Dear Everybody:
The big news today was Trump’s continuing to pursue his press ban in spite of the judge’s ruling:
–Yesterday was an up-and-down day, with CNN, MS NOW, and Politico being refused entry when they showed up at the White House in the morning, then allowed in a few minutes before a hearing the news outlets had asked for, then refused entry to the state dinner last night.
–CNN was told to talk to Stephen Cheung.
–Trump then lied and said CNN and MSNOW refused to cover Xi’s morning arrival at the White House: “The event was major. Actually made for TV but because they’re Fake News, and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’ they refused to be there.” (Nice. Keep them out and then blame them for not covering it.)
–Trump also was upset that there were no cameras for the Xi events. Trump: “Where are the cameras?”
–This morning CNN was supposed to do pool coverage, but Trump refused to allow them on board Air Force One for his trip to a football game, so there was no official pool coverage, since the other legitimate news outlets are all supporting the boycott.
–Trump gave pool privileges instead to Real America’s Voice News, a right-wing news outlet.
–(Note: One of the things this whole mess has made clear is that none of these right-wing outlets know how to do video OR audio. The cameras are shaky, there’s tons of background news, and Trump is frequently off to the side of the frame or completely out of it. It’s obvious they’re using the big news outlets’ film on their broadcasts.)
–In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed as an example of “fake news” that the story that GOP candidate Byron Donalds had removed all references to Trump from his campaign website. (Donalds, in fact, had done just that.)
–Trump left the game at halftime.
–The biggest news out of the game was that 1) Trump got roundly booed, and 2) Natalie Harp, wearing a very skimpy skirt (someone asked if she was one of the cheerleaders), sat next to Trump and Senator Hagerty and showed them positive news stories on her laptop during the game.
And speaking of Natalie Harp:
–People are getting more and more concerned about Natalie Harp and her influence on Trump after he instituted his ban on the press. She had apparently shown him clips of negative coverage by the three news outlets right before he declared the ban.
–The Washingtonian did an interview (sort of) with Natalie Harp. I say sort of because she sent in written answers to questions she was sent, but even then her answers were pretty scary.
Harp: “Trump has the rare gift of seeing something in people that perhaps they don’t see in themselves, male or female, young or old, and then bringing those gifts into focus.” (Sure.)
–Harp: “Since the epicenter of Power is not Washington, DC, but Heaven, every morning I listen to a few chapters of the Bible on audiobook and pray for God’s wisdom and strength in whatever situations may arise.”
–Jimmy Kimmel went after Trump and Natalie on his show the other night in a skit in which Kimmel’s real wife (who’s a producer on the show) played an adoring Natalie. (Her final line as she was forced off the stage was “Your wife doesn’t deserve you!” Kimmel has been fearless in going after Trump ever since Trump got him taken off the air–he badly misjudged the consequences of that, just like I think he is misjudging the consequences of going after CNN and MSNOW and Politico. It’s already showing up in the questions Kaitlin Collins is now shouting at him.
—You can watch the Kimmel Natalie skit here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8tDFPmehl4
Republicans are lining up behind Trump to show they don’t believe in the freedom of the press either:
–Yesterday JD Vance claimed the White House was Trump’s and he had a perfect right to ban people from “his” White House. Today Trump went even farther. He posted: “Why should perpetrators of FAKE NEWS, like CNN and MSDNC, be allowed access to a very sacred place, the White House?”
–GOP Rep Maria Elvira Salazar: “He may not be allowing some journalists to go into one place, but with social media and with all the different outlets out there for people to receive information, I am sure that those journalists are going to be able to cover the President…”
–Commerce Secretary Scott Bessent says the journalists will be allowed back in if there’s a “change in coverage.”
–GOP Senator Josh Hawley: “The White House should probably be able to determine when and what cameras are in the White House.”
–US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz: “The President is absolutely within his rights to limit journalists to government facilities.” (No, he’s not. Those facilities belong to the people, not to Trump.)
–The most chilling statement was from Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “They’re not banned. We’re not closing CNN. There aren’t a bunch of police officers or soldiers kicking down the doors of MSNBC or MSNOW or whatever it’s called and arresting people and unplugging them from the grid.”
