DCUM Weblog

I was about to start writing today when I noticed a New York Times article about newly released emails in which Jeffrey Epstein alleged that cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump knew about his conduct, which involved sex trafficking of underage girls. I changed my original plans and decided to address this topic instead. It is becoming increasingly clear that nearly the entire Republican establishment is engaged in a cover-up of Trump's involvement with Epstein, which may well have included sex with minors.

It is well-known that Trump and Epstein had a close relationship for many years. In tape-recorded conversations between Epstein and author Michael Wolff, Epstein said that "I was Donald’s closest friend for 10 years." In a 2002 New York magazine article, Trump was quoted as saying, "I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy" and that "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." However, Trump has denied being aware of Epstein's sex crimes during their friendship and claims when he learned of the accusations against Epstein, he banned him from Mar-a-Lago. More recently, Trump has said that Epstein "stole people," including Virginia Giuffre, from the Mar-a-Lago spa and that led to Trump telling Epstein he was "out of here."

Today I am going to write about what might become a recurring topic. That is cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's Truth Social posts. Trump loves attention and is happy to have media appearances most days. He is not shy about press conferences or interviews with reporters. But, more often than not, Trump's preferred communications medium has become Truth Social, his social media network. Trump is liable to post a so-called "truth" at nearly any hour of the day. I have frequently accused Trump of attempting to "rule by Sharpie" because of his attempt to use executive orders as dictatorial edicts. But, lately, Trump appears to be attempting to rule by social media posts.

If you are not familiar with Trump's Truth Social feed, it is a combination of posts by others that he has "retruthed" — by all appearances without the slightest bit of vetting — and his own "truths" which generally appear to reflect whatever happened to be on his mind at the time and rarely suggest that much thought has been devoted to them. The result is something that might be more at home in your crazy conspiracy-theorist uncle's email box than a president's social media feed. Trump's own posts are written in his unique style which involves "creative" use of capitalization, frequent spelling errors, and an almost complete abandonment of the rules of grammar. While his "truths" are almost immediately reposted to other social media networks, I have noticed that they rarely appear verbatim in the mainstream media. Even when they are referenced by mainstream publications, they are often done so in an anodyne manner that does not convey their true nature.

As probably everyone is aware by now, last night eight Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to invoke cloture on debate over a continuing resolution that will likely lead to the reopening of the government. This is the first step towards approving the CR, which will require its own vote by the Senate and then will need to be passed by the House of Representatives and signed by the President before the government can reopen. As observers from both sides of the aisle have been quick to point out, Democrats received very little — certainly nowhere near their demands — in exchange for their votes. As such, this has been the cave-in that launched a thousand takes. Mine, of course, will not be better than the others and will probably be worse than many. But, having spent most of last week enjoying the taste of victory resulting from Tuesday's election, it is probably necessary to return to the familiar confines of disappointment.

Today I'll do one more post related to Tuesday's election. Admittedly, as a liberal, I have been so starved for good political news that I really want to drag out the positive vibes from the election as long as possible. However, I also think that there are still topics of interest to be discussed. Yesterday, I wrote about some of the messages that voters were sending. Number one was that they are very unhappy with cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's governance. But, it is important to keep in mind that while many voters simply dislike Trump and, for them, that is the end of the discussion, others — especially swing voters — are more focused on how Trump is performing. For them, it is not that Trump is bad, but that the impact of Trump's policies on them is bad. Much of the success by Democratic candidates on Tuesday was owed to their ability to not only tie Republicans to Trump, but to further tie them to Trump's policy outcomes. This provides a blueprint going forward for how to oppose Republican candidates. It is a successful strategy for Democrats and one that is very hard for Republicans to defend against.

Yesterday I reviewed the results of Tuesday's voting, which overwhelmingly, almost entirely in fact, favored Democrats. Today I will discuss what those results might mean and the messages that voters were sending. The most obvious message is that voters are unhappy with the governance of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump. For all of Trump's narcissistic bragging that he is the greatest president of all time, voters clearly see him as a failure. Moreover, voters are not willing to sit by passively while Trump destroys the country. Voters are motivated nearly to the point of militancy, and Democrats, for the first time in my memory, have no interest in playing by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules. If a throat punch is required to win, Democrats are willing to politically throat punch.

I suspect that if today Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson is asked about last night’s election results, he will claim not to be aware of them. Johnson has claimed ignorance of current events in almost every recent press appearance. Like many Republicans, he has preferred to stick his fingers in his ears and ignore signal after signal indicating that what happened yesterday was about to occur.

Two and a half weeks ago, 7 million Americans took to the streets to loudly proclaim that they would not accept a king ruling this country. Cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump’s reaction was to post a video of him dumping feces on the demonstrators. Johnson suggested that this was an effective use of satire and social media by Trump. Last night, voters responded to having shit dumped on them and their reaction was not metaphorical. It was as widespread a rout of Republicans that could have been imagined. According to data journalist G. Elliot Morris, "What we saw last night was a directional shift toward Democrats in 99.8% of counties that held partisan elections."

Today's post will likely show the shortcomings of this blog being a one-man show. The topic of this post could really benefit from extensive research that would require days or even weeks. I have had a couple of hours to devote to it. Therefore, this post won't be all that it could or should be. It is what it is. The topic in question was provoked by remarks made by cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump during his "60 Minutes" interview about which I wrote yesterday. In a discussion about AI and Nvidia chips, Trump, as he tends to do, suddenly changed topics and started to talk about electricity production, saying:

Yesterday evening, the CBS show "60 Minutes" broadcast an interview with cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump. Only about a third of the interview was actually included on the show, but a transcript of the full interview was published on the CBS News website. I decided to go through the full transcript and comment on parts that caught my eye.

The start of the interview was about trade with China and mostly consisted of Trump spouting his usual talking points. He stressed how much he likes the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping, and how much Xi likes him. Trump turned the conversation toward tariffs, which is perhaps his favorite topic. I've always suspected that, despite his fixation on tariffs, Trump doesn't really understand them. This suspicion was increased when Trump stated:

The wealthy and the powerful are increasingly living in fear. The rich obviously realize that the immense and growing wealth gap presents a danger to them. If they had not already seen the signs, the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson made their peril eminently clear. But rather than take steps to reverse inequity, they are building luxurious bunkers and hiring military-style security to protect them from what they expect to be a societal collapse. Leery of the loyalty of paid security staff, some billionaires hope to replace humans with armies of robots. Those with the greatest wealth plan to rocket off to another planet entirely, leaving the rest of us to deal with the mess they helped to create. They view the average person not as a fellow human being, but rather as a resource to be exploited. They dread the day that the masses might be pushed too far and rise up. Now, the American political elite is demonstrating similar concerns and engaging in similar reactions. Two recent revelations demonstrate that top Republicans in particular are preparing for a potential mass upheaval.

As I have repeatedly written in these blog posts, with authoritarian government comes incompetence. There is a common belief that dictatorships, notwithstanding their otherwise negative characteristics, can at least get things done. In reality, such governments are generally filled with corruption and incompetence and do a very poor job performing. The administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump is fitting this pattern perfectly. Trump has appointed incompetents who either through their incompetence or their disregard for the law, repeatedly act in ways that are not lawful. In the case of U.S. Attorneys, this has been coming back to haunt the administration. In example after example, courts have been ruling that Trump Administration U.S. Attorney appointments have not been lawful. Not only does this potentially remove a Trump appointees, but it endangers any cases in which the unlawfully appointed officials were involved.