Month: July 2025

Trump just respected them because they stole their country blind

The NY Times:

In meeting President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines, President Trump referred to his “highly respected” family — a family Trump knew back in the 1980s. He made no reference to the fact that President Marcos’s father was forced out of office in a people’s revolution, and that during the Reagan administration was told it was time to go. The elder Marcos was an authoritarian, ruthless to his enemies; his son has become a close American ally, in part because of China’s encroachments on territory that both countries claim.

As Trump attacks his political opponents, Marcos keeps returning to the countries’ military relationship, and Washington’s help to the “self-reliance defense program.” But the fact is that the Philippines has no chance against China’s powerful military — and the Chinese coast guard ships that have been at the core at the conflict — without its treaty ally.

And don’t forget that Imelda Maarcos was a role model for Trump:

“How’s Imelda?” Trump asked the Philippine leader when they first spoke in November, according to an official familiar with the call, sending his regards to the onetime first lady of the Philippines and a fellow cultural figurehead of the 1980s and 90s.

Trump has long placed a premium on family ties and genetics as a measure of people’s value, including for foreign leaders and members of his staff. He appeared to be impressed in the lead-up to Tuesday’s meeting with Marcos Jr.’s connections to an infamous period in Philippine history, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“A great family, great family legacy and highly respected in this country. I know that because I have many friends in the Philippines,” Trump said as Tuesday’s meeting was getting underway.

Trump and Imelda Marcos first crossed paths decades ago as members of the international jet set — he as a New York businessman and she as the wife of strongman leader Ferdinand Marcos, famous for her extravagant taste financed by public funds and amassing a massive collection of shoes while her husband imposed martial law.

The two attended parties together in New York, including during the period when Imelda Marcos and her husband were forced into exile in Hawaii after being unseated by a popular uprising. They fled the country with crates of gold and pesos.

Images show Trump seated alongside his second wife Marla Maples and the glamorous Imelda Marcos at a birthday party in New York in 1991 — ten months before she returned to the Philippines after six years to face graft charges.

Bigly

I won’t pretend to understand why they were as enthusiastic about Trump as they were in the first place. I suppose it’s possible that Trump just seemed normal to a lot of young people because he’d been president before and they had the sense that he did a good job. The “bro” factor played into it too, I think.

But they can all see him in action now and it’s obvious that he’s a miserable failure and an addled criminal.

*I should add that many Gen Xers have some splainin’ to do too. They should have known better.

Maybe:

Facing backlash from MAGA supporters about the handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, President Donald Trump and his administration have released a flood of information on old grievances and issues popular with the base.

Overnight, Trump used his Truth Social social media platform to attack Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., post a fake AI-generated video showing former President Barack Obama being arrested by the FBI and share AI-generated mugshots of a variety of Democratic officials who have served as Republican bogeymen over the years.

Trump also weighed in on another MAGA favorite — the names of sports teams — and threatened to try to block a deal to build a new football stadium in Washington, D.C., unless the Commanders changed their name back to the Redskins. The team dropped that name in 2019, after years of criticism that it was racist.

The intensity of the Epstein conversation has dampened since last week, after the Trump administration had to contend with many of its MAGA supporters who were furious that officials weren’t releasing more information about the Epstein case. On Friday, Trump sued The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch after the paper published an article saying Trump sent a letter to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 that included a drawing of a naked woman.

By Monday, many prominent MAGA social media accounts appeared to have moved on from the Epstein issue, focusing instead on some of the other topics that the Trump administration has been pushing.

[…]

On Friday, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard revisited the 2016 election, calling for several Obama aides to face prosecution related to Russian interference in that campaign.

[…]

The Justice Department and other agencies released files Monday that have long been the subject of conspiracies. But they weren’t Epstein documents; they were documents on Hillary Clinton and more than 230,000 pages related to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Attorney General Pam Bondi has been a particular target of the MAGA base’s ire.

“The American people have waited nearly sixty years to see the full scope of the federal government’s investigation into Dr. King’s assassination,” Gabbard, whose agency was also involved in the release, said in a statement. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are ensuring that no stone is left unturned in our mission to deliver complete transparency on this pivotal and tragic event in our nation’s history.”

Never mind. Nothing to see here. We’ve moved on. Look over here!

It’s hard to believe that MAGA will turn on Trump over a sex scandal. I mean, they could have done that a thousand times over and they believed him over women every single time. But who knows?

Update — oh my. Looks like they aren’t letting it go:

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee agreed July 22 to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell, a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein, to testify about the conspiracy that landed her in prison.

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tennessee, pressed for the subpoena on the same day Justice Department officials announced they’ve asked to meet with Maxwell. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring with Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019, to sexually abuse minors.

“This deposition will help the American people understand how Jeffrey Epstein was able to carry out his evil actions for so long without being brought to justice,” Burchett said.

Fergawdsakes…

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday that Deputy Attorney Todd Blanche will meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted associate of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, sometime in the “coming days.”

“President Trump has told us to release all credible evidence. If Ghislane Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say,” Blanche said in the statement posted by Bondi on X.

Blanche also said that the joint statement from the Justice Department and FBI on July 6 — which stated they would not release any additional files on Epstein and that they determined there was no Epstein “client list” — “remains as accurate today as it was when it was written.”

“Namely, that in the recent thorough review of the files maintained by the FBI in the Epstein case, no evidence was uncovered that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” Blanche said.

Welp:

Shutting down the United States House of Representatives to avoid a vote on the Epstein matter should cause everyone to recalibrate their conspiracy meter from like a 6 out of 10 to 8.5 out of 10.

— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) July 22, 2025

I keep hearing that this had nothing to do with Trump personally extorting $16 million from CBS for approval of their merger. It was purely financial.

Sure. And it happened days after the “settlement” by total coincidence. Uh huh.

If it wasn’t part of the settlement it was just a nice little present for the president. A gesture of good will. Which would be even worse.

`

Maxwell did not commit suicide next week

After Jeffrey Epstein’s death in a jail cell, anyone serving time over his sex trafficking operation might be worried about getting a visit from the Trump DOJ:

As the Republican party remains in a state of flux over the Jeffrey Epstein debacle and the Trump administration continues to desperately try to claw back the narrative on the issue, the justice department has asked Epstein associate Ghislane Maxwell if she would be willing to speak with US prosecutors. Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche said that he intends to meet with Maxswell “in the coming days” with the aim of finding out if she has any “information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims”.

He wrote on X:

Justice demands courage. For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know? At @AGPamBondi ’s direction, I’ve contacted her counsel. I intend to meet with her soon. No one is above the law—and no lead is off-limits.

In a statement posted on X before that, Blanche said:

This Department of Justice does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, nor from the responsibility to pursue justice wherever the facts may lead. The joint statement by the DOJ and FBI of July 6 remains as accurate today as it was when it was written. Namely, that in the recent thorough review of the files maintained by the FBI in the Epstein case, no evidence was uncovered that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.

President Trump has told us to release all credible evidence. If Ghislane Maxwell [sic] has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say.

Therefore, at the direction of Attorney General Bondi, I have communicated with counsel for Ms. Maxwell to determine whether she would be willing to speak with prosecutors from the Department. I anticipate meeting with Ms. Maxwell in the coming days. Until now, no administration on behalf of the Department had inquired about her willingness to meet with the government. That changes now.”

Last week Donald Trump instructed attorney general Pam Bondi to begin the process of unsealing grand jury testimony in Epstein’s criminal case.

That followed publication of a Wall Street Journal story alleging that Trump sent Epstein a “bawdy” birthday letter several decades ago, though Trump has claimed the letter is fake and is now seeking billions in a defamation lawsuit against the WSJ.

“No evidence was uncovered that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” That may not be the only thing Trump has to worry about from details contained in the investigation’s files.

Trump is still pissed and anxious: Trump bans Wall Street Journal from Scotland trip press pool over Epstein report

* * * * *

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Who owns America?

Real Americans™. I’ve used the trademark for years to mock the insistence some on the right they and only they represent the true American faith. The more loudly they proclaim it, the they less they embody it. It is a largely white claim, but not exclusively so. It is also claimed sometimes by the last wave of immigrants. Having endured the discriminatory hazing from Americans already established that immigrants from [fill in the blank] don’t share American values or speak good English, the last wave gears up to do to the next what was done to them.

Watching the debate Mehdi Hasan had with 20 extremist conservatives, one thing that stood out was that same underlying sense among the young extremists that theirs is the true America faith and all others are blasphemers. As an immigrant from England born there to Indian parents, Hasan is not in their eyes not a member of their exclusive Real Americans™ club. Perhaps that is why Donald Trump gets so much traction with this crowd. He runs exclusive clubs. He’s modeling their vision for the country.

It was more heat than light. There were blood-and-soil nationalist and great replacement references. What’s stunning was how aggressively they attacked the Constitution and American political traditions while (presumably) believing they embody Americanism (except for fascist boy). It was more heat than light.

I debated 20 far-far-far-right conservatives on Jubilee's 'Surrounded.'

Below are some brief highlights of them unable to answer my basic questions or rebut the simplest of points. Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Here's the full eye-opening 'debate': https://t.co/VG2vnik1J0 pic.twitter.com/vCewUHAKfg

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 20, 2025

I suck at judging ages, but it looked like these 20 were either in college to late 20s. So some brought the full-of-themselves attitude of campus wannabe intellectuals armed with arguments intended to dominate libruls and show them up as weak (thinkers).

Then there was the budding sociopath who admitted, smiling and referencing Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt, to being a fascist.

“i’m just checking who’s clapping” 😭 @mehdirhasan pic.twitter.com/S7kyLYG39S

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) July 21, 2025

But there were those who when they couldn’t dominate Hasan grew visibly agitated and/or hostile. Those are the ones (Joseph, pink shirt, and Richie, green shirt) who worry me most. They are the sort who might under the right circumstances go to guns. Joseph invited Hasan to get the hell out of the country.

Political scientists have spent the last 2 decades wondering what the children who grow up being inundated by Fox News propaganda from their parents would end up like and now we know.

And they are legion. pic.twitter.com/sDWQDaiLTm

— Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆 (@RachelBitecofer) July 22, 2025

Hasan was taken aback by just how extreme this group was. So was I.

“I’m amazed that Jubilee found some of you guys. How do they find you?” Hasan asked.

It wasn’t thathard:

Mehdi also interviewed another groyper, Kai Schwemmer. He was one of Nick's leading fanboys in 2021 https://t.co/ZulF4ezIZi pic.twitter.com/uENlOsW8Xn

— Ben Lorber (@BenLorber8) July 20, 2025

Zeteo adds:

Each of the far-right conservatives took turns attempting to challenge a set of claims made by Mehdi, and one after another, they simply refused to engage in the logic of his arguments. Instead, they responded to facts about Trump’s extremism with extremism of their own, including calling for Mehdi to “get the hell out” of the US and telling him he’s “not an American.”

Throughout this episode, you will hear conservatives say that white people in the US are the real ‘Native Americans,’ that Nazis may not have been that bad, and that ‘white genocide’ is real. One of them even tried to defend and justify Israel’s deliberate killing of children in Gaza.

The last was an Iranian-American dressed “like a villain from a mexican telenovela.”

Excellent work.
On an unrelated note, I would like to know why somebody decided, for this event, to dress like a villain from a mexican telenovela. pic.twitter.com/b8flvnhjnG

— Savvas Papadopoulos (@Savvas98374297) July 20, 2025

God help us.

Update: Fascist Catholic gets the boot (h/t MW)

The self-proclaimed Catholic fascist who recently appeared on an episode of Surrounded by the popular YouTube channel Jubilee has lost his job following the programme’s release. The debate, which first aired on Sunday, featured 20 “Far-Right Conservatives” in discussion with British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan.

