He once boasted that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.” He accepted a $1 million bribe from El Chapo to allow cocaine shipments to pass through Honduras. A man was killed in prison to protect him.
At the federal trial of Juan Orlando Hernández in New York, testimony and evidence showed how the former president maintained Honduras as a bastion of the global drug trade. He orchestrated a vast trafficking conspiracy that prosecutors said raked in millions for cartels while keeping Honduras one of Central America’s poorest, most violent and most corrupt countries.
Last year, Mr. Hernández was convicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison. It was one of the most sweeping drug-trafficking cases to come before a U.S. court since the trial of the Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega three decades before.
[…]
But on Friday, President Trump announced that he would pardon Mr. Hernandez, 57, who he said was a victim of political persecution, though Mr. Trump offered no evidence to support that claim. It would be a head-spinning resolution to a case that for prosecutors was a pinnacle, striking at the heart of a narcostate.
I am including a gift link for you to read the whole sordid story. This man is a monster. One of the worst ever. And Trump pardoned him.
That may seem counterintuitive since he’s simultaneously waging war on Venezuela over cocaine trafficking but he’s acting entirely on impulse now and Roger Stone told him that he was “unfairly” prosecuted so Trump did it. He rightly sees himself in Hernandez — a corrupt criminal president:
For many Hondurans, his conviction was a rare taste of justice. A woman in a crowd outside the courthouse celebrating his punishment had held a sign that read “No clemency for narcopolitics.”
But on Saturday, Mr. Trump said in a statement to The New York Times that “many friends” had asked him to pardon Mr. Hernández: “They gave him 45 years because he was the President of the Country — you could do this to any President.”
No doubt that is the argument Roger made to him.
Trump 2.0 has been a train wreck from the beginning but it does feel like he’s just saying “fuck it” now and doing what he feels like doing no matter how insane it might be. We are entering a new phase of lunacy.
Although Republicans have expressed just a tiny bit of “concern” over Pete Hegseth’s order to “kill ’em all” in the Caribbean, I haven’t heard any of them speak out about this. I honestly don’t think there’s any red line for them. If Trump decided to set up camps to throw all of his political enemies in them I’m fairly sure he wouldn’t get any trouble from the GOP.
A secretive Fort Bragg operation that specializes in influencing people’s thoughts has released a hypnotic recruitment video that is laced with hidden meanings and strange images.
The 1:17-second clip, posted Nov. 19 on social media, is a string of baffling clips, including old cartoons, masked figures hiding in plain sight and a group of people staring blankly at the viewer over the phrase: “We are everywhere.”
“There is another force applied in combat that we generally don’t think of as a weapon of war. That weapon is words,” the video says. “Words are weapons. … This is psychological warfare.”
The video then beckons: “Join PSYOP.”
Some responses:
Among the surprises found, references to conspiracy theories, the “Ghost Army” that deceived the Nazi generals in WWII and the popular Pepe the Frog GIF shows up in a clown suit. At one point, the phrase “anything we touch is a weapon” flashes and fades.
“Watch it over and over again. Great little nuggets of information for us,” Nidia Law posted on Facebook.
“A lot of crumb drops in this one,” TheJason wrote on Instagram.
“I think y’all have so much fun at work! Would love to be on the other side of this ‘fog show’,” Leigh Eschew said on Instagram.
I’m sure the recruits will be the finest conspiracy theorists the country has to offer.
Oh, and then there’s this. (Note that eleven stars represented the eleven states that had originally seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy.)
From Pete Hegseth’s book which every Senator had access to when Trump nominated him. They knew what he was and they knew that Trump was a sociopathic moron. I imagine they thought the generals would be a “guardrail” but they aren’t. (Those who might have been willing to do it have been fired.)
This is the simple-minded, delayed adolescent we have in charge of the U.S. military because all of those Republicans betrayed America.
The targeted shootings on Wednesday last week of two National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C. were a nightmare. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died after being shot. Her colleague, Andrew Wolfe, 24, is still reportedly “fighting for his life.” The alleged shooter is an Afghan refugee and former CIA battlefield asset admitted to the country under a Biden administration program and given asylum status in April under the Trump administration. He is hospitalized with gunshot wounds sustained during his capture.
When Americans commit mass shootings, as they often do, conservatives offer thoughts and prayers, as they often do, declare shooters mentally ill, as they often do, and warn the left not to politicize the shootings.
But raging xenophobes like Stephen Miller feel no such constraints. He declared that “importing” men, women, and children “at scale” from “broken” countries simply leads to them turning ours into another failed-state hellhole.
Ah yes, the classic “importing societies” lecture from the guy whose great-grandparents fled pogroms with nothing but the clothes on their backs and somehow didn’t recreate Tsarist Russia in Pennsylvania.
Funny how that magic transformation worked just fine for the Miller family, but suddenly stops functioning when the skin is browner and the prayers face Mecca.
We need security, yes—but humane, targeted, and blind to race or origin.
Immigrants from “failed states” have lower crime rates than native-born Americans, built more businesses per capita, and many of the Afghans you’re targeting literally risked their lives helping U.S. troops. But sure, keep cosplaying 1924 immigration quotas while pretending it’s about “security” and not demographics. We see you.
NY Times Pitchbot satirizes Miller’s argument that such people are unable to assimilate as Americans. He shot multiple innocent people, didn’t he?
Stephen Miller says Afghan immigrant Rahmanullah Lakanwal was incapable of assimilating to American culture. But a factcheck shows that Lakanwal used a gun to assault and kill multiple innocent people. Four Pinocchios.
One would have to be culturally illiterate not to see it coming. Men like Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller would be comically cartoonish, B-movie villains if their statements and behaviors were the least bit funny. People are dead and disappeared. Men killed in the Caribbean on Sept 2 by U.S. forces were murdered, according to a statement released Saturday by “Former JAGs Working Group.”
Former US military lawyers speak out
"The Former JAGs Working Group unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both"
Statement on Media Reports of Pentagon “No Quarter” Orders in Caribbean Boat Strikes pic.twitter.com/eXo0bs4zyb
Secretary Pete Hegseth gave verbal orders to kill everybody aboard a small boat in the Caribbean targeted as smuggling drugs, according to two unnamed sources “with direct knowledge of the operation.” The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump and the Pentagon claim that “the Sept. 2 strike targeted members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua but have not provided evidence to support those claims.”
Once a missile struck the boat, drone footage showed two survivors clinging to the burning wreckage. The Washington Post reported, “The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack [Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, per the Post] … ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.”
Hegseth, unsurprisingly, declared the reporting “fake news.” The man with the Crusader tattoos called the story “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.”
The former JAGS presumably know more about the laws of war than a former Fox News Weekend host. “The Former JAGs Working Group unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both,” reads their statement:
If the U.S. military operation to interdict and destroy suspected narcotraficking vessels is a “non-international armed conflict,” as the Trump Administration suggests, orders to “kill everybody,” which can reasonably be regarded as an order to give “no quarter,” and to “double-tap” a target in order to kill survivors, are clearly illegal under international law. In short, they are war crimes.
If the U.S. military operation is not an armed conflict of any kind, these orders to kill helpless civilians clinging to the wreckage of a vessel our military destroyed would subject everyone from SECDEF down to the individual who pulled the trigger to prosecution under U.S. law for murder.
A former Pentagon associate general counsel concurs, telling CNN that it is a crime either way you slice it:
“They’re breaking the law either way,” said Sarah Harrison, a former associate general counsel at the Pentagon who now serves as a senior analyst at the Crisis Group think tank. “They’re killing civilians in the first place, and then if you assume they’re combatants, it’s also unlawful — under the law of armed conflict, if somebody is ‘hors de combat’ and no longer able to fight, then they have to be treated humanely.”
Harvard Law Professor and former head of the Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush, Jack Goldsmith, writes at his Substack, “One can imagine stretching Article II of the Constitution to authorize the U.S. drug boat campaign.” One might also, he writes, “possibly, stretch the laws of war to say that attacks on the drug boats are part of a ‘non-international armed conflict,’ as OLC has reportedly concluded.”
But, Goldsmith concludes, “there can be no conceivable legal justification” for the killings reported by the Post. He quotes chapter and verse:
Prohibition Against Declaring That No Quarter Be Given. It is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given. This means that it is prohibited to order that legitimate offers of surrender will be refused or that detainees, such as unprivileged belligerents, will be summarily executed. Moreover, it is also prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter. This rule is based on both humanitarian and military considerations. This rule also applies during non-international armed conflict.
Hegseth denies he gave the “kill everybody” order. Those who carried out the supposed non-order are not talking. Leaders of the House Armed Services Committee stated on Saturday that they intend to investigate. So does the Senate Armed Services Committee:
A top Republican senator, Roger Wicker, has joined his Democratic counterpart in calling for “vigorous oversight to determine the facts” of allegations that the military intentionally killed survivors of a boat strike.
“The Committee has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances,” said Sen. Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
What makes the Sept. 2 strike even more curious is an Oct. 18 statement from Donald Trump. Survivors of a strike on an alleged drug-carrying submarine were captured and would be “returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution.” But survivors from an alleged drug boat from Venezuela had to die. Wouldn’t survivors of an alleged Tren de Aragua drug boat be a source of valuable intelligence on cartel smuggling operations? The committees will surely ask that question.
Hegseth has directed the killing of dozens in the Caribbean, possibly illegally, including Columbian fishermen. Secretary Kristi Noem’s masked Customs and Border Patrol and ICE have launched a reign of terror against Latinos and other non-white U.S. residents. Both the undocumented and U.S. citizens have been impacted. Donald Trump wants and chief advisor Stephen Miller is likely directing deportations without due process, defying court orders, instituting a new kind of extraordinary rendition, and now targeting duly naturalized citizens for denaturalization and deportation.
If this were a movie, they’d plainly be the villains. They are making all of us villains by proxy. This is the part of the movie where the heroes stand up and fight back. That’s you.
Update: Oh, by the way
On the horrific news that Pete Hegseth ordered the killing of boat bombing survivors, remember: The DOJ memo "authorizing" the strikes preemptively clears those carrying them out. That's unusual. And we still haven't heard from the commander who resigned:https://t.co/LaeGR5jqLhpic.twitter.com/vLr4Ojut3j
Since it’s Thanksgiving weekend, that most venerable of American holidays which enables families to gather once a year to count their blessings, stuff their faces, and endeavor mightily to not bring politics into the conversation, I thought I might mosey on over to the movie pantry and hand-select my top 10 food films. Dig in!
Big Night– I have frequently foisted this film on friends and relatives, because after all, it’s important to “…take a bite out of the ass of life!” (as one of the characters demonstrates with voracious aplomb). Two brothers, enterprising businessman Secondo (Stanley Tucci, who also co-wrote and co-directed) and his older sibling Primo (Tony Shalhoub), a gifted chef, open an Italian restaurant but quickly run into financial trouble.
Possible salvation arrives via a dubious proposal from a more successful competitor (played by a hammy Ian Holm). The fate of their business hinges on Primo’s ability to conjure up the ultimate feast. And what a meal he prepares-especially the timpano (you’d better have pasta and ragu handy-or your appestat will be writing checks your duodenum will not be able to cash, if you know what I’m saying).
The wonderful cast includes Isabella Rossellini, Minnie Driver, Liev Schreiber, Allison Janney, Campbell Scott (who co-directed with Tucci), and look for Latin pop superstar Marc Anthony as the prep cook.
Comfort and Joy– A quirky trifle from Scottish writer-director Bill Forsyth (Gregory’sGirl, Local Hero). An amiable Glasgow radio DJ (Bill Paterson) is dumped by his girlfriend on Christmas Eve, throwing him into existential crisis and causing him to take urgent inventory of his personal and professional life. Soon after lamenting to his GM that he yearns to produce something more “important” than his chirpy morning show, serendipity lands him a hot scoop-a brewing “war” between two rival ice-cream dairies.
The film is chockablock with Forsyth’s patented low-key anarchy, wry one-liners and subtle visual gags. As a former morning DJ, I can attest the scenes depicting “Dickie Bird” running his show are authentic (a rarity on the screen). One warning: it might take several days for you to purge that ice cream van’s loopy theme music out of your head.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover– A gamey, visceral and perverse fable about food, as it relates to love, sex, violence, revenge, and Thatcherism from writer-director Peter Greenaway (who I like to call “the thinking person’s Ken Russell”).
Michael Gambon chews up the scenery as a vile and vituperative British underworld kingpin who holds nightly court at a gourmet eatery. When his bored trophy wife (Helen Mirren) becomes attracted to one of the regular diners, an unassuming bookish fellow (Alan Howard), the wheels are set in motion for a twisty tale, culminating in one of the most memorable scenes of “just desserts” ever served up on film (not for the squeamish).
The opulent set design and cinematographer Sacha Vierny’s extraordinary use of color lend the film a rich Jacobean texture. Richard Bohringer is “the cook”, and look for the late pub rocker Ian Dury as one of Gambon’s associates. It’s unique…if not for all tastes.
Diner– This slice-of-life dramedy marked writer-director Barry Levinson’s debut in 1982, and remains his best. A group of 20-something pals converge for Christmas week in 1959 Baltimore. One is recently married, another is about to get hitched, and the rest playing the field and deciding what to do with their lives as they slog fitfully toward adulthood.
The most entertaining scenes are at the group’s favorite diner, where the comfort food of choice is French fries with gravy. Levinson has a knack for writing sharp dialog, and it’s the little details that make the difference; like a cranky appliance store customer who will settle for nothing less than a B&W Emerson (he refuses to upgrade to color TV because he saw Bonanza in color at a friend’s house, and thought “…the Ponderosa looked fake”).
This film was more influential than it gets credit for; Tarantino owes a debt, as do the creators of Seinfeld. It’s hard to believe that Kevin Bacon, Mickey Rourke, Ellen Barkin, Daniel Stern, Timothy Daly, Steve Guttenberg and Paul Reiser were all relative unknowns at the time!
Eat Drink Man Woman– Or as I call it: “I Never Stir-Fried for My Father”. This was director Ang Lee’s follow-up to his surprise hit The Wedding Banquet (another good food flick). It’s a well-acted dramedy about traditional Chinese values clashing with the mores of modern society. An aging master chef (losing his sense of taste) fastidiously prepares an elaborate weekly meal which he requires his three adult, single daughters to attend. As the narrative unfolds, Lee subtly reveals something we’ve suspected all along: when it comes to family dysfunction, we are a world without borders.
My Dinner with Andre– This one is a tough sell for the uninitiated. “An entire film that nearly all takes place at one restaurant table, with two self-absorbed New York intellectuals pontificating for the entire running time of the film-this is entertaining?!” Yes, it is. Director Louis Malle took a chance that pays off in spades. Although essentially a work of fiction, the two stars, theater director Andre Gregory and actor-playwright Wallace Shawn are playing themselves (they co-wrote the screenplay). A rumination on art, life, love, the universe and everything, the film is not so much about dinner, as a love letter to the lost art of erudite dinner conversation.
Pulp Fiction– Although the universal popularity of this Quentin Tarantino opus is owed chiefly to its hyper-stylized mayhem and the iambic pentameter of its salty dialogue, I think it is underappreciated as a foodie film. The hell you say? Think about it.
The opening and closing scenes take place in a diner, with characters having lively discussions over heaping plates of food. In Mia and Vincent’s scene at the theme restaurant, the camera zooms to fetishistic close-ups of the “Douglas Sirk steak, and a vanilla coke.” Mia offers Jules a sip of her 5 Dollar Milkshake.
Vincent and Jules ponder why the French refer to Big Macs as “Royales with cheese” and why the Dutch insist on drowning their French fries in mayonnaise. Jules voraciously hijacks the doomed Brett’s “Big Kahuna” burger, then precedes to wash it down with a sip of his “tasty beverage”. Pouty Fabienne pines wistfully for blueberry pancakes.
Even super-efficient Mr. Wolfe takes a couple seconds out of his precisely mapped schedule to reflect on the pleasures of a hot, fresh-brewed cup of coffee. And “Don’t you just love it when you come back from the bathroom and find your food waiting for you?”
Tampopo– Self billed as “The first Japanese noodle western”, this 1987 entry from writer-director Juzo Itami is all that and more. Nobuko Niyamoto is superb as the title character, a widow who has inherited her late husband’s noodle house. Despite her dedication and effort to please customers, Tampopo struggles to keep the business afloat, until a deux ex machina arrives-a truck driver named Goro (Tsutomo Yamazaki).
After one taste, Goro pinpoints the problem-bland noodles. No worries-like the magnanimous stranger who blows into an old western town (think Shane), Goro takes Tampopo on as a personal project, mentoring her on the Zen of creating the perfect noodle bowl. A delight from start to finish, offering keen insight on the relationship between food, sex and love.
The Trip– Pared down into feature film length from the BBC series of the same name, Michael Winterbottom’s film is essentially a highlight reel of that show-which is not to denigrate; as it is the most genuinely hilarious comedy I’ve seen in many a moon. The levity is due in no small part to Winterbottom’s two stars-Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, basically playing themselves in this mashup of Sideways and My Dinner with Andre.
Coogan is asked by a British newspaper to take a “restaurant tour” of England’s bucolic Lake District, and review the eateries. He initially plans to take his girlfriend along, but since their relationship is going through a rocky period, he asks his pal, fellow actor Brydon, to accompany him.
This simple setup is an excuse to sit back and enjoy Coogan and Brydon’s brilliant comic riffing (much of it improvised) on everything from relationships to the “proper” way to do Michael Caine impressions. There’s some unexpected poignancy-but for the most part, it’s pure comedy gold. It was followed by three equally entertaining sequels, The Trip to Italy(2014), The Trip to Spain (2017), and The Trip to Greece (2020).
Tom Jones– The film that made the late Albert Finney an international star, Tony Richardson’s 1963 romantic comedy-drama is based on the Henry Fielding novel about the eponymous character’s amorous exploits in 18th-Century England.
Tom (Finney) is raised as the bastard son of a prosperous squire. He is a bit on the rakish side, but wholly lovable and possesses a good heart. It’s the “lovable” part that gets him in trouble time and again, and fate and circumstance put young Tom on the road, where various duplicitous parties await to prey upon his naivety.
John Osborne adapted the Oscar-winning script; the film also won for Best Picture, Director, and Music Score (Finney was nominated for Best Actor).
The film earns its spot on this list for a brief but iconic (and very tactile) eating scene involving Finney and the wonderful Joyce Redman (see below).
Demolishing the East Wing of the White House before finalizing plans for what will be built above its ruins is a near-perfect metaphor for Trump's approach to economic policy. The only difference is the wrecking crew doesn’t claim the rubble is evidence of unprecedented growth.
Economist Justin Wolfers is always entertaining and informative. Here are a few recent highlights:
Tariffs apply to goods, not services. Zero in on the goods-producing sector, and you'll discover that it's hemorrhaging jobs. Indeed, the start of the trade war marks the peak in that sector, and it's been in recession ever since. pic.twitter.com/rpvSwpZabj
"No one's going to build a factory based on a tariff that's on on Monday, off on… Tuesday, the president's changed his mind by Wednesday, he gets hormonal by Thursday and someone says something nasty in the middle school cafeteria on Friday and they're back on again." pic.twitter.com/0bTJ4OOOu2
"If you look at job growth between January and September … for the past 15 years, it's only been worse once, and that was during the pandemic … It is the worst first nine months for the labor market in 15 years." pic.twitter.com/v3NaEVZxap
I had my first ever go at one of those round table talking heads sort of shows, and promised myself ahead of time that I wouldn't turn into a shouting head.
And then one of the panelists said something utterly silly… I didn't shout, but you might be able to hear my eyeroll. pic.twitter.com/bktwQzRTJl
When a politician says: we’ll deregulate health insurance and send you a “freedom account” check, ask: freedom to buy what? If insurers don’t offer real policies or can cherry-pick only healthy people, that money is a coupon for a store that’s not open. pic.twitter.com/4HTseJRUDK
"Look, the Fed can do a lot of things, but what it can't do is lower the price of imports. It can't make it so there are more workers for California farmers to help pick the crops." These are self-inflicted supply shocks, and the Fed can't magically undo them. (The White House… pic.twitter.com/kgUrxoumw1
"And so next year's economy is going to see two big things happening. It's going to see the tariffs hit and it's going to see an enormous slowdown in immigration and in population growth… and that will determine whether that turns out to be a recessionary year or not." pic.twitter.com/GjdWmKd5MO
AI is now central to the macro story: markets are booming on data-center spending. But a warehouse of servers is mostly capital, not workers. Great for stock prices, not so great for broad job growth—unless AI eventually raises productivity in other sectors too. pic.twitter.com/3f3XfT5E4b
Trump strong armed the Indiana GOP into coming back to do the redistricting he ordered with his MAGA army doing the dirty work. Here’s one guy’s thinking:
On Monday I spoke with a Republican member of Indiana’s legislature who opposes President Donald Trump’s push for the state to redraw its congressional map to gain two GOP seats and help the party hold its House majority in next year’s midterm elections. Trump, with support from Indiana’s Republican governor, Mike Braun, has vowed to back primary challengers against members of the GOP who are, for now, blocking the redistricting plan. The lawmaker I spoke with asked that I not publish his name. He isn’t worried about Trump’s political wrath; he doesn’t plan to run for reelection. His fear of speaking out is much more personal: “I’d rather my house not get firebombed,” he told me by phone.
Note that he’s not running for re-election. He’s frightened anyway. And that’s not irrational.
Sen. Greg Walker, R-Columbus, said he turned down an invitation to visit the Oval Office last week and is accusing the White House of violating federal law in its push to pressure Indiana Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional districts ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Walker, a Republican who has been an outspoken critic of early redistricting, said he was contacted by a White House official on Nov. 17 and was invited to visit President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Nov. 19, the day after the Indiana General Assembly’s Organization Day.
The state senator said he declined the invitation and believes it violates the Hatch Act, which restricts certain political activities by federal employees. Walker said he would have reported the alleged violation to federal authorities “if I thought that there was anyone of integrity in Washington that would follow through on my accusation and actually cause someone to lose their job over it.”
“I refused (the invitation), but the underling who reached out to me is trying to influence the election on my dime,” Walker told The Republic. “That individual works for me. He works for you. He’s on my payroll, he’s on your payroll, and he’s campaigning on company time. That’s a violation of the Hatch Act. He’s a federal employee. He works in the White House. But does anyone care about the rules anymore? Not that I can tell.”
[…]
The Oval Office invitation came two days before Walker became the sixth GOP senator to be targeted in a swatting incident since Indiana Senate leaders said they were rejecting Trump’s push for congressional redistricting.
Click the link to read more of his comments because it’s so refreshing to see a GOP office holder expressing what is obvious to everyone but Trump’s most sycophantic toadies. It gives you hope that
On Thursday, President Donald Trump once again found it acceptable to use the r-word, directing it towards Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, in a Truth Social post which also attacked Somali immigrants in the state.
“The seriously [r-tarded] Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both,” Trump posted.
For Republican Indiana State Senator Michael Bohacek, Trump’s most recent use of this anti-disability slur was “the final straw” in his decision not to support Indiana redistricting in support of Republicans winning more seats. On Friday, Rep. Bohacek posted the following on Facebook:
Many of you have asked my position on redistricting. I have been an unapologetic advocate for people with intellectual disabilities since the birth of my second daughter. Those of you that don’t know me or my family might not know that my daughter has Down Syndrome. This is not the first time our president has used these insulting and derogatory references and his choices of words have consequences. I will be voting NO on redistricting, perhaps he can use the next 10 months to convince voters that his policies and behavior deserve a congressional majority.
Cue the shrieking about “woke” and political correctness. But one hopes that if there is any decency left among Republican voters that they’ll cringe when they see Trump’s crudeness. (Yeah … I know.)
This is the real political violence that’s happening in our country right now. Yes, there are lone actors out there making violent political statements about various issues. There’s always been an element of that in our political culture. But this is a systematic reign of violent intimidation and terror being visited upon independent thinkers in the Republican party by other members of their party at the direction of the President of the United States. Unless more of these people stand up to it it’s going to get worse with potentially catastrophic consequences. That man who said he’s afraid of having his house firebombed wasn’t kidding.
I think that may be the grossest post he’s ever written and that’s saying something. He ‘s thisclose to just spitting out the “N” word. I thoroughly expect it to happen.
Having said that, I expect the first draft was done by Stephen Miller. Trump doesn’t know about terms like “reverse migration” or “denaturalization” and he’s not one to talk about western civilization. That’s Stephen. The “retard” stuff and the crude racism, however, is all him.
Anyway, he’s had quite a holiday weekend:
REPORTER: Officials say the suspect in the DC shooting was vetted and it came up clean
TRUMP: He went cuckoo. He went nuts. There was no vetting
REPORTER: Actually, your DOJ IG just reported that there was thorough vetting of Afghans who were brought into the US. So why do you… pic.twitter.com/0SRbdZ6RjU
Asked if he’ll attend the funeral of the slain National Guard member from West Virginia, Trump immediately pivots to talking about how popular he is in that state pic.twitter.com/ep3mk34d93
Trump: The whole thing with artificial intelligence. I’ve never liked the word artificial. I don’t know what artificial is. I think they ought to change the name.
Three powerful businessmen—two Americans and a Russian—hunched over a laptop in Miami Beach last month, ostensibly to draw up a plan to end Russia’s long and deadly war with Ukraine.
But the full scope of their project went much further, according to people familiar with the talks. They were privately charting a path to bring Russia’s $2 trillion economy in from the cold—with American businesses first in line to beat European competitors to the dividends.
At his waterfront estate, billionaire developer-turned-special envoy Steve Witkoff was hosting Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund and Vladimir Putin’s handpicked negotiator, who had largely shaped the document they were revising on the screen. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had arrived from his nearby home on an island known as the “Billionaire Bunker.”
Dmitriev was pushing a plan for U.S. companies to tap the roughly $300 billion of Russian central bank assets, frozen in Europe, for U.S.-Russian investment projects and a U.S.-led reconstruction of Ukraine. U.S. and Russian companies could join to exploit the vast mineral wealth in the Arctic. There were no limits to what two longtime adversaries could achieve, Dmitriev had argued for months: Their rival space industries, which raced one another during the Cold War, could even pursue a joint mission to Mars with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
For the Kremlin, the Miami talks were the culmination of a strategy, hatched before Trump’s inauguration, to bypass the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and convince the administration to view Russia not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity, according to Western security officials. By dangling multibillion-dollar rare-earth and energy deals, Moscow could reshape the economic map of Europe—while driving a wedge between America and its traditional allies.
Dmitriev, a Goldman Sachs alumnus, had found receptive partners in Witkoff—Trump’s longtime golfing partner—and Kushner, whose investment fund, Affinity Partners, drew billion-dollar investments from the Arab monarchies whose conflict with Israel he had helped mediate.
[…]
“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” Witkoff told The Wall Street Journal, describing at length his hopes that Russia, Ukraine and America would all become business partners. “If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”
I have no idea if Witkoff believes that drivel but it doesn’t matter. He’s going to get his, no matter what. The grift is unprecedented in world history and illustrates that we are now fully in the grip of a global oligarchy with a fascist political arm.
There’s more:
In the days after Alaska, a European intelligence agency distributed a hard-copy report in a manila envelope to some of the continent’s most senior national security officials, who were shocked by the contents: Inside were details of the commercial and economic plans the Trump administration had been pursuing with Russia, including jointly mining rare earths in the Arctic.
Witkoff has worked closely with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, former Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, has been all but frozen out of serious talks, and last week said he is leaving the government.
To understand the story behind the administration’s Russia negotiations, The Wall Street Journal spoke to dozens of officials, diplomats, and former and current intelligence officers from the U.S., Russia and Europe, and American lobbyists and investors close to the administration. The picture that emerges is a remarkable story of business leaders working outside the traditional lines of diplomacy to cement a peace agreement with business deals.
Don’t worry MAGA. I’m sure you’ll benefit from all this too. Maybe you’ll get to keep social security and Medicare, which is really generous. Kind of like Ukraine getting to keep Kiev.
Major energy investors are in on the deal, meeting with Russian state owned energy companies with quite a few Trump donors at the head of the line. Natch.
Puck’s Julia Ioffe goes into the last week or so’s chaotic 28-point plan talks, pointing out just how inept these Masters of the Universe actually are:
In Washington—at least among the bipartisan crowd that, like most Americans, still backs Ukraine—people are alarmed. One foreign-policy insider pointed out that Ukraine, which is now arguing over a 600,000-troop limit on its military, “has been forced to negotiate against itself and make preemptive concessions.”
Others are simply confused. “Has there been anything else since this morning?” said Rep. Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, given the sundry peace plan drafts in circulation. Still, Bacon told me, what he had read most recently was an improvement over the original leaked draft. “It’s disgraceful that the U.S. would submit a proposal to give up Ukrainian territory and give up Ukrainian sovereignty,” he said. “It angered me to no end. And it embarrasses me as a Republican.” Bacon viewed the original 28-point plan as “Witkoff run amok,” and was reassured that Rubio seemed to be caught off guard by it as well. “I trust him,” he said. “I don’t think he’d give away the store.”
Bacon believes that the U.S. isn’t effectively using its leverage. After all, Trump could be sending Ukraine more weapons and dialing up the sanctions on Russia, then pushing for bigger concessions from the Russians. In short, Bacon said, Trump could be telling Putin, “If you want territory, let them into NATO. If not, then leave Ukrainian territory. Tough, but that’s the choice!” And the United States could insist on it.
“I don’t want Neville Chamberlain’s name in the same sentence as the president’s in the history books,” Bacon continued. “That’s where we were headed Thursday. And I told that to the White House.” Asked how the White House responded, Bacon said, “They say it’s just negotiating.”
Speaking of Neville Chamberlain, at least he was genuinely idealistic, if cripplingly naive, about the need for peace at all costs. “Peace” is obviously just Trump’s schtick in order to get a prize he can display proudly down at Mar-a-lago with his various golf championships he “won” at his golf courses. The big score is all the money he’ll make for Javanka and the boys along with his good buddies like Lutnick and Witkoff.
Trump knows about nothing but his daddy’s real estate business and licensing deals for cheap ties and nasty perfume. The crypto stuff he’s into now is way beyond his Ken. Because of his personality defect, limited bandwidth and sociopathic tendencies he does not have the capacity to understand anything more complicated and this term his henchmen have validated his belief that he can run the entire world through this myopic little worldview. It’s unleashed this global oligarchy that is going to lead to catastrophe. Ioffe adds:
Why would that be???
I assume it could be stopped with a strong pushback from political actors, perhaps competition with other global actors, and the clear ineptitude of these people who believe they are much more intelligent and competent than they really are. But I don’t have a lot of faith that it will. This really feels like a runaway train right now and I have no idea where it ends up.
I think it might be a good idea to re-read “The March of Folly.” There’s also a movie on Netflix right now that’s pertinent, called “Munich, The Edge of War” with Jeremy Irons as Neville Chamberlain. As I said, at least he was genuinely idealistic. Trump is just a greedy moron surrounded by fascists and oligarchs. Sadly, I suspect the motives don’t much matter in the end. The people who seek world domination will use any advantage they have.
