Finally Friday Reads: Inquiring Minds want to Know

John Buss, @repeat1969,

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

We woke up to the news of an earthquake centered in Bedminster, N.J., which means Orange Caligula’s summer palace is likely damaged somehow. I’m visualizing lots of nuclear secrets flying out of the grave of his first wife, Ivana. Perhaps more boxes will turn up, giving Jack Smith a possible new venue outside the loose Canon’s reign of ignorance.

Of course, the Orange Dotard was down in Mar-a-Lardo at an event that should have seen fewer white jackets and a lot of straight jackets. It was a fundraiser for Crazy Kari Lake with a special message from guest Rosann Barr, who is on the NF list these days. She is definitely Not Funny. But, she’s gone full metal maga jacket and QAnon. See the tweet below.

Trump’s meme stock is doing terribly, even by Trump standards. This is from Reuters. Basically, it’s no Game Stop. “Trump-and-dump: Speculators bet on Truth Social ‘meme’ stock.”  Abigail Summerville has the lede.

(RDDT.N), and X found that most were looking to score a quick profit.

They bet that Trump supporters’ fascination with the stock was untethering TMTG’s stock price from the company’s business fundamentals.

TMTG’s current valuation of approximately $6.6 billion is equivalent to about 1,600 times the loss-making company’s revenue in 2023 of $4.1 million, according to LSEG data.

No other U.S. company of similar market capitalization has such a high valuation multiple, the LSEG data shows. This is despite TMTG warning investors in regulatory filings that its operational losses raise “substantial doubt” about its ability to remain in business.

The stock is also among the most actively traded, according to Trade Alert data. While social media posts indicate some Trump supporters have bought TMTG shares, a lot of the trading volume is coming from speculators looking for a quick flip.

“I invested $10,000 last Tuesday because MAGA is crazy and they will pump the stock,” said Sarah, a 21-year-old software developer from Pennsylvania who asked for her last name not to be published. MAGA stands for Trump’s campaign slogan, ‘Make America Great Again’.

The appeal of TMTG to speculators helps explain the stock’s volatility. The shares have risen as much as fivefold in the last two months and are currently valuing Trump’s majority stake in the company at about $3.8 billion.

A bout of this volatility came on Monday, as the stock lost more than fifth of its value. It remained unclear whether hedge funds and other Wall Street firms will get comfortable with such risks to join the speculation. Big investment firms will be required in a few weeks to disclose what, if any, their position in TMTG was as of the end of March.

Like Kari Lake, he’s not having much luck in the courtroom.

Kari herself is fresh off a loss in a defamation case. I guess she is just following in Trump’s footsteps. This is from MSNBC’s The Reid Out’s Ja’han Jones. It was reported last week. “Kari Lake is literally about to pay for her war on fellow Republicans. The Arizona Senate candidate conceded in court that she had said untrue things about a local election official. Now, she’ll fight over how much she has to pay him.”  I guess running for high office as a Republican is the best way to get your court mishaps paid for by someone else.

On Tuesday, Kari Lake essentially admitted defeat in the latest stage of her crusade against a Maricopa County election official whom she falsely accused of cheating her out of a gubernatorial election victory in 2022.

Lake announced she won’t contest a claim that she defamed Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a fellow Republican, after spending the better part of the past two years spreading conspiracy theories about him. Richer filed a defamation lawsuit last year alleging that Lake and her allies drastically altered his life and forced him to hire security after they spread lies about him online and at various events.

As NBC News reported:

Lake’s legal team on Tuesday filed a default judgment motion that indicated she was not challenging her culpability. She instead seeks to dispute the damages. She also said Richer should have to turn over relevant medical and psychiatric records to show that his health was negatively affected, as he detailed in his lawsuit. Lake requested a jury for the default judgment hearing. Lake, a staunch Trump ally, has repeatedly pushed the lie that she won her 2022 bid for governor, and in doing so she took aim at Richer.

This amounts to a pretty pitiful retreat on Lake’s part. But as you might imagine, she’s not framing things that way. Instead, she’s leaning into victimhood and portraying her decision not to challenge the defamation claims as tactful politicking.

In a video posted on social media Tuesday night, she called the lawsuit “ludicrous” and said it was part of an effort by “political elites” to empty out her coffers.  “Since they can’t blackmail or bribe me, they’ve resorted to filing a punishing lawsuit to try to stop me,” she said. She claimed, without even a hint of self-awareness, that she and putative Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump are being subjected to “lawfare” — conservatives’ favorite buzzword these days — designed to “punish, impoverish, and destroy” political opponents through the legal system. She ended by saying that she “won’t be taking part” in the suit.

I hope Trump doesn’t turn on her if she starts peddling a line of Bibles. Also, I don’t think Roseanne’s advice had any chance of hitting folks with solid university degrees in Florida.

Trump had two very bad days in Court last week although the Cannon decision left him some breathing room. BB did a great job of covering those.  The fallout is rather deliscious.  This is written by Katherine Doyle for  NBC News’  ‘The nuclear button’: Special counsel could seek removal of judge in Trump classified docs case, attorneys warn, Special counsel Jack Smith and Judge Aileen Cannon traded terse words in filings this week.”   Good Night Aileen, Good Night Aileen!

Special counsel Jack Smith could soon seek to have the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case recused, prosecutors and defense attorneys warn, describing Smith as being pressed to the “breaking point” over arguments his office said could taint a trial irrevocably.

Smith faulted Judge Aileen Cannon in a scathing rebuke for seeming to take at face value Trump’s “fundamentally flawed” claim around a president’s official and personal records when she asked both sides to put forth competing versions of instructions for jurors in the case and said her request would “distort” the trial. Smith indicated in that filing that if Cannon ruled against federal prosecutors, this could be a trigger for an appeal to the 11th Circuit that could remove her from the case.

“He is close to pushing the nuclear button,” said Palm Beach County State Attorney David Aronberg. “It is a high burden to reach, and it is rarely done, but her proposed jury instructions may have pushed him to the breaking point.”

That proposal for jury instructions, a final version of which would be delivered to jurors at the end of a trial, seemed to consider Trump’s interpretation of how classified documents could be preserved after leaving office, which is at the center of the charge against him.

The latest, most exciting story on Trump and his travails and travels leads to Saudi Arabia. This is from Brian Buetler’s Substack Off Message. “Unmask Donald Trump. If President Biden knows Trump and his henchmen are sabotaging U.S. foreign policy for partisan gain, he should let the American public know before the election.”

President Biden may have reached his wits end, however belatedly, with Benjamin Netanyahu. A readout of their most recent conversation suggests that, in the wake of the World Central Kitchen killings, and the subsequent flight-to-safety of humanitarian workers, U.S. aid will be conditioned going forward on a rapidly implemented ceasefire (of uncertain length) in order to meliorate the catastrophe on the ground.

But Biden’s larger picture goal—and perhaps the only way to lastingly tie this Israeli government’s hands—is a grand settlement, along the lines he’s been negotiating, that would sweeten the deal for Israel by normalizing its relations with Saudi Arabia.

He should thus be alarmed at the news (if it is indeed news to him) that Trump has held at least one undisclosed phone call with Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, in recent days.

Trump has been strangely at pains of late to imply that he is at odds with the rest of his party, which lusts for bloody retribution against Palestinians. He recently told a duo of right-wing Israeli journalists, “You have to finish up your war,” and stressed the same thing to the Republican apparatchik Hugh Hewitt, insisting in his television-addled way that Israel is “absolutely losing the PR war.”

On its face, that suggests agreement with Biden. If we could ever take Trump at face value or trust his motives, his private contacts with MBS might not be so worrisome. There is speculation and reporting to suggest that Trump views Netanyahu as disloyal for having congratulated President Biden on winning the 2020 election—perhaps this is his retribution? And he may see some advantage in getting caught advocating for Israel to end its war, so that he might claim credit if a ceasefire materializes in the coming weeks.

But the clear optimum for him—what is in his best interest, the only interest he cares about—is to scuttle Biden’s efforts to reach a grand diplomatic settlement in the region. And between his secret conversations, his private business arrangements with Saudi royals, and his control over Republicans in Congress, he almost certainly has the clout required to subvert U.S. foreign policy in this way. Just as he’s subverted Biden’s Ukraine policy and border-security negotiations for personal gain.

He’s also not necessarily working alone. We learned this week that Netanyahu hosted Jared Kushner for dinner in December, and that Trump treats his degenerate former national-security henchman Richard Grenell as an “envoy” to right-wing leaders abroad.

What’s more likely: that Trump is Biden’s earnest partner seeking an end to the war in Gaza? Or that he would like to create that impression domestically, while working behind the scenes to prolong it? Biden shouldn’t just wonder if Trump and his lackeys are collectively up to no good. He should suspect it. And insofar as he has access to information that confirms his suspicion, he should reveal it to the American public.

Okay, I’m done with this. I can’t handle the daily garbage skow trip that carries the latest grift, insanity, and stupidity of Trump and his cronies. I nearly puked at a picture of Roger Stone and Rosanne Barr sitting beside each other. It’s like a circus of goons!

So, here’s the good news, and it’s always down in the fine print or a quick chyron. “Job growth zoomed in March as payrolls jumped by 303,000 and unemployment dropped to 3.8%.” This is reported by CNBC’s Jeff Cox. This is something that needs to be SHOUTED IN ALL CAPS.

• Nonfarm payrolls increased 303,000 for the month, well above the Dow Jones estimate for a rise of 200,000.

• The unemployment rate edged lower to 3.8%, as expected, even though the labor force participation rate moved higher to 62.7%.

• Wages rose 0.3% for the month and 4.1% from a year ago, both in line with Wall Street estimates.

• Health care led with 72,000 new jobs, followed by government (71,000), leisure and hospitality (49,000), and construction (39,000).

Nothing moves an economy like a big infrastructure boost from the Federal Government. Thank you, Dark Brandon!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

And this is for Orange Caligula.