–Rejuv: “Yet!”
–The Bulwark: “Under Donald Trump, the formula for American authoritarianism has been distressingly simple: Trump crosses one line after another, usurping Congressional powers, mounting an insurrection, ordering prosecution of enemies–and Republicans go along.”
–Heather Delaney Reese: “The Trump administration has realized that there are, at least not right in the moment, any ramifications for breaking the law. They know that they can do practically anything at this point, that they will get sued and maybe have to stop what they are doing, but until then they just get to do it.”
In China visit news:
–Trump took Xi to the National Archives and showed him the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They were there maybe ten minutes total. When they came out, Trump said, “We’re just comparing. Ours goes 250 years. Which is great and we’re proud of. Theirs goes 6000 years. So there’s a little difference between 6000 and 250. But we’re very proud of our 250.” (Also, our documents guarantee freedom and rights to the people and your government doesn’t because it’s a dictatorship, but apparently they didn’t discuss that.)
–Apparently they didn’t discuss Taiwan either because Trump said they didn’t really talk about it.
–At at least one point, Melania refused to hold Trump’s hand while Xi’s wife held his hand.
–As I told you yesterday, Trump showed Xi the photo of the autopen on the “Presidential Walkway” at the White House and made a joke about it being Biden. Xi laughed and so did everybody else accompanying them, and there was a ton of outrage from the press for treating a former president so shabbily.
–Democrat John Delaney called it “the most un-American thing an American president has ever done.”
–Sarah Matthews: “Trump may think he’s humiliating Biden, but all he’s doing is humiliating the United States.”
–So today (ever the one to take responsibility) claimed that Xi particularly asked him to see the autopen picture because he’d heard so much about it. (Yeah, right.)
In the Paramount/Warner Brothers merger news:
–This deal has been going on forever and everybody’s very worried about it. If it goes through, Paramount and the Ellison Brothers will own not only CBS (which they have already trashed, firing everybody, destroying 60 Minutes, and turning it into a propaganda-for-Trump network) but CNN, too. That would give them enormous power in the US–and we already know how they’d use it.
–For a while it looked like a group of a dozen Attorneys General, including California’s AG and NY State Attorney Letitia James, were going to be able to stop it in its tracks, but last week they “negotiated” a deal that looked more like a surrender to some people.
–The AGs did insist on a board made up of journalists to keep the news divisions honest, but many people are skeptical they’ll be able to enforce that.
–But now the Paramount Antitrust Suit has been delayed again because the Attorney Generals’ negotiated settlement didn’t secure court approval.
–The judge also wants Ellison and Paramount to address by September 29th (that’s Monday) the concerns raised by Democratic Senator Cory Booker, one of which is that they are threatening blackmail by saying they will pull out of California altogether if this deal doesn’t go through. Booker wants an independent review.
–Paramount: “This is not collusion.”
–Anonymous: “If you have to say out loud, ‘This is not collusion,’ it 100% is collusion.”
In Iran War news:
–Trump once again claimed that Iran wants to make a deal to end the war. Trump: “I’m rejecting their deal. They want to make a deal where they open the Strait immediately…we’re winning tremendously. We have total control of the Hormuz Strait. That deal would not be acceptable.”
–According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump plans to resume bombing Iran after the midterms.
–Meanwhile, the Houthis continued their drone attacks on Saudi Arabia.
In Epstein news:
–This week was the deadline set by the judge in Katie Phang’s Epstein files case for Todd Blanche and the DOJ to produce those 37 pages of the Epstein files which they were withholding. They were supposed to hand over unredacted versions of the pages to the judge so he could privately review them and decide whether or not the DOJ had been lying when they said they were “duplicative,” etc.
–These are the handwritten notes that accompanied the four FBI interviews of the 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped by Donald Trump. Just to refresh your memories, she had said that Epstein took her somewhere to a big building and handed her over to Trump. Trump told her, “Let me teach you how little girls should be,” then unzipped his pants and forced her head down to his penis. She bit his penis, and he hit her on the side of the head. She also described other sexual encounters with him.
–The FBI verified key aspects of the girl’s story.
–The DOJ had originally turned over the first interview, which didn’t mention Trump, but not the other three interviews, and none of the votes for any of them.
–Blanche and the DOJ apparently met the deadline, though they didn’t file it publicly with the court docket. This could either mean 1) that they didn’t want people (and Trump, especially) to know they’d caved and handed over the documents, or, as Katie Phang speculated, the pages they handed over were not the pages they were supposed to hand over.
–Katie Phang’s lawyers called the DOJ and they confirmed that Todd Blanche had met the Thursday deadline. If he really did, Katie Phang should get them as soon as the judge reviews them. Stay tuned…
In Trump Destroying Other Places in Washington, DC, news:
–Signs have gone up along the Potomac saying, “There will be temporary closures of certain parkland and public use, limitations Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway.”
–Trump is now permanently fencing off all of Lafayette Park (where many protests take place and through which Trump notoriously walked with his upside-down Bible after tear-gassing protesters.)
–White House historian Ed Lengel: “(The White House is) becoming a fortress now. They’re going to say there are threats on the President’s life. That’s true enough, but it’s just a pretext.”
–Trump is apparently redoing the bowling alley in the White House basement. We know that because of contracts for renovation work and security guards to walk workers into the building. Since Trump doesn’t bowl, God knows what he’s actually doing.
In promising news:
–Republicans drew gerrymander lines based on Latinos’ supporting Trump, since they had voted heavily for him in 2024. He is now at a minus 32% approval rating, and many of those candidates are in trouble.
–Massive primary turnout points to the biggest years for Democrats since Watergate.
–Not even George W Bush in 2006 went into the midterms this unpopular.
–Chaz Nuttycombe: “I’ve been talking with a lot of Republicans this week…I have never heard one side feel so doomed about an election.”
–Dan Pfeiffer: “Trump really offers Republicans nothing. His political problems are historic, and voters are rejecting not just him, but every element of his agenda.”
–Nate Silver: “Polls for Republicans are just getting worse by the day in a way that isn’t actually all that common in midterms.”
James Goodwin: “Trump’s super power was always projecting the image that he was ‘not a fucking loser.’ He’s come close many times to forfeiting that image, but he may have finally crossed the line, and if so, we’ll see how he fares without his super power.”
In weather news:
–Hurricane Nolo is bearing down on the Hawaiian Islands, with the outer rain bands already hitting the islands. It’s a category 2 hurricane right now.
–Meanwhile, landfall is expected Monday on the Pacific coast of Mexico for Hurricane Polo. It’s already a category 4 hurricane. (It literally never rains but it pours.)
–And as if all that wasn’t enough, a powerful nor’easter is battering New England and the Atlantic coast. There’s flooding and there are power outages all up and down the coast.
–On the bright side, as it approached, the nor’easter provided New York City with some absolutely gorgeous sunsets. And even a rainbow. You can see them here (click to see all 5 photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/Ddwu1FpGKJU/?img_index=5_
In other news:
–Hackers breached data at the Pentagon nine months ago. According to a CNN report, it exposed Social Security numbers and other personal information of current and former military personnel, raising counterintelligence concerns among national security experts.
–In another usurpation of Congress’s power of the purse, Trump canceled $1 billion dollars in spending for immigration services and diversity initiatives already approved by Congress.
–A million people gathered at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to see Pope Leo XIV.
In good news:
–Judges have ordered the Trump administration to restore consumer watchdog funding.
–Virginia’s legislature has voted to ban convicted domestic abusers from purchasing firearms. Nearly all the Republicans voted against it. (Because you definitely want guns in the hands of domestic abusers.)
–The UK and France are both stepping up support for Ukraine.
In one last piece of Dolly Parton news I forgot to mention yesterday. Dolly’s movie, NINE TO FIVE, will be returning to theaters soon, with ticket sales donated to the Dollywood Foundation.
Best comment of the day, from JWC: “I’ll crawl through broken glass to vote against anyone who supports him (Trump) and have donated more to Democrats than I ever had.”
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis
