Dear Everybody:
The big news today is that GOP Rep Thomas Massie introduced articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth today:
–Massie said Hegseth abused the power of his office through his actions in the Iran War and “knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders to initiate war against a foreign nation. Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth, by such conduct has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with his duties and the rule of law.”
–Also Massie: “I do have a message for the troops. This secretary has used our troops to go seize oil for large corporations. You shouldn’t be used like that. You signed up to pledge your life for this country, if need be, and that obligation shouldn’t be diminished to stealing oil for big corporations.”
–Thomas Massie: “I hope Hegseth addresses the 8 articles of impeachment and doesn’t get up and misquote the Bible in Quentin Tarantino fashion and do some pull-ups and call everybody fat and gay. I may have just given you half his speech, I don’t know.”
–Trump was asked if he would stand by Hegseth and he said, “Yeah, I’ll stand by him. He won two wars. Massie is a lower. Just like you’re a loser at CNN.” (Yup, he said “lower.”)
–Also Trump: “He’s won the war in Iran but he’s certainly winning the war.”
–A vote to impeach will have to happen by Wednesday. There will likely be enough votes to impeach in the House, but it’s not known whether there will be enough votes in the Senate to convict Hegseth and remove him from office.
The other big news is all the truly bizarro stuff Trump said in an interview with SIXTY MINUTES last night:
–Even though CBS is now owned body and soul by David Ellison/Trump and even though they assigned the interview to right-winger Ross Douthat and he did his best to only ask softball questions, it went VERY badly for Trump.
–Of the war in Iran, Trump said he hasn’t lost any soldiers in Iran. “Again, we haven’t lost anybody. No soldiers.” (Note: We have lost at least 23 soldiers and many people feel the Pentagon is concealing the actual number.)
–Quentin Ocama: “Wildly disrespectful of the service members who have been killed or injured in this clusterfuck of a conflict.”
–Of the war in Ukraine, Trump said: “They’re going to end up with a little different shaped Ukraine.”
–Trump claimed to know nothing at all about World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm that is owned almost entirely by him and his family.”
–Douthat, who is a Catholic, asked Trump a bunch of religious questions, asking what would happen after he died. Trump said, “I hope I’m missed,” and Douthat asked, “But what do you think will happen to YOU?” Trump: “Well, I’m a religious person, so in theory I go to heaven. I don’t want to go to hell.” But when Douthat asked him if, before the Seat of Judgment, he could forgive his enemies, he said flatly no, that he will always hate his enemies. (One of the truest things he’s ever said.)
–Possibly the worst exchange was this one: Ross Douthat: “There’s a Forbes story that said your net worth, maybe it’s changed for the stock market recently, but your net worth went up by $3 billion dollars since you returned.” Trump: “So did everyone’s.” Douthat: “My net worth did not go up by $3 billion dollars.” Trump: “You should’ve bought stock.”
–Trump then added, “I have a lot of money. Far more than I even thought I’d have.”
–merbevans: “I have stock. My income did not go up $3 billion. Maybe if I’d had insider information.”
–Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li: “I think contributing to the general feeling of powerlessness and rage in America today is the extent to which our elites engage in such flagrant, grotesque, even performative contempt for the rest of America.”
–the grumpy lawyer: “If Marie Antoinette was a man.
–Douthat’s final question to Trump was, “Most presidents are remembered with a single line: He freed the slaves, he ended the Cold War. 100 years from now, while you’re working out your situation in purgatory, what is the line that your presidency is remembered with?” Trump: That I made America great again.” Douthat: “I guess I asked for that.”
–Josh Marshall: “Just collapsing on every front now.”
One of the things Trump said in the interview was that he was only kidding about Dana White:
–Trump: “Dana loves the idea…of course, I was only kidding, but Dana is actually coming tomorrow.”
–Today Trump held a bizarre press conference with Dana White, who praised Trump to the sky, calling him “the toughest, most resilient human being that I’ve ever met in my entire life.”
–Trump said White would be great for the job because he has “done a lot of press promoting fights.”
–Caitlin Collins to Dana White: “Did you tell the president ‘no’ to the press secretary job?” Dana White: “I don’t tell the president ‘no’ to anything. no, I didn’t say no.”
–Trump glitched really badly at the press conference, saying, saying, “We had the worst recrudement numbers, we have the highest recroot…the recooot…”
–Aaron Rupar: “YIKES! Trump’s brain is shorting out.”
–At the end of the press conference, Trump asked White, “So let me ask you the big question, Dana, would you like to be press secretary of the United States of America…or do you just want to stay with this ridiculous UFC?” Dana White said, no, “I do not want to be in politics, sir.”
–Civil Disorder: “Okay, now I’m certain the theory about the other Dana White over at DOD is true.”
–Petal Lu: “I think Trump had him there to cover his ass because he made a mistake. Announced the wrong Dana White.”
–PRO5SP3CTOR: “Crazy times. Dragging out some weirdo from professional wrestling to turn down a fake job offer to try and save a senile man the embarrassment of his idiotic mistake.”
–ddll: “It’s just full WWE at this point.”
Trump is now saying the election was rigged:
–Trump posted on Truth Social: “Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest? How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting drops were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote. It’s all about the Machines, which are far more important than the voter!” (Note: Actually, the polls were dead on.)
–Diogenes: “‘How could the polls be so wrong?’ Except they weren’t…they predicted Democrats to win and they did. Another lie from the president.”
–CNN: “This post just goes back to what President Trump likes to do, which is call into question, say that elections are rigged, and try to distract away from the fact that this was a message. This was a referendum.”
–Trump this afternoon: “I think the numbers were terrible in terms of those early votes. You look at all those early votes.”
–gg: “Early votes are bad, late votes are bad, gotta hit that sweet vote spot timewise.”
–Megyn Kelly: Just stop.”
–Laura Loomer, Kari Lake, and Katie Miller (the wife of Trump’s new Chief of Staff) immediately said they thought the election was rigged, too.
Lauren Boebert is also saying her election is rigged:
–CNN reported this afternoon that Boebert is now projected to lose her election. With an estimated 98% of the votes counted, Laubacher led 48.8% to Boebert’s 47.9%, and there aren’t enough ballots left for her to catch up, so Laubacher has officially flipped the seat blue. (Hurray!)
–muellershewrote: “It’s official!! Boebert lost!”
–Boebert is claiming the election was rigged and has demanded a hand recount.
–Borowitz Report: “Boebert demands votes be recounted manually…’This recount should not be conducted in secrecy,’ Boebert said. ‘What is needed is a hand job with plenty of people around to watch.’”
In midterms news:
–The new Democratic senators are hiring lawyers for the investigations they plan to conduct. They are particularly looking for lawyers who were fired by the DOJ and by DOGE.
–One of the possible outcomes of the midterms is that the electoral college might finally be abolished, not through an amendment to the Constitution, which is nearly impossible, but through an initiative called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which states would pledge to assign their electoral votes to whichever candidate won the national popular vote. 19 states have already signed it, and there may now be enough blue states to get the rest of the necessary votes.
–Another, more immediate outcome, is that Katie Miller says she is ending her podcast now that her husband Stephen is Trump’s Chief of Staff. She is, however, continuing to tweet and post on Truth Social.
And in midterms analysis:
–Andrew Sullivan, to Trump: “You probably haven’t fully absorbed it yet, as you wander aimlessly through the wreckage of your glorious new East Wing and lash out at Susie Wiles as therapy, but you were just fired by the American people. Yep. Fired.”
–Andy McCarthy: “Republicans got their clocks cleaned this week because they made Trump the center of their universe, as if Congress did not exist other than as a presidential pom-pom squad. Unleashed, Trump has governed like a lunatic.”
–Republican David French: “It’s as if an entire political movement watched BACK TO THE FUTURE and decided that Biff Tanner was the hero. Or they watched A CHRISTMAS STORY and cheered for Scott Farkus, the kid who terrorizes Ralphie on his way to school.”
In Rats Fleeing the Sinking Ship news:
–Brett Schumate,, the assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Civil Division has resigned. He was the person in charge of the deportation flights.
The Republicans are already plotting their strategy for the Presidential election in 2028:
–Fox showed the photos of their most likely candidates. They are JD Vance, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Pete Hegseth, and Glenn Youngkin.
–Tucker Carlson has also hinted he’s running.
