Finally Friday Reads: Full-on Full Moon Crazy

“Every single time he opens his mouth…” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

If you got to look into the sky last night, you got to see the Hunter’s supermoon.  There certainly was a lot of Lunacy yesterday.  That causation or even correlation doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny, but it has a literary tradition covering nearly all periods of history.  DonOld’s Yesterday fits the adage neatly.

“It is the very error of the moon.She comes more near the earth than she was wont. And makes men mad.”
—William Shakespeare, Othello

Speaking of madness,  “North Korea sends troops to support Russia in Ukraine war: NIS.” This was announced in The Korea Herald.

North Korea has dispatched special forces to support Russia in its war against Ukraine, with the first batch already having arrived in Russia and a second group of North Korean troops expected to follow soon, South Korea’s intelligence agency claimed on Friday.

The National Intelligence Service said it “confirmed that North Korea began its participation in the war by transporting special forces to Russia via Russian Navy transport ships from Oct. 8 to 13.”

However, the NIS provided no substantial evidence to support this claim, other than satellite imagery showing Russian vessels docked at the port of Chongjin in North Hamgyong Province.

Four amphibious ships and three escort ships from the Russian Pacific Fleet transported around 1,500 North Korean special forces to Vladivostok during this period, departing from areas near Chongjin and Musudan-ri in North Hamgyong Province, as well as Hamhung in South Hamgyong Province, according to the NIS.

The NIS further stated that a second operation to transport North Korean troops to Russia is “expected to take place soon.”

The North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia have been stationed at military bases in the Far East, spread across cities such as Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk.

“They are expected to be sent to the battlefield once they complete their adaptation training,” the intelligence agency added.

According to the NIS, the North Korean soldiers were provided with Russian military uniforms and Russian-made weapons. They were also issued fake identification documents resembling residents of Siberian regions such as Yakutia and Buryatia, whose appearance is similar to North Koreans.

“This appears to be an attempt to disguise them as Russian soldiers and conceal their involvement in the war,” the NIS stated.

The NIS also reported that Kim Jong-sik, the first vice director of North Korea’s Munitions Industry Department and a key figure in the country’s missile development, was observed visiting a North Korean KN-23 missile launch site near the Russia-Ukraine front. He was accompanied by dozens of North Korean military officers to provide on-site guidance.

“It’s incomprehensible,” John Buss. @repeat1968. “More Full moon Madness!!!” me

American Madman DonOld is showing his age; finally, the legacy media have noticed and are reporting it.  It only took 39 minutes of swaying to his playlist at a rally for them to start asking the real questions. He’s evidently tuckered out. “Trump cancels a streak of events with only days until election.” This is reported in AXIOS by Ivana Saric

Former President Trump’s planned appearance at a National Rifle Association event next week was cancelled Thursday, the latest in a slew of scuttled public appearances and interviews by the former president in recent weeks.

Why it matters: With only 17 days to go until Election Day, the spate of cancellations gives voters fewer chances to hear from Trump before heading to the polls in a coin toss race.

• Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has been on a media blitz after enduring criticism from Republicans about a perceived lack of interviews.
• And while Harris has ventured into the unfriendly territory of a Fox News interview, Trump has stuck to the safe spaces of conservative outlets.
• In the appearances he has made, Trump’s rhetoric has grown more violent and nativist. In recent weeks, he has decried his critics as the “enemy from within” and fanned the flames of false conspiracy theories about migrants.

Driving the news: The NRA said Thursday it had cancelled its “Defend the 2nd” event with Trump in Savannah, Georgia, next week due to “campaign scheduling changes.”

• Trump also pulled out of two mainstream media interviews this week, with NBC News and CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
• Earlier this month he backed out of a scheduled appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” while Harris appeared on the program.
• The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.

Between the lines: Several of the events and interviews Trump has appeared at in recent weeks have raised eyebrows.

