Category Archives: current events

Total exoneration

Donald Trump has never been totally exonerated in his long life of being endlessly, unfairly persecuted, no more than he has ever been held accountable for any of his various crimes and misdeeds. He has defeated justice many times, by delay, bribe (e.g. Pam Bondi in Florida, $25,000 to her campaign if she’d drop case against his fake university) obstruction, vexatious litigation, using government resources to prosecute vendettas, making threats against judges, jurors, witnesses, calls to violence, getting others to cover up his many crimes.

The second most corrupt Attorney General of modern times, Bill Fucking Barr, lied when declaring that the Mueller report “totally exonerated” Trump when Mueller wrote, in his report:

Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment [that Trump did not act with corrupt intent and did not commit felonies]. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. . .

. . . The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of the office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.

I know we live in a post-fact age, but consider this:

Any president who leaves office, illegally taking with him with boxes of classified and top secret papers, although presumed innocent until convicted, is a criminal suspect until investigated and exonerated of wrongdoing. Especially if, like Trump, he claims he can declassify them with his mind, that he doesn’t have them, that he returned them all already, that he’s willing to show the government that he doesn’t have them, then gets one of his lawyers to lie that no more classified documents are in his possession, and so on, rope-a-doping the authorities for a year and a half. When a federal judge signs a search warrant, specifically describing the evidence of crime being sought and the exact places where they are likely hidden, that’s not an “illegal raid”. There is nothing more legal, under our law, than the execution of a search warrant adhering strictly to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.

The punchline; they find some of the classified documents the president illegally took when he was dragged kicking and screaming out of the White House. They find boxes of the documents he claimed he didn’t have, in a bathroom, in a ballroom, in his sock drawer, the ones he lied about having (or selling to Putin, Mohammed bin Bonesaw, et al).

He got away with clear violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice because he had a corrupt judge, appointed after he lost the election he claims was stolen from him, throw the case out, on the shabbiest of legal theories (tip of the cap to Clarence Thomas) after dragging her feet for over a year ruling on routine motions.

Consider Trump’s long campaign to reverse the results of the 2020 election, an election he was told, and knew, he lost (‘how did I lose to that piece of shit?’ he asked one of his lackies after losing the election). 60 baseless law suits, pressure on various state officials, a lying $50,000,000 ad campaign (payments for ‘Stop the Steal’ ads stopped on January 6, don’t you know?), slates of fake electors, threats to state officials, an illegal plan to get the DOJ to contest results in states he lost, a plot with his “friends” in Congress (“The Greenbay Sweep”) to throw the final certification into the House so he’d be declared the winner, increasing madness unto epic fury leading up to the passionate Day of Love on January 6, 2021, when he whipped up a crowd he knew to be armed to go to the Capital for a bloody riot the RNC later rebranded as “legitimate political discourse”. We all saw that legitimate political discourse unfold on TV, along with the president who sent the mob to disrupt the joint session of Congress and watched the assault on TV for over three hours, and how it led to 140 Capitol and D.C. policemen hospitalized with grievous injuries sustained during the legitimate political discourse. That he beat being prosecuted for his multi-tentacled treason and shitting on his oath to defend the Constitution, by delay, obstruction, threats, violence, etc. does not mean he was exonerated for jack shit.

Now Trump’s fully weaponized, selectively prosecuting DOJ, led by his criminal and impeachment attorneys, has fired everyone involved with either prosecution against their boss. At a far-right event the other day, Nazi consigliere Todd Blanche proudly announced this purge was complete. Fair is fair. Come to kill me, I kill you, how you like that, asshole?

Here’s one of the “righteously” fired DOJ attorneys, J.P. Cooney, with a short summary of how guilty Trump was of both of these disqualifying criminal conspiracies. Cooney is now running for Congress in Virginia.

Project 2025 — TSA abolition — p. 158

These Nazi dickheads, convened by Charles Koch and his rarefied ilk at the radical right Heritage Foundation, published a detailed 920 page blueprint for explicitly transforming the US to a fascist oligarchy — the infamous, largely implemented Project 2025.   The liberty loving billionaire mantra is privatize and corporatize, for maximum profit for the few (fuck the many) and also, remove all regulations and immunize corporate wrongdoers (protect the super wealthy at all costs!). 

Here’s the Project 2025 plan for the TSA (see link above at 191).   Compare this to their long running plan for the destruction of the US Post Office, and every other agency dedicated to providing public services or aid to those in need.

TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (TSA)


The TSA model is costly and unwisely makes TSA both the regulator and the regulated organization responsible for screening operations. As part of an effort to shrink federal bureaucracies and bring private-sector know-how to government programs, TSA is ripe for reform. The U.S. should look to the Canadian and European private models of providing aviation screening manpower to lower TSA costs while maintaining security. Until it is privatized, TSA should be treated as a national security provider, and its workforce should be deunionized immediately.

TSA could privatize the screening function by expanding the current Screening Partnership Program (SPP) to all airports. TSA would turn screening operations over to airports that would choose security contractors that meet TSA regulations and would oversee and test airports for compliance. Alternatively, it could adopt a Canadian-style system, turning over screening operations to a new government corporation that contracts screening service to private contractors… Blah blah fucking blah…

If he can do this, without Congress, (and we don’t know if he can or not, since the source is Fox News), why didn’t this painted orange turd do it a month and a half ago? Rhetorical question…

“I do believe I’ll be having the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump said. “That’s a big honor. Taking Cuba in some form. Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth.”

Congressional Republicans showing spine, 2026 edition

A criminally insane madman, raised by a psychopath father who demanded his boys be “killers” (note: Frederick Christ Trump, the president’s father, was conceived in Bavaria before his father was deported from Germany for evading military service — Fred Trump, born here, was an anchor baby) is in charge of the world’s most powerful military. He runs it like dad’s second choice for heir used to run the family business, as an absolute ruler, even if a figurehead while the old man was still running things.

If his bones tell him to do it, he won’t hesitate to commit the military might of the US to whatever his bones tell him must be done. He will act — boldly, impulsively, unaccountably — even if the Constitution places democratic limits on his actions. If 100, or 1,000, or 100,000, or any number at all, American and foreign, have to die, so be it. The cause is not important. War is war, and as Mr. Trump has already stated, it “often” involves killing. Congress has the power to stop this madness by withholding funds for further war, but Republicans have been too afraid of their mad, vengeful leader to oppose him. The other day two Republicans in Congress attempted to stand up straight, a remarkable thing to see.

Yesterday, after a classified briefing, House Armed Services Committee chair Mike Rogers (R-AL), who backed the Iran strikes, told reporters that Congress members “want to know more about what’s going on, what the options are, and why they’re being considered,” adding, “And we’re just not getting enough answers on those questions.” Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Roger Wicker (R-MS) commented: “I can see why he might have said that.”

Wow.

While Trump continues with the cute answers to serious questions, when he’s not snapping reporters’ heads off or making violent threats, (he makes the best threats), along with being adorable with the cute remarks:

. . . Trump simply began the Iran war without consultation with Congress, and administration officials have refused to appear at hearings, instead briefing Congress behind closed doors. At an annual fundraising dinner for Republican members of Congress, Trump appeared to acknowledge he was violating the Constitution. He spoke of the “tremendous success” of what he called his “military operation” in Iran. He continued: “I won’t use the word war ’cause they say if you use the word war, that’s maybe not a good thing to do. They don’t like the word war because you are supposed to get approval. So I will use the word military operation.” source for both quotes

Adorable, Donnie.

Sick and ridiculous

Indecency personified, with a nice assist from the jack-o-lantern-faced  Secretary of Treasury and a cast of despicables.  As always, Lawrence O’Donnell nails it. (Pasted wrong link, sorry, couldn’t find Bessent bit…)

It’s the incoherence, stupid

Lying is one thing, and it’s a bad thing, most of the time. Without trust, there’s not much basis for dialogue or friendship. You can lie to spare someone’s feelings, but outside of that, it’s hard to think of a good lie. The truly corrosive thing in human relations is incoherence. If someone insists on an incoherent version of events, no communication is really possible with that person. The only healthy course of action is to understand you’re dealing with someone who is incoherent and disengage.

You can never persuade an incoherent person to listen to nuance or to compromise based on shared reality because their need to believe what they believe is impervious to reason. They are incoherent because they have no emotional choice but to believe what they believe, 100%. Doubt would crush them, because, in any dispute based on what is really going on, they have no ammunition, outside of a blind, angry insistence that they’re right. Being wrong in any detail of anything is an intolerable humiliation they will never submit to. In a war with such brutal stakes, incoherence is truly their only play.

I’ve had the misfortune to know many of these motherfuckers over the course of my long life. Some have been very good companions, everything is fine with them, as long as you’re conciliatory. You can laugh with them, enjoy a good meal, go on an adventure together, until any conflict arises. In the event of any kind of disagreement, unless you drop it immediately and pretend it never happened, you get a childish insistence that what happened never happened, they don’t remember, or understand, or that you’re a liar, or that they might have been lying when you quote them as saying they might have been lying, that they never called you a liar and certainly never said they might have been lying, etc. It can make your head spin when these creatures really get going.

I knew an old lady, 98 now (same age my mother would be if she was alive), since I was her son’s best friend in fourth grade, who often insisted on things that were incoherent. She had to believe, for example, that the nightmarish marriage her son fought in for almost thirty years was completely the fault of his insane ex-wife. It was one of those conflicts, you know, where only one person is to blame for all the ugliness and the other, the innocent party, simply made the mistake of engaging with someone who was a violently enraged lunatic. There was no reason, in the old lady’s version, for the furious wife’s rage, outside of her own troubles. Her husband had absolutely nothing to do with it, even if he was passive aggressive, habitually untruthful, a provocative weasel, etc.

In the end I did the only thing possible in the face of an insistence on an insane worldview. After hearing the same insane insistence that I must forgive even people incapable of regret, empathy or apology, I stopped taking her calls and wrote her a note which I put in the mail. Her response was a classic, a close variation on the one you will always get from someone who insists incoherence by way of the last word is simply fine and dandy and there will be no further discussion of the matter. I put the perfectly polished turd of her last word in a frame, nobody I know ever phrased it more to the point:

Incoherence, when it comes from the most powerful man in the world’s most powerful country, is truly fucking horrific.

This morning, Trump’s social media account once again blamed U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for not joining his war, although NATO is a defensive alliance, designed to respond to an attack. The account posted: “Without the U.S.A., NATO IS A PAPER TIGER! They didn’t want to join the fight to stop a Nuclear Powered Iran. Now that fight is Militarily WON, with very little danger for them, they complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz, a simple military maneuver that is the single reason for the high oil prices. So easy for them to do, with so little risk. COWARDS, and we will REMEMBER! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

This afternoon, Trump told reporters: “You know, we don’t use the strait…we don’t need it. Europe needs it, Korea, Japan, China, a lot of other people, so they’ll have to get involved a little bit on that one.” He also said: “I think we’ve won, we’ve knocked out their Navy, their Air Force. We’ve knocked out their anti-aircraft. We’ve knocked out everything. We’re roaming free. From a military standpoint, all they’re doing is clogging up the strait. But from a military standpoint, they’re finished.” . . .

. . . Aware that [Trump’s impulsive] war is historically unpopular, Republicans in Congress are refusing to exercise any oversight of the Pentagon and the White House. Megan Mineiro of the New York Times reported today that Republicans don’t want to expose disapproval of the war and so are simply cheering Trump on in public. Rather than holding public hearings that would allow the American people to hear the administration’s justification for the war and plans for its execution, as Democrats demand, Republicans are permitting the administration to inform Congress as it wishes, behind closed doors.

“You don’t want to show that kind of division to your enemy when you’re in the midst of a war,” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Mineiro. “I don’t have a problem with the administration avoiding showing our enemy that they don’t have 100 percent support of the Congress.”

“They’re holding news conferences,” Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters last week, so there is no need for official hearings.  source

See, as long as FOX NEWS CHANNEL is covering the ongoing story, there’s no reason for debate in Congress. Unite behind the Commander-in-Chief or make yourself liable to the punishment for treason. Debate only aids our enemy, whoever that might be, and the Commander-in-Chief is the only one who determines who is an enemy and who deserves death, so stop being disloyal and just support our troops. So-called intellectuals, and so-called pragmatists, always insist that men of action have to explain themselves. That is the fatal liberal error of history, according to devotees of the incoherence of the will.

Assholes assume everyone is like them

If you are the kind of person who cheats at games, you assume everyone else is cheating, that’s why you have to. Apply this to any asshole behavior and you’ll find the same thing. We “wise apes” (homo sapiens) rarely do anything without feeling completely justified. How do you lie about people legally in the country being savages who eat good people’s dogs and cats? Your enemy would do the same thing, to gain an advantage, if they had the cojones, el huevos. If you rig elections, it’s only because your enemies are rigging elections, otherwise how else would they win?

