When Hillary Clinton was first lady, a furor erupted over reports that she had once made $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures. Even though it had happened a dozen years before her husband became president, it became a scandal that lasted weeks and forced the White House to initiate a review.
Thirty-one years later, after dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket — 280 times the Clinton lucre and in this case from a person with a vested interest in policies set by her husband’s government. Scandal? Furor? Washington moved on while barely taking notice.
The Trumps are hardly the first presidential family to profit from their time in power, but they have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House. The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking. The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone.
Just last week, Qatar handed over a luxury jet meant for Mr. Trump’s use not just in his official capacity but also for his presidential library after he leaves office. Experts have valued the plane, formally donated to the Air Force, at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined.
And Mr. Trump hosted an exclusive dinner at his Virginia club for 220 investors in the $TRUMP cryptocurrency that he started days before taking office in January. Access was openly sold based on how much money they chipped in — not to a campaign account but to a business that benefits Mr. Trump personally.
By conventional Washington standards, according to students of official graft, the still-young Trump administration is a candidate for the most brazen use of government office in American history, perhaps eclipsing even Teapot Dome, Watergate and other famous scandals.
“I’ve been watching and writing about corruption for 50 years, and my head is still spinning,” said Michael Johnston, a professor emeritus at Colgate University and author of multiple books on corruption in the United States.
Yet a mark of how much Mr. Trump has transformed Washington since his return to power is the normalization of moneymaking schemes that once would have generated endless political blowback, televised hearings, official investigations and damage control. The death of outrage in the Trump era, or at least the dearth of outrage, exemplifies how far the president has moved the lines of accepted behavior in Washington.
He’s missing something in this equation. As Tapper points out in that exchange with Mike Johnson, e just had four years of “the Biden crime family” and “Hunter’s laptop” bullshit from the GOP Congress and their propaganda networks. The mainstream media didn’t go after it with the fervor of Clinton’s cattle futures and Whitewater, but it was hanging out there as “a problem” with special counsels and endless investigations.
So, yes, it’s changed. But that because it’s ok if you are a Republican. It’s especially ok if you are Trump because well… that just how he is, dontcha know? They’ve decided that if you are openly accepting bribes and shaking people down to line your pocket in the White House, it’s fine. For Trump. But you can bet that any Democrat who did such a thing would cause a political earthquake.
This double standard has existed for so long that the Republicans have realized they can just say “fuck it we’re going for it”, knowing that nothing will ever be done about it because their base doesn’t care and the press will report it but it won’t make any difference.
That comparison is making the rounds on social media today. I think you can easily see why. The mainstream media continues to sane-wash Donald Trump.
As S.V. Date writes in this piece for Huffington Post, there is a book to be written about press failure in 2024 but it isn’t about Biden’s abilities:
The great irony is that there absolutely was malfeasance by the media in its coverage of the 2024 presidential campaign — not in how it covered the sitting president, but in how it covered the challenger.
Donald Trump assaulted the Constitution he had sworn to defend after he lost reelection in 2020. He invited his followers to Washington long after the votes had been counted, whipped them up into an angry mob and then sicced them on his own vice president and Congress to coerce them into awarding him a second term.
It was the closest America has come to losing our democracy since the first year of the Civil War. Yet within weeks of Jan. 6, 2021, reporters began making the trek to Mar-a-Lago to interview him and somehow managed to file stories that elided the day entirely. I recall listening to a podcast interview with one who was asked how Trump had explained his behavior on Jan. 6, and the reporter replied that the topic had not come up.
I was and remain dumbfounded by that.
Crazy. And completely absurd. But it wasn’t unusual.
As a young reporter, I used to cover criminals full time. The idea of agreeing to a jailhouse interview of a suspect with the understanding that I would not detail the charges against him in the story never would have occurred to me. Even if it had, my editors never would have tolerated such an arrangement.
And yet by late spring 2022, that is precisely what started happening. The political press corps began normalizing the hell out of Donald Trump. They downplayed or flat-out ignored the fundamental violence he had committed against our democracy in their coverage in return for the possibility of an interview or even just anonymous quotes from top advisers.
(Because, really, what kind of reporter are you if you can’t publish a few hours ahead of time whether Trump is going to call Gov. Ron DeSantis “Meatball Ron” or “Fat Ron” in his rally speech?)
Just as one example: Trump, unlike every other modern presidential nominee, refused to take a traveling press pool with him. Instead, he and his staff handpicked reporters for each trip. You can probably guess which reporters were invited and which ones weren’t.
There was an implicit understanding that access to the Republican nominee meant you would not portray him as a fundamental, proven threat to American democracy. Which, of course, he was back then, and which he continues to prove himself to be now on a near-daily basis.
As he goes to some lengths to emphasize, none of this is to downplay the massive influence of the right wing media. We are all too well aware of what and who they are.
That said, repetition across a broad swath of the media matters. If reminders of Trump’s actions leading up to and on Jan. 6 had been repeated as frequently as, say, Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a private email server, who knows what might have happened. A non coup-attempting, pro-democracy nominee could well have emerged from the Republican primary.
