. We can expect Trump’s White House to deal with this case like the others.

Donald Trump and his then-girlfriend, Melania, with the financier Jeffrey Epstein and the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, on February 12, 2000. Davidoff Studios/Getty Images

First deny. Then project Trump’s actions onto other people, in this case, Bill Clinton. Next they will try to distance themselves from the perpetrator while discrediting the victims involved. Finally there will be lots of screaming about Witch Hunts.

Remember, with Trump there are actual crimes that happened.  We have records of victims being paid off in Trump’s fraud and theft crimes. In other cases people were threatened, so they would shut up. We have evidence of that too. Trump has always used both high-level legal tricks and low-level thuggery.

For Trump’s alleged sexual assault cases he uses the same tricks. Only in this case, he might be the one who sees himself as a victim! If Epstein has evidence against Trump I think it would go like this:

“It never happened. (show the photo evidence) I was told she was 18! (Play the audio evidence) That could have been anyone! Where is your proof!? (play the video evidence) “That’s fake!” 

If we follow the cover-up we might be able to see power players destroying evidence, obstructing justice, discrediting victims and cutting deals with law enforcement. If we are lucky we might see evidence of the serious underlying crime. And that matters. Would Trump apply his own standard of justice to himself?

Got to do something about these missing chidlren grabbed by the perverts. Too many incidents–fast trial, death penalty.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2012

During the Clinton impeachment Republicans said, “It’s not about the sex, it’s about the LYING!”    With that line the mainstream media could run the titillating details that were not crimes, and then pivot to a crime, lying, under oath.  The sex gave the story “heat” but the perjury gave the story a broken law to focus on to make it legitimate. Lying has no weight anymore, especially if it’s to the media. But sex crimes do.

In the Epstein case we will see a cover-up, deal cutting and lying about sex crimes. Instead of Acosta resigning or apologizing, first he will go on attack. He might eventually fall on his sword rather than reveal the people and leverage used to get the deal.

How will the media play these stories? The right wing media will connect the Clintons and Democrats to Epstein.  “See? Just like Monica and all those other women! I told you he was guilty!”

The main stream media will try and be “objective” but will be focused on the “both sides” and be sure to mention Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton for ever Trump connection.

The few media sources on the left will be cautious and try to only use evidence and court information.  That’s fine with me, because this is just the kind of case that I expect actual “false information” to be injected into the story by fixers.

If someone is Karl Rove/Karen Hughes level sneaky they will release some damning evidence about Trump, let the left wing media jump on it and then reveal it is a fake. “Check the kerning folks!”  Hopefully someone will point it out when it does happen.

No Collusion! People Just Know What Trump Wants!

There is a Powerful People Protection system that will help Trump. They don’t work for him, but it’s “collusion by mutual understanding.”

Trump expects other people’s lawyers and low-level thugs to continue to do the dirty work needed to protect their own clients, which also protected him.  For example: This suspicious fire in April 2018 on Epstein’s private Island  in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Simple explosion? Or destruction of evidence? 

Massive Fire Spotted On Private Island Owned By Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein

Fixers will also use the power of the Internet to feed conspiracy fans. They don’t have to actually DO the work, just drop a few seeds and watch them grow.  Back in 2008 during Epstein’s trial, they focused on Clinton’s connection to Epstein. In 2016, before he was President, Trump even used Epstein’s association with Bill Clinton to attack Hillary. Conspiracy’s are designed to contaminate stories with over the top connections in order to distract from real connections.

Based on the VIP list international fixers and governments will also be involved. The US and Trump didn’t condemn the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman following the murder of Khashoggi, even with extensive evidence. The use of international leverage to help Trump might happen here.

What kind of leverage does/did Epstein have? It could be serious and useful enough to get him his deal. Maybe I watch too many movies, but the phrase, ‘If you take me down, I’m taking all of you down with me!” comes to mind.

Donald Trump calls out Bill Clinton Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Pedophile Island’

People love to talk about how they got Capone on taxes, because it seems so clever, what they forget about is WHY they needed to go that route. Corruption. Deep, wide spread corruption. They couldn’t bust Capone for the serious violent crimes that he was responsible for, so they found something he hadn’t figured out a way out of, and used a group that worked outside the corrupt system.

I want to help the Democrat’s fight Trump. I know people want action.  But I want actions that will have terrible consequences for Trump and his allies.  If we can’t get Trump for emoluments violations, tax fraud or obstructing justice why not get him for a serious sex crime?

Of course that kind of case would require planning and preparing for the elite guard protection.  We would need a Justice Department that wasn’t corrupt. Where is our Elliot Ness?