–crystaline: “Youngkin, who? DeSatan is about as popular as a venereal disease and Cancun Cruz is even less likeable. Kegsbreath has all the charisma of a wet dis-rag, nobody likes JD Dunce, and Rubio is a weak little pipsqueak of a man, so I’d say our chances are good at beating any of them.
–amandasmildtakes; “I’m kinda hyped for 2028 now. We have a benchful of potential stars. They have DeSantis and Vance (who is already running from Trump) and Tucker Fucking Carlson.”
–My take: This list made me feel even more optimistic about our chances in 2028. And Stephen Miller’s appointment made me feel more optimistic.
–(Note: There is no map in which Republicans can win the Presidency without Texas, and now Texas is completely run by Democrats. The only statewide Republican official left is Senator Ted Cruz.)
In The Grift Goes On news:
–Nvidia’s stock is tumbling now that it’s been revealed that its CEO Stephen Huang had an extramarital affair with a Chinese spy.
–Trump said he spoke to Jensen Huang today and “he said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy. And I really believe him.”
–Trump: “He is an honorable man,” and announced he is taking him to China for talks next week.
–Emyi Mae: “Trump’s determination of how honorable you are is directly connected to how much money you have given him.”
In They’re all Perverts news:
–Comedian and actor Russell Brand has just been sentenced to 10 to 12 years in prison in the UK for sexual assault and rape.
–Only a month ago he appeared at a Make America Healthy event with JD Vance, RFK, Jr., and Dr. Oz, having his picture taken with all of them and making a speech. He began it with a joke about “consent.”
–Elon Musk: “I support Russell Brand. That man is not evil.”
In historical news:
–Today in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down in one of the weirdest stories you’ll ever hear. East and West Germany had been partitioned off after World War II with a cement wall between them, and hundreds of East Germans had been shot trying to climb over the wall and escape in the years since.
–On November 9th, the Russian government (under tremendous pressure) had decided to loosen the requirements for people who wanted to leave. The plan was to loosen the requirements for getting a visa to leave East Germany, but an East German bureaucrat, Gunter Schabowski, got confused somehow and said, on air and in front of reporters, that visas would be freely granted to those wanting to travel outside East Germany or leave. The astonished reporters asked, “When does this take effect?” and Gunter hemmed and hawed and finally said, “Immediately,” whereupon hundreds of East Germans mobbed the border checkpoints, demanding to be let through.
–The border guards had no idea what was going on, but had no authority to shoot hundreds of people (especially when West Germans had raced to the gates to greet their loved ones) so thy opened the gates and people began pouring through. That wasn’t fast enough, though, so they also began climbing the wall and dancing on top of it as joyful East Berliners poured through the gates and hugged the relatives and friends they’d been separated from for so long.
–Others began tearing down the wall with jackhammers, crowbars, giant ropes, bulldozers, anything they could get their hands on, and gouging great holes in it. People grabbed pieces of it as souvenirs, and by the time the authorities came to formally tear it down weeks later, there was hardly anything left of it. Or of the Soviet Union.
–zenbasonn: “That was one of the most glorious nights. I remember Peter Jennings just in awe as the wall came down. One of those times when you feel like Sam in LORD OF THE RINGS: ‘That there is good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.’ The hope that night.”
–Washington Post: “One of the most momentous events of the past century was, in fact, an accident, a semi-comical and bureaucratic mistake that owes as much to the Western media as to the tides of history.”
In other news:
–Governor Newsom spared everyone on death row in California, commuting their sentences to life in prison without parole.
–Trump is back in court, trying to get his conviction on 34 counts of business fraud overturned.
–Trump Media, Trump’s company which owns Truth Social, is now under $5.00 a share.
In good news:
–The new cover of TIME Magazine has a photo of Trump with an “I Voted” sticker over his mouth.
–Recent rains in southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico have flowed into the Colorado River and raised Lake Powell’s level by 20 feet.
–The DOJ dropped their appeals of two court rulings that struck down the Trump administrations’ restrictions on the student loan forgiveness program for public servants.
Best comeback of the day: Ann Coulter declared “Kansas is dead to me.” Ken Reid: “Come on, Ann, you’ve hated Kansas since it dropped a house on your sister.”
Best comment of the day, from Maureen Dowd: “It was the Norma Desmond crash-out of all crash-outs for Trump.”
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis
