Dear Everybody:
The big news today is that the Republicans have once again proved themselves to be a disgraceful bunch of cowards and perverts and pedophile protectors.
First, after acting like they were actually going to do something, Cornyn and Tillis both caved and voted yes on Todd Blanche’s confirmation as Attorney General:
–This is one of those days you just want to bang your head against the wall listening to these Republicans sell our democracy down the river before our very eyes.
–Cornyn said, when asked about how he’d just betrayed the Epstein victims, “That’s one of those things that can’t be remedied by a no vote.” (No, but it sure as hell isn’t helped by a yes vote.)
–Chairman Chuck Grassley: “The Justice department has thrived under (Blanche’s) leadership.”
–Tom Tillis admitted that Trump is weaponizing the DOJ. “If you want to talk about weaponization, take a look at the Biden administration. Take a look at the Obama administration. The bottom line is nobody is clean here. Maybe it’s a little bit more intense in this administration than the last one…I’m going to support Mr. Blanche’s nomination.”
–Kristy Greenberg: “Stop the false equivalencies. No other President sued his own government to secure immunity for himself and his family, created a fund to reward cop beaters, and demanded prosecution of his political enemies. Trump’s weaponization of the DOJ is unprecedented, and you just endorsed it.”
–Kevin M. Kruse: “At this point, Thom Tillis has nothing left to lose but his principles, so he made sure to toss them overboard, too.”
–Republican statement of the day, and the one that should be in every Democratic ad out there this fall, from Cornyn: “There’s nothing we could do to rein in the president.”
–Amanda Carpenter: “Wow. If this isn’t the mentality of Trump’s party in a sound bite, I don’t know what is.”
–And anyway, their objections were never that Todd Blanche was acting as Trump’s personal attorney, that he was trying to cover up the Epstein files, that he was protecting the ICE agents who killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the others, or that he was filing cases against Trump’s enemies, or that he was letting Trump commit fraud right and left and rob the country blind. They were only concerned about the January 6 slush fund–and not even about the immunity for Trump part of the deal.
–Adam Schiff on the vote on Todd Blanche: “This is someone who has violated his code of ethics blatantly misled this committee, supported establishment of a fund for cop beaters, covered up documents implicating the President in the Epstein files, and used the DOJ to enrich the President. Is this who we’re prepared to confirm as AG? It appears so.”
–Corey Booker: “Ghislaine Maxwell is sitting in the loosest possible confinement after giving no information that helped us get one more investigation started and has been silent, and the man responsible for that we’re about to make the Attorney General of the United States. This is farcical.”
–Sheldon Whitehouse: “Today is a sad and embarrassing day for this committee as it looks like on a party-line vote we are going to advance out of this committee probably the most discredited person ever to seek the office of Attorney General.”
–Elizabeth Spiers: “There is no red line anywhere for Republicans. Pedophiles? Rapists? Criminal fraud? All fine.”
–His nomination has now passed out of committee to the floor, where he’ll almost certainly be confirmed.
Next, Max Miller (scalded wife and broke 2-year-old daughter’s shoulder) is not only refusing to step down, but is demanding the Congress investigate him so he can prove his innocence. (Be careful what you wish for.)
–Meanwhile, there have been new developments making things worse. First, his wife has released photographs of a syringe and needle by his bed and a picture of him with a large bag of gummies. (He denied having a drug problem.) Second, in his release of evidence yesterday, he released several photos of his two-year-old daughter, at least one of which showed her nude, and now the wife’s lawyer is charging possession of child sexual abuse material. His defense is that her private parts weren’t showing and that, anyway, he took the pictures down. Problem is 204,000 people had viewed the photos before they were taken down.
–More Senate Republicans joined the call to push Miller out. Senator Roger Marshall: “He should resign. He should quit.” Senator Rick Scott: “You shouldn’t be in office and everyone should be held accountable.”
–Miller talked to Trump on the phone and pushed back against Trump’s polling that showed him losing his re-election race. Miller said Trump told him, “Things aren’t looking good. Re-election would be tough.” He said he had a poll with no detail, and I pushed back with our poll that has us winning by 9 points with our message out there. He kept on reiterating, ‘It’s going to be tough and it’s going to be a really hard one for you.’” He then claimed Trump was supportive of him over the phone.
–Trump: “I know Max, he’s a good person. And I’m going to let the families figure that out…it’s only accusations.”
–Once Trump spoke, the Republicans all fell in line.GOP Senator Husted: “Let’s focus on letting them sort this out on a family level.” GOP Rep Patronis: “No, I agree with the president. This is a family fight. Unfortunately, divorces are messy. There are two sides to every story.”
–In karma news, Trump is the one who put Miller in Congress in the first place, encouraging him to challenge Rep Anthony Gonzales after Gonzales voted to impeach Trump for his role in the J6 insurrection.
Third, Larry Ellison, who’s trying to buy Paramount and take over CNN, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in which he assured everyone he won’t do what he already did to CBS and 60 MINUTES. Honest:
–He promised he would not “put a finger on the scale” if he took over CNN. “Our journalists will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve–not to any party or cause. Those were founding principles for both CNN and CBS News, for legends like Ted Turner and Edward R. Turner (who are both spinning in their graves) and it is exactly that kind of independence that has always fueled the greatness of 60 MINUTES.”
–He didn’t address what he’d done to CBS or 60 MINUTES. (You may have forgotten some of the stuff, so let me refresh your memory: He put Bari Weiss, who had NO experience with network news, but who was a right-wing podcaster, in charge of the whole shebang, and she promptly fired every good journalist they had. She yanked a major piece on the torture prisons of El Salvador and another on Trump’s money-laundering scandal. And she just hired Ross Douthat, another right-winger.
–In November Ellison made clear to Trump that massive changes at CNN would take place if he was allowed to buy the network. He said he’d start by getting rid of Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, who Trump hates.
–Sam P: “Dude, we’re not buying it. We’ve seen what you done with CBS News. No one is buying your ‘journalistic independence’ line. This seems panicky from Ellison. Despite his blustering about prevailing in the state Attorney General’s lawsuit, this kind of thing seems to be an admission that maybe the AG’s case is stronger than he let on.”
–Commedia del Arty: “I mean, it’s just lies all the time, about everything. Do they think anyone believes them anymore?”
–Middle Pillar: “BS, just BS…If Ellison gets his hands on CNN, it will go the same way as CBS News–down the drain. Kaitlin Collins would be the first one fired.”
–The Banana_Splitz: “He would not ‘put a finger on the scale’ if he took control of CNN. Of course he wouldn’t. He’d smash it with a hammer like he did to 60 MINUTES.”
Fourth, Jeanine Pirro is now blaming a staffer for the collapse of the Reflecting Pool case:
–3 other misdemeanor cases of Reflecting Pool vandalism have been dropped.
–Jeanine Pirro was seen leaving the White House with a white cardboard box, and people thought she’d cleaned out her desk, but it turns out it was a box full of evidence about why she’d dropped the case. Trump, however, was not impressed with any of it.
–Pirro is now blaming a career staffer, saying they dropped the prosecution without telling her.
–Legal analyst Elie Honig: “There is no way on this earth, having been one of those career officials, that when your US Attorney calls a press conference like that, that’s covered on national news, you would then go and dismiss the case without looping in the US Attorney. That’s a fireable offense. So I do not buy that it was done without her knowledge for one second.” (I don’t know why he’s so surprised. Republicans never take responsibility for ANYTHING.)
–The Geogre: “Pirro and her office ran like curs once they realized the public might hear what went down before the grand jury.”
In Epstein/Trump news:
–Todd Blanche just turned over the unredacted documents Katie Phang had asked for in her lawsuit along with his rationales for why he redacted things. They’re very disturbing. Victims’ names are supposed to be redacted, but now Blanche has come up with a whole new definition of “victim” as anyone who “self-identifies as a victim.”
–There are certainly women who were victimized by Epstein, and then, once they were under his control, forced to recruit other girls and paid for that, and they would definitely still qualify as victims, but people are worried that Blanche is expanding the term “victim” much farther.
–This would include the people who worked for Epstein, like Ghislaine Maxwell, or his long-time secretary who made all the flight reservations for the girls and paid them for recruiting new girls, etc. But it could also conceivably include men who consider themselves victims because they didn’t realize Epstein was inviting them over to have sex with underage girls or otherwise entangling them in his trafficking enterprise so he could blackmail them.
–Katie Phang: “It creates a very slippery slope in terms of how we are now defining victims. It’s never easy to identify a victim, especially in a trafficking situation. My concern is the expansive nature that Blanche is taking is that he’s going to use that as an excuse to not investigate, as an excuse not to prosecute.”
–Chauncey Gardiner: “Brilliant! Why hasn’t any criminal thought of this simple reclassification scheme in the past? John Dilliger could have called himself a victim of bank robbery and Charles Mansion could have called himself a victim of a murderous cult. Trump can now claim he was sexually assaulted by underage girls, the Russians forced him to take Putin’s dirty money, those classified documents illegally invaded his bathroom, and Blanche will say that any disclosure of his ID would unfairly re-victimize him.”
In Trump dementia/madness news:
–Trump held another Q-and-A session with reporters this week and said a whole bunch of unhinged stuff which the press corps continued to respond to as if it made sense.
–Trump (talking about the proof of vandalism of the Reflecting Pool): “We have photographs, or tapes–like moving cameras, right?”
–Also on the Reflecting Pool: “There’s a tape that’s out there that I posted on Truth where you have people leaning over the side. The weakest part ’cause of the flexibility. You know it moves. It’s very complicated. it moves. And the softest part has to be flexible. And that’s the stuff you can cut. We have photographs or tapes–like moving cameras, right?–where people are on the side cutting it with a box knife.”
–Joe is Me: “If he truly had a video showing someone cutting the liner, you can rest assured that Fox News would be showing it on a loop.”
–Mary Carol: “When the blue lining/sealant was being applied, he told the world even a machete/strong knife could not cut through it.”
–Trump on Washington, DC: “This was the crime capital, frankly, of the world. It was the most unsafe capital of any country anywhere in the world.”
–Also on DC: “Would I federalize DC? I’m allowed to do that.”
–Amy: “So cool that whenever someone asks the president, ‘Did you eat the Lindbergh baby?’ he’s like, ‘No, but I’d be allowed to. I have the right to. I might do it later.’”
–Trump: “Any country with windmills is a loser.”
–Trump: “I know Europe better than anybody. Better than the people who run it.”
–He yelled at assorted reporters (not all women this time) telling one who asked if he was going to fire Jeanine Pirro: “You’re fake news. Don’t ever talk again. You’re fake news. One of the worst in the business. Fortunately, no one watches you!” and a reporter from MS Now: “What a terrible show that is. They have the worst people on that show.” (Note: It’s a network with LOTS of shows.)
–But all he was really interested in was his building projects. He went on and on about the ballroom and the drone port and Lafayette Park, which he has now turned his sights on: “Now we have a big decision to make. Do we take the pavers that are red–the red, brick pavers–and do we change them into a granite?” (Note: When he did this with the walkway at the White House, it ended up costing millions.)
–He didn’t look good today. His tie was wrinkled, and so was his shirt, and his hair was mussed.
–Prof Antifa: “He’s fucking crashing out.”
–Atticus Finch (of Georgia): “Dude is totally insane.”
In historical news:
–Today in 1920, the score of the baseball game was 6 to 5. The Cleveland Indians were trailing the New York Yankees by one at the top of the ninth inning with two outs–they were one out away from disaster and down to their last chance. They took it, scoring 9 runs and tying an American League record for most runs with two outs. They beat the Yankees 14 to 6. (Moral: “It ain’t over till it’s over.” Keep that in mind on days like this.)
In other news:
–Yangsan, South Korea, just recorded 108.5 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest temperature recorded anywhere in that country since 1904, on the fourth day of a terrible heat wave. The government has given orders to the people to stop all outdoor activity and stay inside. It has warned that all indoor spaces without air conditioning are dangerous.
–Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025 and the person behind DOGE and the gutting of the federal government, is leaving the CFPB. No doubt Trump will get somebody worse, but at least Vought will be gone.
–The European league of FIFA has warned Infantino and the other FIFA leadership that they are actively considering legal action, arbitration, and/or regulatory complaints arising out of and connected to FIFA’s plan to sell off the World Cup to Jared Kushner’s brother. They said they’ve lost all faith in Infantino. (Everything Trump touches dies.)
In good news:
–After nearly a decade, Johnson and Johnson will FINALLY pay $5.5 billion dollars to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging its baby powder and other talc products caused ovarian cancer.
–A new analysis of Black voters in the South indicates that Republican attempts to dilute their political power is driving them to the polls in larger numbers and shifting their counties farther left.
–In Atlanta, Georgia, a group of Black fathers and their kids called The Library Dads meets regularly. It was founded several years ago by Corey Arnold, who started taking his four-month-old to the library and then reached out to other fathers who wanted to encourage their kids to read and reverse the literacy crisis. The group is now huge. It meets once a month for group storytime, one-on-one reading time, and other “bonding with books” activities.
Best comment of the day, from Lawrence O’Donnell: “It is time to ask what has become tragically obvious: the Trump administration is essentially acting as a massive criminal enterprise. It lies, steals, extorts, and murders–all while decked in the awesome authority of the state. It is on a crime spree that puts Al Capone to shame.’
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis
