CSotD: Reluctant Singer but Eager Lobbyists
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Deering quotes a familiar piece of doggerel, enlivening it with looks of consternation that end in panic, which well replicates how Dear Leader has gone from shrugging off the Epstein issue into a shotgun flurry of bizarre distractions, the only material result having been that Coke is making their periodic “throwback” releases of sugared versions a permanent option.
People who drink Coke at breakfast may give him credit for addressing a kitchen-table issue, but most people still seem to wonder what is in the Epstein files that makes him break his promise to release them.
Fell offers a less generous take, showing the dead friend as a weight dragging Trump down as he frantically tries to get a breath of air.
Various observers have questioned the notion that this might be the end of Trump’s lucky streak, and, in a conversation at Charlie Sykes’ Substack, Sykes and Jim Acosta found they had each banned the phrase “walls closing in” because it has proven false so often.
Trump has a history of escaping certain doom that may not be respected but certainly has to be factored in.
Alcaraz calls Epstein the kryptonite to Trump’s Superman, not only showing Dear Leader in peril but …
… drawing him as less buff than in the AI version released by the White House, which isn’t the nuttiest thing the executive branch has thrown up as chaff to distract the booboisie.
For instance, Dear Leader has proposed renaming the opera house at the Kennedy Center after a woman nobody has heard sing and who not many people have seen in Washington of late.
Ohman borrows the silly idea to promote the much-heralded appearance of a potential songbird, albeit one who declined to sing the last time she appeared before an audience.
Espinoza goes a little overboard, since Maxwell was only offered conditional — not full — immunity, which is fairly standard in these matters. The other offers we can’t be sure of, but they were certainly hanging overhead if not made directly.
Maxwell reportedly answered all the questions she was asked, though Broelman suggests that she may not have delivered the direct blow audiences expected.
She was being questioned, let’s remember, by Donald Trump’s defense attorney, who now works for the Justice Department, which has been converted from a non-partisan law-enforcement agency into a mechanism for advancing Dear Leader’s interests.
On social media, former FBI agent and past associate dean of Yale Law School Asha Rangappa expressed shock at the haphazard way the interview was set up:
A pretty basic FBI rule of thumb is to always go into an interview knowing more than they think you know. No way Blanche digested the whole Epstein/Maxwell case. Original prosecutor fired. No FBI agents. Victims left out. How did he know how to test her credibility? What follow up questions to ask?
Her posting was seconded by Kristy Parker, who is also no newcomer to the trade:
I was a federal prosecutor for 15 years and never interviewed a witness without an agent present. It wasn’t allowed. Among other things, the agents are responsible for memorializing the interview and are themselves the witnesses to how the interview was conducted and what was said.
So, Broelman may get the official report right, but anyone who wants more literal truth had better be prepared to do more digging. And if Dear Leader’s attorney and a convicted perjurer really were in there alone without witnesses or recordings, there may not be any fertile ground to dig in.
Now Congress wants to hear from Maxwell. I’d suggest they also invite the victims (remember them?) to testify.
Meanwhile, back at the Fed
Ramirez decries Trump’s threats to fire Fed Chairman Jerome Powell as a threat to the important independence of the Federal Reserve, which is intended as a sort of sea-anchor to keep the economy from drifting at the pleasure of either the president or Congress.
Granlund offers an explanation for why there has been tension between Dear Leader and the Fed, which would start with the obvious, transparent fact that the president has no idea in the world what a “trade deficit” is or how tariffs even work, much less their potential impact.
BTW, I wouldn’t solicit an illegal act, but I am curious about how somebody could hack into Columbia’s system and pull out an application from a kid who wasn’t even admitted, but nobody has ever gotten into Wharton’s files to reveal the grades of their most famous graduate.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Benson is confident about Trumpenomics, stating that the cuts were minor and that Democrats are complaining about nothing when they decry low-income children being denied food and millions of people losing their medical coverage.
Auchter, meanwhile, points out the minor expense involved in helping fund public broadcasting. He works for Michigan Public, so funding cuts could cost him his job, but, as someone who has lived in rural America most of my life, I know the crucial role NPR plays in potential news deserts around the nation.
Mostly I know that we are spending as much fixing up Trump’s “free” airplane from Qatar as it would cost to continue funding public broadcasting, or to continue sending vaccines to developing nations, or to feed our own poor.
And I’m old enough to have heard Republicans scream for decades about deficits, only to see them flood the country with red ink as soon as they are back in power.
Overall, I prefer tax-and-spend to not-tax-but-spend-anyway.
Another sudden burst from Dear Leader has been a resurgence of his attacks on wind power, which apparently started with his seeing a windfarm from the golf course that he flew to Scotland to promote at taxpayer expense.
Ramirez joins in the chorus, apparently unaware that wind turbines are sited on places chosen for a dependable, relatively constant wind flow.
For my part, I’m glad the tobacco industry didn’t have the grip on Washington in the 1960s that the petroleum industry has on it now. It seems Citizens United ushered in a political cancer to replace the medical one we’d fought.
Who better to feature on the results?
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