[…]
The political media’s efforts to normalize him notwithstanding, it was plain from all of Trump’s open talk about revenge and his vows to grab extra-constitutional power that America was risking a slide into autocracy if voters returned him to the White House.
An even sadder truth is that, faced with a choice between democracy and the promise of cheaper Doritos, America went with the Doritos.
We were never going to get the latter, and, as is becoming clearer by the day, we’ll be lucky to get through this with some semblance of the former.
And they’re still doing it. Just look at that NY TImes headline.
As House Republicans prepare to investigate former President Joe Biden’s health and mental fitness while in office, they are increasingly zeroing in on his use of a so-called autopen to sign certain pieces of legislation and executive orders…
“We’re focused on the autopen,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told NBC News. “Who was making the decisions? Who was authorizing his signature? Was it him?”
I don’t think we ever saw him asking a staff member what was in his own Executive Orders as he signed them but maybe I’m wrong.
There are so many of these stories now it’s hard not to believe it isn’t deliberate. The CPB and ICE are completely out of control:
A former NSW [New South Wales]police officer has described the terrifying ordeal she faced after she was detained, jailed overnight and deported from the United States – despite travelling there legally on a tourist visa to visit her US military husband.
Nikki Saroukos from south-west Sydney says she was “treated like a criminal”, denied her rights and subjected to invasive searches, humiliating treatment and a night in federal prison – simply for trying to spend time with her American partner stationed in Hawaii.Now back in Australia and still reeling from the trauma, Mrs Saroukos and her mother are demanding answers – and warning others how easily international travel can turn into a nightmare.
Mrs Saroukos has visited Hawaii three times in recent months under the ESTA visa waiver program to see her husband, a US Army lieutenant she married in December 2024 after a whirlwind long-distance romance. The couple met through a dating app and quickly knew they wanted to be together.
He joined the army in 2022 and has been serving as a US Army lieutenant on the Pacific island and US state since August 2023. “He’s serving their country,” Mrs Saroukos told news.com.au in an emotional interview.
[…]
Mrs Saroukos and her mother arrived to Daniel K Inouye International Airport in Honolulu last Sunday for what was supposed to be a routine three-week holiday when things took a sharp and unexpected turn at the customs desk.“The officer began to look troubled at his computer to which my mum offered to provide more information,” she explained.“From there he screamed – ‘Shut up and get to the back of the line, go now’ – at the top of his lungs.
Mrs Saroukos was departing on her fourth trip to visit her US Army husband. Picture: Supplied “My fight or flight immediately kicked in. I’d seen horror stories about this stuff. I just bawled on the spot,” Mrs Saroukos recalled. “We were in such a vulnerable position. We didn’t know their rules well and he was obviously carrying a gun.”
Mrs Saroukos, who lives with with anxiety and PTSD, and her mother were then taken to a holding area for questioning where she offered contact with her husband and to show her marriage certificate – to which they laughed in her face.She said the pair were told, “Don’t say anything, don’t talk and don’t touch your phones,” by officers before their bags were tossed out and inspected along with their documents. “I didn’t hide anything,” she said.
Her mother was free to go after the search but Mrs Saroukos was taken to a second location where she was subjected to further interrogation. There, she was forced to surrender her phone and passwords, and questioned about her work as a former police officer. “They questioned me about the demographic of my suburb and what crimes I was exposed to as a police officer,” she said.“They were asking me about ice and meth and whether I knew how much was being imported from New Zealand.” She said she had “no idea” how to answer the questions.
“I was just dumbfounded,” she said. “They took a 45-minute sworn statement where they grilled me on my stream of income, my marriage, my phone history. “They were clutching at straws. They even asked why I had deleted Instagram three days prior, I was completely honest.”
After the statement concluded she was told to wait outside where she was then subjected to a DNA swab – which she was given no explanation for. She was further forced to sign a document declaring she was not a part of a cartel and had no affiliation with gang members.
She also signed a document stating her husband was her next of kin and that he would be contacted and informed of her whereabouts – something she later learnt never happened. After hours of questioning and a sworn statement, a supervisor informed her that her statement was deemed inadmissible and that she would not be entering the United States.
“I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I froze. They said ‘We’ll be sending you to jail.’ I was just shaking, sweating – I couldn’t believe it,” she said. Mrs Saroukos said she was handcuffed, subjected to an in-depth cavity search and marched through the airport in full view of the public before being placed into a car and driven 10 minutes to a federal detention facility.
“The officers told me I wasn’t under arrest but I was cuffed and searched. My jewellery was taken and not secured. I felt stripped of all my dignity,” she said. “I told the officer that from my understanding when you place someone in cuffs it’s an indication of arrest and you need to read them their rights.” To which an officer replied, “It’s for our safety.”
When she asked a female officer whether she’d be safe inside the prison they told her, “I can’t answer that, I’ve never been there. I can assume you’d be safe to a degree.” Upon arriving at the prison around 3.30pm, she was fingerprinted again, ordered to strip naked, squat and cough, and handed prison issued briefs and green outerwear.
“When they finished with the search there was a male officer standing outside who looked confused. He asked me why I was here to which I told him what had happened,” she said. “He told me, ‘Wow. You should not be here right now, you have Trump to thank for that though.’”
When she asked if she would be fed, officers told her she had missed the cut off for dinner time and would not be provided any food today. She was further forced to sign a waiver where she agreed she would not be making or receiving any phone calls – something her lawyer later informed her was against basic human rights. Officers also told her that if she needed to take a shower she would not be provided with a towel and was to use a wet paper towel to clean herself.
“The entire time I was just thinking, ‘Shut up and do what they say and you’ll get out of here,’” she said.
Mrs Saroukos says she was taken to a shared cell where her roommate was a Fijian woman who was being held over similar circumstances. “There were prisoners everywhere. I learned that I was being housed with convicted murderers,” she said. “(Other inmates) told me I looked like a fish out of water and even gave me soap and a towel. “As a former police officer it was such an irony to be on the other side of things. Those inmates treated me better than anyone else.”
Mrs Saroukos’ husband and mother had been waiting outside the airport for five hours with no information on her whereabouts. “A Hawaiian Airlines ground manager told them that their ‘best guess is that she is there’ (the detention centre). That was all they had to go off,” she said.
Mrs Saroukos recalls that at 6am after only receiving an hour of sleep, she was woken by prison guards bashing on the metal cell doors. “I just kept thinking that someone has to come save me and that this surely wasn’t really happening,” she said.
She was then told by officers that she would be leaving in ten minutes and was to clean her cell and discard any rubbish. She was changed back into her own clothing before being transported back to the airport, again in handcuffs. There, she was marched through crowds of people by officers before being taken to another holding room where she was finally given a small bottle of water, a muesli bar and a packet of chips.
“It was just so humiliating and embarrassing,” she said.
She was then informed she had a call from the Australian Embassy who had been closed over the weekend during the ordeal. “They told me they couldn’t do anything and that no one had the power to help,” she said.
She asked the embassy to call her mother and let her know that she was being put on a 12.15pm flight back to Sydney. “I couldn’t fly by myself, I was terrified.”
She was then finally allowed a three-minute phone call with her husband who was “inconsolable”. “He was crying so much. When I asked if he had known where I was he told me ‘nobody told us anything’,” she said.
Mrs Saroukos was then escorted to the gate by two officers – one in front and one behind – who then handed her phone and passport to flight attendants. Once in the air, she requested her phone to which a flight attendant said “You will get it given back when touch down and it will be handed over to Australian authorities.”
Upon landing in Australia, Mrs Saroukos was forced to stay on the plane where she expressed her concerns to an empathetic air hostess.“She told me didn’t agree with what was happening.”
Once being free to de-board the plane, an Australia Customers Officer was waiting for her where he handed her an envelope with her belongings.
“He told me I was free to leave which I couldn’t believe,” she said. Mrs Saroukos’ husband is planning to apply for an honourable discharge from the US Army as a result so that he can live and work in Australia. “We don’t know yet what he’ll do here. We’re just too shaken up to even think about it,” she said.
“I never want to return to the United States.”
I can’t imagine what the explanation for this might be. Was it mistaken identity? Was she flagged for some reason? Are they just randomly making examples out of tourists? I don’t get it.
Unless there’s more to this story, it seems there is absolutely no reason this person would have been treated this way. And if it was the first time we’d heard of this I’d say it was some kind of bureaucratic glitch. But there are many stories of people being treated like trash by customs officials, interrogated, detained, and deported for apparently no reason.
I’m sure you’ve heard that they made Jimmy Carter give up his peanut farm when he became president. It’s become a common punch line in light of Donald Trump’s flagrant corruption. But there are details about that peanut farm issue that are worth remembering. The historian Kevin Kruse wrote about it in his book “Presidential Misconduct” and excerpted it in his newsletter today, noting just how far we’ve come in norms since then:
Distancing himself from Washington D.C., Carter presented himself as the antithesis of its political culture of cronyism and corruption. This “outsider” trope became more common in the wake of the Watergate crisis of the Nixon administration, but Carter laid an early claim to the territory. “The strongest feeling in this country today,” an adviser noted in a 1972 memorandum, “is the general distrust of government and politicians at all levels. The desire and thrust for strong moral leadership was not satisfied with the election of Richard Nixon.”[2] Accordingly, Carter worked to associate himself with the values of trust, honesty, integrity, and responsibility. “I will never make a misleading statement,” he promised voters. “I will never tell a lie or avoid a controversy. I will never let you down.”[3]
After he won the presidency, Carter immediately worked to make his promises manifest. In January 1977, he announced that he was placing his interest in his family’s farm and peanut warehouse into a blind trust. Moreover, the President-elect made it clear that he expected everyone in his administration to follow his personal example. The Carter White House soon instituted stricter rules for financial disclosures and conflicts of interest and worked to curb the practice of “revolving-door” government, in which officials left office and then went to work for businesses in the industries they had dealt with in their government roles. The new ethics rules, Press Secretary Jody Powell explained, were meant “to restore the confidence of the American people in their own government.”[4] …..
Upon taking office, Carter had placed his share of the family-owned peanut warehouse—62 percent—in a blind trust under the control of Atlanta lawyer Charles H. Kirbo. The remainder was maintained by Carter’s mother Lillian and his younger brother Billy (as he was commonly called), who oversaw daily operations. Over the course of 1977, the business fell on hard times, partially due to an unwise expansion of operations and partially due to a drought that hurt local crops. The President’s blind trust lost more than $300,000 during that period, and Kirbo soon announced that he was looking to sell the warehouse entirely.[11]
The attention to the failing family enterprise brought to the surface details about past mismanagement of the warehouse and concerns about possible misappropriation of funds. In November 1978, newspapers reported that the National Bank of Georgia, under Bert Lance’s direction, had lent Carter’s Warehouse $1 million without full collateral. Further inquiries in January 1979 revealed that Lance had also, in early 1976, directed bank officials to lower interest rates on loans and lines of credit to Carter’s Warehouse totaling nearly $4 million in all. While the issuing of the loans came under scrutiny, so did the terms of their repayment. In March 1979, a former bonded warehouseman who was employed by NBG to supervise the collateral on the warehouse loan reported that, at Billy Carter’s direction, he had sent misleading reports to the bank. It soon became clear that the warehouse was roughly $500,000 behind in its repayment schedule.[12]
Though the President had divested himself from the business, these reports raised questions about his possible role in securing the loan and, soon, questions about whether any money from the loan had been diverted to his 1976 presidential campaign. On March 20, 1979, with pressure for a full investigation mounting, Attorney General Griffin Bell appointed former U.S. Attorney Paul J. Curran, a New York Republican, to serve as Special Counsel to investigate the loans. (Initially, Curran’s powers fell short of those of a special prosecutor as outlined in the recently passed Ethics in Government Act of 1978, the post-Watergate legislation that instituted new policies and procedures for investigations of the executive branch. Under pressure from Republicans in Congress, Bell expanded Curran’s authority and effectively made him a special prosecutor in everything but name.)[13]
The Special Counsel’s investigation unfolded over seven months during the summer of 1979. “I want to do the investigation as quickly as possible,” Curran told reporters, “but obviously it has to be thorough.” The Special Counsel’s legal team reviewed 80,000 documents and took grand jury testimony from 64 witnesses, including Billy Carter. Most significantly, President Carter himself provided a sworn deposition in an interview that lasted four hours, marking the first time in American history that a sitting president was interviewed under oath in a criminal investigation. “Curran is looking for the smoking peanut, if there is one,” a reporter for the Atlanta Constitution noted, “and if there isn’t, he wants to be very sure.”[14]
In October 1979, the Special Counsel issued his findings in a 179-page public report. Curran concluded that there was no evidence that any money had been diverted from Carter’s Warehouse to the Carter presidential campaign. Moreover, he declared that, while he was not “exonerating” Billy Carter, he had found no grounds for federal criminal charges over the handling of the NBG loans at the warehouse either. Asked how it felt to be declared “clean,” the President responded: “I knew it all the time.”[15]
How quaint. I don’t think I have to dredge up the $38,000 Whitewater scandal which similarly turned up nothing after tens of millions of dollars and years of shrieking about corruption. And, of course, the “Clinton Cash” bullshit along with the “Biden Crime Family.” You’ll notice that they’re all Democrats.
Trump believes he is immune from all this and he’s right. I don’t know why.
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) May 24, 2025
“Look at all those suckers and losers”
That’s Trump at the West Point graduation yesterday. And yes he wore his MAGA baseball cap.
Trump: “Totally stealth planes. I hope they're stealth. I don't know, the whole stealth thing—I'm sort of wondering. We shape a wing this way, they don’t see it but the other way they see it? I’m not so sure. That’s what they tell me”
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) May 24, 2025
Trump, addressing West Point graduates:
He ended up getting a divorce. Found a new wife. Can you say a trophy wife? It didn't work out too well. I must tell you. A lot of trophy wives. It doesn’t work out. It made him happy for a little while at least pic.twitter.com/PTButD00l6
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) May 24, 2025
Trump: I was investigated more than the great, late Alphonse Capone. Alphonse Capone was a monster. He was a very hardened criminal. I went through more investigations than Alphonse Capone. Now I am talking to as President. Can you believe this? pic.twitter.com/K42cDdYlpP
🚨 UNBELIEVABLE: Donald Trump broke tradition today at West Point—leaving halfway through commencement and skipping the time-honored handshake with graduating cadets.
Last year, President Biden stayed to shake the hand of every single one of the 1,000+ graduates.
It was the messaging advice of the Democrat-friendly House Majority Forward that set off LOLGOP:
"House Majority Fund, a Democratic group aligned with House Democratic leadership, issued talking points for members on the bill."Avoid Hyperbolic Rhetoricpunchbowl.news/hmf-releases…
I’d been a fan of the “MAGA Murder Budget” frame since Stephanie Wilson brought it as an example of the good messaging that’s “out there” but not being used. It was no surprise to hear it had come from Anat Shenker-Osorio—the messaging mastermind, host of the fantastic Words to Win By podcast, and a personal hero I once got to break bread with at Zingerman’s Roadhouse.
I didn’t tag Anat when I posted the above skeet, but I—unfortunately for her and fortunately for me—summoned her spirit, triggering her into a quick discourse on how effective messages are tested and what the House Democratic leadership [uses] instead.
Anat rebutted House Majority Forward’s advice on a long Bluesky thread (excerpts below).
FULL DISCLOSURE, MAGA Murder Budget is the messaging that I suggested and while I wanted to just ignore this new testing, now that it's out there, feels like I gotta wade in. Here goes – adventures in everything wrong with Dem message testing, a case study. /1
Aside from technical details about message testing, a couple of her points are key. We are in an attention economy: “a message no one hears, by definition, cannot persuade them.” No matter how wordsmithed and focus-tested.
Dems use message testing to *take*temp – to figure out where people (in captive setting, consciously aware responses are sought) "are." Reps use it as a flame thrower – to understand how to *change* the temp, by looking NOT at overall "approval" response but rather at what their base would repeat.
Dems make believe message that "works," defined again as approval/disapproval, in captive setting translates to real world, where Job #1 is get people to stop scrolling long enough to hear you at all. Reps test for what garners attention and makes salient what they need folks to believe.
2. Short, memorable, sticky. As outlandish as MAGA Murder Budget sounds, it serves precisely same function as "death panels" during ACA debate. It makes absolutely visceral the stakes.
Sarah Palin of all people defined the ACA debate with that phrase regarding “one of the wonkiest parts” and obscure provision of the bill. Go and do likewise.
3. If your words don't spread, they don't work. Voters as whole may not agree that MAGA Murder Budget is presently apt. But the base sure does and therefore is willing to repeat it and that's actually how you convert conflicted.
4. If you want to be on the news, you need to actually MAKE NEWS. Imagine, really imagine, Dem after Dem after Dem saying "listen, I am an absolute NO on this MAGA Murder Budget. I cannot in any way allow this life ending bill to pass." News media would cover that repetition.
Anat credits Erica Payne’s (The Agenda Project) 2011 “Granny Off the Cliff” ad from Paul Ryan’s tenure as Speaker of the HouseIt was as attention-getting as hell. They released it online only (IIRC) and had no budget for buying airtime. But it got attention and free replays on major media for days (weeks?). That’s how you do it.
You may recall the “horror” a shocked, shocked news media expressed in 2021 when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) attended a high-dollar Met gala wearing a white gown with “Tax the Rich” slashing across it in blood red. She dominated the internet for a week. People repeated her message in spite of themselves, including on Fox News. It cost her nothing. Occupy Wall Street popularized “the 1% vs.the 99%” framing, but took camping out for weeks to do it.
Democrats’ reflexive cautiousness is killing them, Statler suggests. They prioritize preventing loss over winning. I suggest that leading Democrats shy from potential blowback like abused spouses. Voters want boldness. Democrats offer them Mr. Rogers on Quaaludes. Why is their brand in tatters?
Statler’s “first rule of politics is that if you want to win, you do what Republicans do.” For financial and moral reasons that’s no workable, he concedes. So then what?
First, what’s needed, as Anat suggests, is a “break from any sense of normalcy.” That’s a comforting illusion. But establishment Democrats, especially the oldest among them, are in a sense rent-seekers, living off the positions they’ve spent their lives building. At best they will sway the boat but not rock it.
Statler concludes:
This is not something we can expect from Democrats in Washington, DC at this point in history. Either they don’t get the stakes, strategically believe in letting the GOP overplay their hand, or are literally traumatized by the power of a man who sent a mob to murder them four years ago and then pardoned that mob.
But we can call this bill what it is—the MAGA Murder Budget. And we can try to summon those who will be heard across this land to do the same. It’s the moral thing to do. And, ironically, it’s what Republicans would do.
The Washington Post’s landing page today features the problem of bad credit.
Today’s Washington Post print front page looks different from its online landing page. The print edition features stories about starvation in Gaza, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s life growing up among violent gangs, and Russia’s war on Ukraine. The lead online post is about Americans with bad credit scores.
Politico leads with a story about state of politics in Canada.
The New Yorker’s landing page features a story about guitar heroes.
The mundaneness of it all has a creepiness to it. We are This-is-not-normalled out.
Again yesterday (it’s happened before), I sat reviewing the state of the country with a colleague over a beer, glanced around the joint and pointed out, “so this is life under fascism.”
People go about their business. Business goes on. Store shelves are not empty … yet. Nothing seems particularly different on the surface. Like the Post’s lead online story. People are having credit-score trouble! No one I know has been arrested yet, says virtually the entire country.
The change is almost imperceptible for those who don’t pay attention (or don’t want to). My friend says her bestie is aligned with her but not particularly political. Doesn’t want to think too hard about the deconstruction of the country we’ve grown up in or the destruction of the rule of law as both crumble.
But that’s not exactly right. It’s not that there is no rule of law. It’s just that Trumpism takes its cue from Peruvian authoritarian and former president Oscar Benavides: “For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.”
The Seattle International Film Festival winds down this weekend. This year’s SIFF featured a total of 245 shorts, documentaries, and narrative films in 63 languages. The brick-and-mortar event will be immediately followed by a week of select virtual screenings from this year’s catalog (May 26th to June 1st) on the SIFF Channel. I think this year was a record for me: 22 films (ow, my ass). I reviewed half of them last week; here’s 11 more for you. Hopefully, some of these festival selections will be coming soon to a theater (or a streaming service) near you!
U Are the Universe (Ukraine) **** – As Elton John sang, it’s lonely out in space. Especially if there’s no Earth to come home to. Andriy (Volodymyr Kravchuk) is the pilot on a garbage scow loaded with nuclear waste destined for disposal on one of Jupiter’s moons (it’s just his job, 5 days a week). When he gleans that the world’s entire population has been wiped out by a cataclysmic event, he’s saddled by the realization he may be the last living human in the universe.
Considering that there is an ample yet finite supply of food on the ship, Andriy has calculated he can survive for a while, but obviously not as long as he would have expected, had the Earth not been destroyed. His growing sense of existential despair is kept somewhat in check by the presence of his onboard AI technical assistant/personality-enhanced companion Maxim, which at least gives him “someone” to interact with.
Then, one day, out of the vacuum, a glimmer of hope. He receives a voice-only communication from a Frenchwoman named Catherine, who tells him she’s the sole occupant of a space station on a collision course with Saturn (she figures she only has a couple weeks before there’s an earth-shattering kaboom). Andriy now has a raison d’être; he immediately sets course for a rescue mission (despite Maxim’s dire warnings about his ship’s limited power reserves).
While this may be familiar territory (with shades of 2001, Solaris, Silent Running, and Miracle Mile), Ukrainian director Pavlo Ostrikov’s film (which was in the midst of wrapping production in Kyiv in 2022 as Putin began sending salvos of missiles into the city) is armed with a smart script, tight direction, a nuanced performance by Kravchuk, and a beautiful statement on love, compassion and self-sacrifice-adding up to one of the best genre entries I’ve seen in some time.
Suburban Fury (USA) *** – Within a 17-day period in the early fall of 1975, President Gerald R. Ford survived two attempts on his life-both taking place in California. One could argue that the first would-be assassin, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme is the only one people remember, by virtue of her well-known association with the Manson Family.
The second shooter, Sara Jane Moore, has remained a relative cypher. For one thing, she wasn’t a member of a high-profile death cult, and in stark contrast to Fromme’s psycho daisy couture, Moore looked for all the world like a buttoned-down housewife who had strolled straight out of a John Cheever story (although in this case, a buttoned-down housewife armed with a .38 Special).
Not that she didn’t have a screw loose…which became apparent (to me) as Robinson Devor’s documentary unfolded. Mixing archival materials and a present-day interview with an evasive and truculent Moore (now in her 90s), Devor tries to piece together the jigsaw of her bizarre journey from suburban mother of four to FBI informant, self-proclaimed revolutionary and would-be presidential assassin.
Moore (released from prison in 2007, after serving 32 years) is too cagey to drop any real bombshells here, so her motivations remain foggy. What I found even more interesting than Moore’s story was the adjacent retrospective on a politically tumultuous period in San Francisco (e.g. Moore has a tie-in with the Patty Hearst debacle). Despite leaving a number of questions unanswered, Suburban Fury is nonetheless a worthwhile watch for political junkies and the curious.
Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers (USA) **½ – Robert J. Kaplan’s long-“lost” 1972 cult indie starring the legendary Holly Woodlawn (immortalized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”) has been restored in all of its…glory, by the Academy Film Archive. This was Warhol Factory alum Woodlawn’s third film (she had previously appeared in two of Paul Morrissey’s features).
Woodlawn plays “Eve Harrington” (first in a series of references), a naive Kansas farm gal who hits the Big Apple with ambitions of becoming a huge, huge star. She encounters a bevy of fellow wannabes and low-rung show-biz hustlers. While this suggests a dark and depressing tale (there’s a nod to Midnight Cowboy with a character named “Joe Buck”), no worries-because this is a musical (sort of).
This campy wallow in some of NYC’s seediest neighborhoods is pretty over-the-top (reminiscent of Ralph Bakshi’s 1973 animated feature Heavy Traffic) and anyone looking for a cohesive narrative need not apply, but there are some genuine laughs and a couple of decent songs (one sung by Bette Midler). Not for all tastes; I’d wager that fans of directors John Waters and/or Paul Bartel will fare best.
Waves (Czech Republic) ***½ – While it is set on the eve of the 1968 Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, in some respects writer-director Jiří Mádl’s riveting political thriller could have been ripped from today’s headlines:
The administration of Donald Trump has terminated nearly 600 contractors at Voice of America (VOA), the US-funded international news network known for delivering independent journalism to countries with restricted press freedom.
The firings, announced on [May 15], appeared to defy a recent court order requiring the government to preserve strong news operations at VOA. The US president has criticized the news network and accused it of spreading “radical” content.
The cuts, announced on Thursday, affected mostly journalists along with some administrative staff and represented more than one-third of VOA’s workforce.
Among those dismissed are journalists from authoritarian countries who now face deportation, as their visas are linked to their jobs at VOA. […]
Kari Lake, a Trump ally and senior adviser at the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, defended the decision as legally permissible. Lake had previously denounced the agency as “unsalvageable” and accused it of corruption without presenting evidence. […]
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, ranking member of the Senate foreign relations committee, issued a statement in response to the firings:
“The Trump administration’s gutting of Voice of America threatens access to independent media in places where it is needed most,” the statement reads. “It deeply weakens a critical and cost-effective tool of American influence and soft power. If Voice of America is silenced, PRC and Russian propaganda and lies will fill the void. To add more fuel to the fire, Kari Lake’s recent announcement that the Voice of America will now become a conduit for One America News Network is a gift to Russia and propagandists everywhere.”