Trumpism, like the ethos of our own religious white Christian slaveholders, is the perfect illustration of this principle. The slaveholders used overwhelming violence, well-armed militias and the threat of death to keep the slaves in line because if the slaves ever got free they would, according to their innocent masters, mercilessly massacre all the people who committed what they felt were atrocities against them. For that reason, the terrible vengeance an enslaved people would rightfully seek, the masters had to be extremely violent.

Old Mr. Day of Love himself told the crowd he was whipping up to peacefully storm the Capitol to gently convince reluctant members of Congress to declare him the winner of an election all evidence, and several of his closest advisers (including giant human turd Bill Barr who used the word “bullshit” to describe the baseless election fraud claim) said he’d decisively lost:

“When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do, and I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”

source

This little piece, repeated by MAGA spokespeople from time to time, reminded me of that timeless human principle, that wrongdoers always justify themselves by accusing everybody else of doing the same thing, in their position.

Let’s leave aside the fact that the Trump administration is continually pursuing baseless prosecutions, without any evidence of wrongdoing, with their weaponized, scofflaw Department of Justice, a department that also routinely defies court orders.  And not to apply logic to an unfounded and false statement, but the FBI in the lead-up to the 2020 election was under the control of Trump enabler Bill Barr’s Department of Justice.  

They had just suicided Jeffrey Epstein so he’d be nice and quiet about his long friendship with his longtime running buddy President Trump.  There was, literally, nothing to see there — both guards were gone and the cameras were out when he suddenly died — a series of regrettable fuck ups, as Barr shrugged when the threat of Epstein was gone. Who exactly would have weaponized these “untrue and sensationalist” claims?   Trump’s enemy former FBI director James Comey had been dismissed years earlier, he couldn’t have done it.  Hugo Chavez, perhaps?

We are to believe that all the heavily redacted Epstein files that have been released are all totally kosher, in accordance to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law, veto-proof, by Mr. Trump.   The names and nude photos of underaged Epsyein victims revealed to the public, oops, DOJ said they were under pressure to release files and mistakes happened (though no abusers’ names were mistakenly revealed).   The three million pages Blanche and Bondi refuse to release?  Well, the EFTA has no criminal enforcement provision, so fuck you.  The president has nothing to hide (it’s not like he’s hiding his entire educational record or anything like that).  How dare you question the most transparent administration in the history of the world?! 

In fairness to the serially immoral, criminally insane Mr. Trump, he assumes anyone would do the same, act exactly as he knows he has to act, so he’s just doing it before somebody can do it to him. If you had evidence of your own crimes, wouldn’t you do everything possible to hide them? Come on, be honest.

Do not panic, induced despair is the main tool of Nazis

Though he lied about it at the time, obviously, the Hitler book the totally non-racist Mr. Trump had on his nightstand was not Mein Kampf, as some reported, but The Collected Speeches of Adolf Hitler. Trump is not known to be much of a reader, I suspect the Hitler tome was just there to remind his wife, Ivana, who she was married to. Anyway, the German strongman had nothing on our American Dictator On Day One. Though I got lots of shit for comparing Trump and his hand-chosen cast of freakishly cynical, ambitious, amoral shapeshifters to Nazis, I get less shit about it today than a couple of years ago.

I’ve always been fond of long sentences. Why place a period to end a thought you’re still thinking when you can use a comma, you know, sometimes an em dash — and continue on indefinitely; when in doubt, why not a semicolon? Anyway, here’s one of the longest English language sentences I’ve ever seen, and it’s a beauty in its catalogue of recent inhuman cruelty and incoherence. It’s written by a self-identified human named Gene Weingarten.

In the last two weeks alone, Donald Trump has destabilized the Middle East, turned the United States into a pariah state, killed more than a hundred little girls by mistake then denied he had done it and then admitted he might have done it but he didn’t know for sure because he hadn’t bothered to look into it, caused gas prices to spike by 25%, enabled Israel to commit atrocities against Lebanon, begged for military help from our historic allies whom he had previously insulted and alienated, and then threatened to punish those same allies if they don’t help him, said many in the media were “guilty of treason” for not cheerleading his benighted, unpopular war, gloated about having castrated the fourth estate, proudly identifying his conquests by name in a social media post …

… declared the Iran war over, then not over, and then over, again, then said that we had “totally demolished” a key Iranian oil facility, but added that he might bomb it a little more “just for fun,” continued pardoning his cronies and white-collar felons whose crimes have already wiped out nearly $2 billion in victim repayment and taxpayer recovery for various frauds, said that a former U.S. president he wouldn’t name had told him he regretted not bombing Iran first, but all four living former presidents immediately denied having said it, saw his approval rating plummet like a flapping turkey dropped from a helicopter, said he might “take” Cuba, revealed that his administration was considering withholding HIV aid to Zambia “on a massive scale” unless that impoverished country gives us access to their copper, cobalt and lithium stores … and played at least four rounds of golf.

According to my research, at 286 words the passage above was the longest single sentence ever written in a Substack newsletter.

Also, just an aside, in researching that item about Trump threatening widespread death to Zambians, I discovered that The Wikipedia entry devoted exclusively to DonaldTrump’s racist views is significantly longer than the Wikipedia entry for The Korean War.

These psychopaths (self-obsessed, manipulative, always ready to lie, lacking any ability to empathize) want you to believe their power is absolute, unchallengeable, the strongest force in the universe. They control their lackeys through transactional bribes, promises of unlimited opportunities for power and corrupt self-enrichment; their followers by lying promises they have no intention of keeping, and; all others by terror.

Terror is the main weapon of fascists. If they can keep masses of citizens in constant confusion, perplexed, anxious, in fear for their physical safety, the lives of their loved ones, they have a tremendous advantage. Like all bullies, pushing an incoherent claim to the right to make others do what they want, they are also very fragile. Defiance drives them insane. It is important, in these dangerous times, not to give in to the despair they are laser focused on instilling. There is nothing at all inevitable about their transforming the United States into a permanent one party fascist police state, though that’s clearly their goal. They are fucking up massively and spectacularly, over and over, in spite of controlling all three branches of the federal government. Every election, every poll, every utterance by any of them, demonstrates the unpopularity of their cruel grift, over and over.

FCC chairman Brendan Carr can’t cancel broadcast licenses for stations that don’t kiss an insane president’s ass passionately enough. He performs that threatening dance, on Elon Musk’s social media platform, to please his enraged master. Pete Hegseth can openly announce his intention to keep committing war crimes, and kick out photographers who don’t get his makeup and lighting right, he’s still ordering war crimes to be committed. Kristi Noem can’t keep her job, no matter how incompetently she did it, once she announces Trump was in on her $220,000,000 emergency vanity project that enriched her friends and her. The same holds for every one of Trump’s fire breathing lickspittles. Things are very, very bad when creatures like Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner have more power and influence on world affairs than Congress, than anyone confirmed as a member of Trump’s cabinet.

Remember that all of these people were chosen by the Very Stable Genius for their incompetence for their respective jobs. They were hired based solely on their fawning obedience to the master’s will, their ability to gratify his need for praise, and the destruction or weaponization of every federal administrative agency they oversee. The rightwing billionaires who pay for Trump’s campaigns have long been determined to destroy the “administrative state.” They are getting what they paid for, at the moment.

Trump, like his German hero of a century ago, believes he is an infallible genius in all matters. He’s a genius at conning about 35% of the country, he has an undeniable talent for that, got to give the handsome rascal his props there. His boy, the Austrian corporal with the little mustache, shared that genius for moving crowds of his aggrieved countrymen to passionate ecstasies of rage and religious fervor. Outside of that, their outsized talent for lying and throwing tantrums terrifying to their inner circles, and their recklessness, there is little remarkable about either one. True, Mr. Hitler racked up impressive numbers in the mass murder department, but that doesn’t make him a genius. Nothing that Mr. Trump has done so far suggests he will get the chance to match those numbers, though he may well try, and with the nuclear code and his thirst for murder, who knows?

The desperation of the deteriorating Mr. Trump is evident in his obsession with the election he lost, still insisting he won. He’s now trying to force the Senate to pass a bill for him to sign into law that will disenfranchise about half of the voting population. Massive voter suppression on a national level is his only hope for avoiding what is coming for him and his party.

If not voter suppression he must again provoke his followers to commit mass violence he can blame on antifa. That or stage a mass death terrorist attack on a sanctuary city in the US. He is perfectly capable of doing both of those things, as he’s already shown on his infamous Day of Love in January 2021. It would not be wise to bet against his willingness and ability to have his lackeys organize a false flag terrorist attack, if pressed. As always for his type, he must maintain power at all costs. Otherwise, it’s… crap, it just won’t go away, will it?

Take courage, my fellow humans, from Lawrence O’Donnell

Traitors, treason, execute them all!

Look at it from President Trump’s point of view. He has been totally up front with everybody about what kind of person he is, and about 35% of the country still loves him, unconditionally. He could, literally, have his masked agents execute peaceful civilians, in their car, restrained face down on the pavement, trying to run from a masked mob of heavily armed agents, and they’d still vote for him. He could promise lower gas prices and no new wars, get over 70,000,000 votes, and then, when necessary, start to carpet bomb Iran (excursion, not war, excursion!) declare immediate victory in the war, and watch as the price of gas spiked. Then righteously vent epic fury that traitorous Europeans and Chinese will do nothing to open the strategic choke point, the Strait of Hormuz

As the president knows very well, the world is a cruel and unfair place. If you don’t get your enemies first, and keep punching, kicking and shooting them while they’re down, they will eventually surround and kill you. That’s why the Iran Excursion is existential for the president. You don’t need a business degree from Wharton to know any of this.

In his first term, he surrounded himself with unreliable people. His first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, listened to the advice of the DOJ’s Office of Ethics (ethics, for fuck’s sake!), because he’d lied, in the Senate, about his contacts with Russia. Ethics (fucking ETHICS!) told Sessions his involvement in investigating Trump’s ties with Putin had a clear appearance of impropriety — and like a coward he recused himself and refused to un-recuse. By stepping away from the investigation, Sessions paved the way for the traitorous Robert Mueller, who then accused Trump, basically, of ten counts of obstruction of justice, while also totally exonerating him from the Russia Hoax. After his total exoneration Trump publicly humiliated Sessions, and later destroyed what was left of his political career. He had other disloyal, traitorous, selectively “ethical” assholes in his first administration, and they leaked terrible lies about him. Lessons learned, mistakes he would not repeat next time.

An oath of personal loyalty to the president, demonstrated by an ability to angrily lie publicly in any situation, (along with iron-clad nondisclosure agreements), would ensure Trump’s second administration would run much smoother than the first. With Kristi Noem, a posing pinhead, in charge of Homeland Security (along with FEMA and the TSA), Pete ‘no quarter, no mercy’ Hegseth, a misogynistic alcoholic sadist, in charge of the Department of WAR, Kashyap Pramod Patel, enraged author of a children’s book praising a Godlike Trump, leading the FBI, and a pliant, cherub-faced white Christian fascist as Speaker of the House — what could go wrong in squashing protests, intimidating enemies foreign and domestic, dominating the legislative branch, sodomizing the Constitution, and so on? Appoint your criminal and impeachment lawyers to head the Department of Justice and who can touch you? Only the fucking media, with their constant lies and fake news. That’s where loyalist Brendan Carr, partisan head of the FCC, comes in.

The New York Times, often named by name as among the worst of the worst by the president (along with the lickspittle Bezos-owned Washington Post, not currently licking quite enough spittle), reported on the attack on mass media with uncharacteristic urgency, and fewer qualifiers than usual. The gist is that Brendan Carr is openly threatening broadcasters with the loss of their licenses, for failure to serve the public good, if they report lies about the president’s perfect, already historically successful, meticulously planned and war gamed non-war excursion in Iran. Carr is equally outraged about the lie that Biden “won” in 2020, but that’s another story. The Times (from link above):

The goal seems to be pressuring journalists to back off critical coverage of the war effort, or to at least encourage the public to second-guess reporting that runs counter to the administration’s preferred narrative. And the effort has gone well beyond words.

Mr. Trump’s top media regulator, Brendan Carr of the Federal Communications Commission, issued an explicit warning to broadcast television networks on social media, writing that “hoaxes and news distortions” could lead to the revocation of licenses for local stations, a threat that Mr. Trump said he was “so thrilled to see.”

Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, doing what she does so well:

[She] said in a statement on Monday: “The media has been undeniably biased and negative in its coverage of President Trump and Operation Epic Fury. Anybody with eyes and ears can see this.”  

So true, so fucking true, Karoline, it brings tears to the eyes, and also to the ears. Anybody with eyes and ears can see this!

Another [Trump] post blamed Iranian AI and disinformation for stories that he said are “FAKE and, in a certain way, you can say those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information.” He reiterated support for Carr’s attack on the media and insisted he won the presidential election “IN A LANDSLIDE.” source

Obviously.

Rupert Murdoch: devoted public servant

Brian Tyler Cohen, with a nationwide chorus of fair and balanced analysis of the spike in gasoline prices, “short term pain for long term gain.” You betcha.