Connor, who uses the online name “Pinesap”, explained that he would prefer an autocratic state aligned with Catholic teaching over democracy. He went on to reference Carl Schmitt, a German philosopher who collaborated with the Nazis, after which Hasan challenged Connor on whether he was a Nazi. Connor appeared to avoid denouncing Nazi totalitarianism and, when asked whether he was a fascist, replied: “Yeah, I am,” to scattered applause around the studio. He also defended Franco as a political figure who fought for the Church and denied that Franco was involved in the murder of women or children.

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

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I guess making America great again means we have returned to the most barbaric practices of our distant past. What an achievement:

Migrants at a Miami immigration jail were shackled with their hands tied behind their backs and made to kneel to eat food from styrofoam plates “like dogs”, according to a report published on Monday into conditions at three overcrowded south Florida facilities.

The incident at the downtown federal detention center is one of a succession of alleged abuses at Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice) operated jails in the state since January, chronicled by advocacy groups Human Rights Watch, Americans for Immigrant Justice, and Sanctuary of the South from interviews with detainees.

Dozens of men had been packed into a holding cell for hours, the report said, and denied lunch until about 7pm. They remained shackled with the food on chairs in front of them. “We had to eat like animals,” one detainee named Pedro said.

Degrading treatment by guards is commonplace in all three jails, the groups say. At the Krome North service processing center in west Miami, female detainees were made to use toilets in full view of men being held there, and were denied access to gender-appropriate care, showers, or adequate food.

The jail was so far beyond capacity, some transferring detainees reported, that they were held for more than 24 hours in a bus in the parking lot. Men and women were confined together, and unshackled only when they needed to use the single toilet, which quickly became clogged.

“The bus became disgusting. It was the type of toilet in which normally people only urinate but because we were on the bus for so long, and we were not permitted to leave it, others defecated in the toilet,” one man said.“Because of this, the whole bus smelled strongly of feces.”

When the group was finally admitted into the facility, they said, many spent up to 12 days crammed into a frigid intake room they christened la hierela – the ice box – with no bedding or warm clothing, sleeping instead on the cold concrete floor.

There’s more at the link. They were, of course, denied medical care and were routinely brutalized by the guards.

Remember, this is all being done so that Americans will no longer have to put up with gardeners, nannies, dishwashers, agriculture and manufacturing workers who pay into the system and get almost nothing in return for it.

The dumbest man in the Senate, possibly the dumbest man to ever be elected to national office, explained that Trump’s cankles are caused by Democrats:

After President Trump was diagnosed with a chronic vein condition, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) suggested the president’s health condition could be a result of his efforts in “fighting the radicals.”

“The pressure on somebody like President Trump right now, not just from outside entities … all over the world but also fighting the radicals in this country,” Tuberville said during a Sunday interview with radio host John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM’s “The Cats Roundtable. ”Every day it’s almost like a fistfight.”

The White House announced Thursday that Trump had been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a condition where leg veins have difficulty sending blood back to the heart. It often results in ankle swelling and is common in people older than 70.

Weirdly, I haven’t seen a lot of follow up on the president’s health after they revealed that diagnosis. I thought it was expected that they would dog him day after the day after day since he’s quite old and clearly losing his faculties. But apparently not.

I have heard that Joe Biden’s staff and his physician are the subject of a big congressional investigation about his health, however. I guess they’re busy.

This picture from the White House really shows how many gold accents have been added to the Oval Office. This is how it looked last year: https://t.co/Y2auT8fjTg pic.twitter.com/GCXoyunFjf

— Michelle L. Price (@michellelprice) April 7, 2025

Huffington Post shows the details in a series of pictures including close-ups of  “a TON of … gold squiggly things all over the place.” Hideous. It’s everywhere!

Between golf games, Truth Social, cabinet bootlicking sessions and tariff threats he’s been very busy:

Six months since he moved back into the White House, Trump’s Oval Office is bathed in a sea of gold and gives a glimpse of his maximalist design approach. Gold-colored appliqués on the fireplace, gilded mirrors and ornate Rococo-style 18^th and 19^th century dessert stands and flower vases from London and France sit on the mantle. The walls are choc-a-block with paintings of former presidents in heavily ornate gold frames. The Cabinet Room has been outfitted with new ceiling medallions and a grandfather clock.