Reminds me of a funny story (well…not “ha-ha” funny). In 1967 Prague, a young man named Tomás (Vojtěch Vodochodský) lives in a cramped apartment with his younger brother Paja (Ondřej Stupka). Tomás is Paja’s legal guardian. The conservative and apolitical Tomás is concerned about rebellious Paja’s increasing involvement with an anti-regime activist group. One day, he is chagrined to learn that Paja has sneaked off to an open audition for a job as an assistant to a popular but controversial radio journalist. Tomás rushes down to the station to intervene, but stumbles into landing the gig himself.
While he cannot foresee it, Tomás is about to get swept up into the vortex of tumultuous political upheaval in his country, culminating in the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces (the film is based in part on the rousing story of how Czech Radio managed to keep broadcasting, even after Soviet troops forced their way in and seized control of the main studios).
Waves plays like a mashup of Three Days of the Condor and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and is a welcome throwback to films that hit that sweet spot between historical sweep and intimate drama. Oh, and don’t forget to support your favorite independent journalists, because democracy dies in…well, you know.
Sorry, Baby (USA) *** – Mumblecore is alive and well, as evidenced by SIFF’s Closing Night Gala selection. Written, directed and starring Eva Victor (who you may recognize from Showtime’s Billions) this dramedy is a sometimes meandering but generally affable portrait of an independent young woman’s long recovery in the aftermath of a traumatic betrayal of trust. Victor slowly reveals her character’s arc in episodic fashion, using a non-linear timeline. Solid performances all around in a story that chugs along at the speed of life. The film left me thinking about something Mr. Rogers once said…“Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” He was right, you know.
Souleymane’s Story (France) *** – Every minute of the next 48 hours of Souleymane’s life counts, because it will determine whether or not he will be granted the asylum he has been seeking in France. He’s barely scraping by, and has to bike around Paris day and night delivering food just to remain flush with his creditors. He has no legal papers, so he has to pay to work, forking over a fee to a fellow Guinean delivery man so he can “borrow” his identity.
Most importantly, he has a looming deadline to pay off the shady fixer who is selling him a new “story” he claims will be more likely to convince the authorities that Souleymane warrants asylum. Adding to his stress level, Soueymane has to memorize the extremely detailed narrative to a tee, or he’ll risk raising red flags for the well-seasoned bureaucrat he has been scheduled to meet with in just two days time.
Driven by a realistic lead performance by non-professional actor Abou Sangaré and imbued with a kinetic energy and sense of urgency recalling Run Lola Run, writer-director Boris Lokjine’s Souleymane’s Story is really the story of millions of émigrés all over the world who dream and strive for a better life.
Flamingos: Life After the Meteorite (Mexico) *** – While the title of Lorenzo Hagerman’s film could suggest some kind of fantastical post-apocalyptic Planet of the Avians scenario, what actually transpires is an 83 minute meditation on the cycle of life and the delicate balance of the natural world.
Truth be told, a meteorite of fantastical size (6 miles in diameter) did smack the Earth around 66 million years ago (this would be the Big One that wiped out the dinosaurs). More specifically, it hit the northern region of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, which is where this documentary was filmed (over a 9-year period).
With gorgeous photography, minimal narration, and a cast of thousands (of Caribbean Flamingos), Hagerman lets the birds enact their own story, a la Winged Migration. A nice bit of eco-therapy for anyone looking to take a mental health break from the current news cycle.
Time Travel is Dangerous (U.K.) ** – Chris Reading’s comedy-adventure about a pair of North London antique shop owners who stumble on a working bumper car time machine seemed to have the requisite elements that would put it right in my wheelhouse: I love British comedy, I love science fiction, and I especially love British science fiction comedies (e.g. Time Bandits, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Morons From Outer Space, The Mouse on the Moon)…but unfortunately it never quite gelled for me.
The story centers on two long time friends, Ruth (Ruth Syratt) and Megan (Megan Stevenson) who are in arrears with their landlord and in imminent danger of losing the lease on their vintage shop. When they discover they have the ability to time travel, they see dollar signs (imagine scoring antiquities in mint condition!). What they don’t foresee are the (wait for it) dangers of time travel (wormholes, the possibility of meeting yourself, changing reality, etc.).
Despite a promising setup and some amusement, the proceedings get progressively more cacophonous and disjointed- especially once one of the women gets trapped (along with the third act) in some kind of inter-dimensional purgatory called The Unreason.
It feels like a waste of a good cast, which includes seasoned British thesps like Brian Blessed, Jane Harrocks, and Stephen Fry (Fry narrates). By the time the credits began to roll I found myself wishing I could travel 99 minutes back in time before all this happened to me.