“I picked it all myself,” he said. “I’m very proud of it.”

Meanwhile, Trump has also ripped up the sod in the Rose Garden in favor of a “gorgeous stone” patio − work paid for by the same nonprofit that funded the Washington Monument’s restoration work after a 2011 earthquake − and announced plans to build a ballroom in the White House. He recently erected two 88-foot-tall flagpoles on the south and north lawns of the White House.

He’s personally redoing the whole White House. At the cabinet meeting where he yelled at the reporter for asking about Epstein when there’s so many important things going on he took the time to tell his sycophants all about it:

President Trump played docent-in-chief as he gave an impromptu tour of the paintings and other objects he’s sourced from various locations, including the State Department, to redecorate the Cabinet Room at the White House on July 8.The tour came at the end of an almost two-hour meeting with his cabinet as they sat around an elliptical mahogany table.

Talking about his attempts to redo the meeting room that was first created in 1934 in the West Wing, he pointed to a wall to his left.“It had some pictures. There were not many of them and not very good ones,” he said.

Trump then revealed the primary source of his new additions: The White House Vault.“The vaults are where we have a lot of great pictures and artwork,” he said…

There were two metrics by which he made his final selections — presidents he admired and ones that were in the right-sized and right-looking frames.

“I’m a frame person. Sometimes I like frames more than I like the pictures,” he told his captive audience.“Polk (President James Polk) was actually a very good president who’s got the same frame that I needed,” he said.

I think he would have preferred to have the job of First Lady. He’s redecorating the White House, taking over Lincoln Center and literally put his portrait up in the first ladies gallery:

This area of the White House features portraits of former First Ladies. Trump replaced Hillary Clinton’s with his own—just as he did with Obama’s on the main floor. pic.twitter.com/qP2ipBokAg

— Molly Ploofkins (@Mollyploofkins) June 18, 2025

The most powerful man in the world, ladies and gentlemen …

Of course he has

Bessent: "The president is the most economically sophisticated president certainly for 100 years, perhaps in history." pic.twitter.com/HXfoJkL8wG

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 3, 2025

Get ready to pay through the nose:

More than half of Americans — 57 percent — said in a new survey that they think the GOP’s sweeping package extending tax cuts and slashing welfare services will increase their health-care costs.

Thirteen percent in the CBS/YouGov poll released Sunday said that the “big, beautiful bill” will lower their health-care costs and 33 percent said there will be no impact.

While the Congressional Budget Office has not yet released a final estimate for the measure as enacted, it projected that 16 million people would lose their health insurance by 2034 under an earlier House-passed version of the bill. This analysis has been the basis for many Democrats’ messaging around health care, and health-care advocates have still warned that the final version could be devastating to communities relying on Medicaid.

The sprawling package permanently extends many of the temporary tax cuts passed by Republicans during President Trump’s first term, alongside making deep spending reductions to Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and other welfare programs. The measure would primarily benefit wealthy Americans, an analysis by the Yale Budget Lab found last month.

That 57% are not wrong. Guess what?

Affordable Care Act insurers are proposing their steepest premium increases since 2018, driven in part by the looming expiration of Biden-era enhanced premium subsidies and by the Trump administration’s tariffs, a new KFF analysis has found.

Insurers are asking for a typical rate increase of 15% with more than a quarter proposing hikes of 20% or more. KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group, looked at 105 Affordable Care Act, informally called “Obamacare,” insurers in 19 states and the District of Columbia that have filed rates so far.

Steep rate increases in 2018 were also fueled by Trump administration policies, which were focused on weakening the ACA during the president’s first term after Republicans in Congress failed to repeal it in 2017.

You can bet that if the Obamacare premiums are going up so is all insurance. Your employer will feel it. Also, Trump is threatening huge tariffs on pharmaceuticals if they don’t move all their operations to Mar-a-lago by October (or something…) Should be great.