Boong (India) *** – Boong (Gugun Kipgen) is a precocious Indian schoolboy who lives with his mother in a small, insular village where everyone is always up in everyone else’s business. Unflattering rumors have been flying regarding Boong’s absentee father, who has cut off communication with his family since migrating to a city in nearby Myanmar to find work. When there’s a pronouncement from a dubious source that his father has died, Boong refuses to believe it. He enlists his best bud and they hit the road to investigate.
Writer-director Lakshmipriya Devi’s impressive debut feature is a gentle family drama/road movie that offers a child’s-eye view of the sociopolitical complexities that fan ethnic and sectarian tensions along the border of India and Myanmar. Despite bittersweet undercurrents, Devi has fashioned a charming and ultimately touching coming-of-age tale.
Sons (Denmark) *** – Danish director Gustav Mölle’s followup to his excellent 2018 debut The Guilty (my review) concerns a prison guard (Sidse Babett Knudsen of Borgen fame) who works at a maximum security facility. Taciturn and unflappable (especially in contrast to her quick-tempered, frequently brutish co-workers), her professional cool gets sorely tested when she learns that a dark figure from her past has been transferred to her facility. An intense, unflinching drama that takes the moral and ethical dilemmas of its protagonist head on, and an uncomfortable reminder that there is an equal capacity for good or evil that exists within us all.
Color Book (USA) **** – Everyone processes grief differently. In the case of recently widowed Lucky (William Catlett) and his 9 year-old son Mason (Jeremiah Daniels) there lies an additional complication in the healing process: Mason is developmentally disabled and doesn’t appear to understand why his mother is no longer with them.
Now more than ever, Lucky’s paternal instinct drives him to bond with his son; and even if Mason isn’t registering the same emotional pain over their mutual loss, he wants to do everything in his power to be a comforting and reassuring presence for him. But Mason’s chief concerns remain steadfast: drawing in his coloring book and watching televised ball games.
Lucky hits on an idea to break the impasse: he’ll take his son to his first pro baseball game. It’s perfect…a father and son bonding experience that will make Mason happy and get both of them out of the house for a day. What ensues is a veritable Homeric journey across the Atlanta metro area, driven by Lucky’s determination to get his son to the ball park in time to catch the game, regardless of any number of obstacles.
They say there is beauty in simplicity, and this is a simple story, beautifully told. It’s an astonishingly assured debut for writer-director David Fortune, shot in black and white by cinematographer Nikolaus Summerer. A truly compassionate drama that keeps it real at all turns, capped off by two outstanding lead performances. Color Book is a must-see.
Larry David shared a transcript of one of his production meetings for Curb Your Enthusiasm for the New Yorker:
LARRY DAVID: Welcome, everyone. The ratings came in for last week’s show, and they were through the roof. Numbers you would not have believed were possible. They’re saying a hundred million, maybe more. Could be two hundred million. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. Just tremendous. And so many stars want to be in it. The biggest stars—Tom Hanks. Leo. Margot Robbie, who’s so beautiful. What a beautiful girl. She’s Australian, you know. You wouldn’t believe how popular “Curb” is there. All over the world. And in New York it’s crazy—I can’t even walk down the street. I have to be carried in a suitcase. O.K., let’s go around the room. Jeff, you start.
JEFF GARLIN (actor): I thought last week’s show was amazing and I’ve never seen you funnier. I mean, you’re always funny, but you went into the comedy stratosphere. When we’re in a scene together, I’m just watching you in awe. I truly do not know how you do it. So honored to be a part of this.
L.D.: Thank you, Jeff. Susie?
SUSIE ESSMAN (actor): Jeff, you took the words right out of my mouth. But what I find most surprising, which isn’t talked about very much, is how handsome you are, Larry. Your comedy is so brilliant that people overlook the fact that there’s a stunning man behind it. I have no doubt that you could’ve been a big movie star, if you chose to do that. Fortunately for us and the world, you chose comedy. I think I speak for everyone here when I say how lucky we are to be in the presence of such a genius.
L.D.: Well, I’ve always felt that my looks were underrated. Sometimes I’ll catch a reflection in a store window and say to myself, “What a gorgeous man!” And then I realize it’s me. Crazy! O.K., let’s hear from J.B.
J. B. SMOOVE (actor): Man, you have no idea how much you’ve done for me. I used to hate white people—and then I met you. How can I hate white people if you’re white? You are a good, white man. And, if I were a white man, I’d want to be you. You are the Martin Luther King of comedy.
L.D.: I was a great admirer of his. And many people have told me he would’ve been a big fan of mine. Laura?
LAURA STREICHER (executive producer): If I ever think about a person who I hope never dies, it’s you. And what I know—and what most people don’t know—is how charitable you are. (To the group) He doesn’t tell anyone, but I happen to know that every Saturday he goes to hospitals and nursing homes—and just by the sheer force of his personality makes everyone feel better.
L.D.: I told you that in confidence.
L.S.: But people need to know. On the set we call you Mr. Larry Rogers because of how sweet and kind you are.
L.D.: Big fan of mine. Next?
JEFF SCHAFFER (director): The impact you’ve had on comedy all over the world—and on other planets, if they’re observing us—is profound. And if, in fact, the aliens are watching the show, they’re getting the most valuable life lessons imaginable. Every day with you is a master class in comedy, but getting to know you has been the greatest blessing of my life.