• Trump cut short a Pennsylvania town hall this week to listen and sway to music for more than half an hour. “Let’s make it into a music fest,” Trump said. “Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”
• In an interview with Bloomberg News at the Chicago Economic Club Tuesday, Trump downplayed the Capitol riot and struggled to respond when confronted about the costs of his economic plans
• Trump later claimed he was “hoodwinked” into the interview.
• During an all-women Fox News town hall that aired Wednesday, Trump declared himself the “father of IVF,” a decades-old fertility treatment that has come under threat since overturning Roe v. Wade — which Trump has repeatedly bragged about ending.

DonOld is asking for a sitdown with Rupert Murdoch. This is from MEDIAITE’s Isaac Schorr. “Donald Trump Outlines His Demands For Rupert Murdoch Live On Fox News Ahead of Private Meeting: ‘I Don’t Know If He’s Thrilled.’”

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outlined his demands for conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch live on Fox News Friday morning, musing that Murdoch should stop airing negative ads and allowing Democratic guests on the network in the run up to Election Day.

After Fox & Friends’ Lawrence Jones thanked Trump for appearing on the show Friday, the former president jumped back in to ask Jones and his co-hosts, “You know what the event I have now?”

“No,” said Brian Kilmeade.

“A very big event,” continued the former president. “I’m going to see Rupert Murdoch.”

A pensive Kilmeade replied, “Alright,” and Steve Doocy exclaimed, “Okay!” before Trump pressed on.

“That’s a big event. I don’t know if he’s thrilled that I say it. And I’m going to tell him, I’m gonna tell him something very simple because I can’t talk to anybody else about it: Don’t put on negative commercials for 21 days, don’t put them. And don’t put on the air their horrible people. They come and lie. I’m going to say, ‘Rupert, please do it this way.’”

“Right,” interjected Kilmeade.

“And then we’re going to have a victory, because I think everyone wants that,” concluded Trump.

Salon Fellow Griffin Eckstein reports that Faux News Reader Brett Baier is very sorry about his behavior during his interview with Vice President Harris. “”I did make a mistake”: Baier apologizes for playing edited Trump clip in Harris interview. The Fox News anchor’s deceptive video clip left out Trump’s remarks about “enemies from within.”

Fox News anchor Bret Baier is apologizing for playing a misleadingly edited clip in an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Harris sat down with Baier on Wednesday for a tense interview, in which the “Special Report” host repeatedly cut off and chastised the Democratic candidate. One exchange in particular gave the game away.

When Harris admonished former President Trump over suggestions that he’d sic the military on his political opponents, Baier aired a portion of a Trump interview that omitted his comments against “the enemy from within.”

“I’m not threatening anybody,” Trump said in the clip Baier played. “They’re the ones doing the threatening.”

In a Thursday night episode of “Report,” Baier owned up his misdirection.

“I wanna say that I did make a mistake,” Baier admitted. “When I called for a soundbite, I was expecting a piece of the ‘enemy from within’ from Maria Bartiromo’s interview, to be tied to the piece from [Harris Faulkner’s ]town hall.”

Baier went on to play the intended clip for his audience, though Harris was still able to get her point across the previous night despite the misleading edit.

“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people,” the vice president said on Wednesday. “In a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it.”

Even the New York Times is noticing DonOld’s crazy demeanor and speech these days. “Trump’s Meandering Speeches Motivate His Critics and Worry His Allies. Some advisers and allies of former President Donald J. Trump are concerned about his scattershot style on the campaign trail as he continues to veer off script.” This is reported by Michael C. Bender.

Now, some Trump advisers and allies say privately they are concerned that the dynamic may be repeating itself four years later. They worry that Mr. Trump’s impetuousness and scattershot style on the campaign trail needlessly risk victory in battleground states where the margin for error is increasingly narrow.

At a time when his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has stepped up her attacks on him as “unstable,” Mr. Trump has struggled to publicly hone his message by veering off script and ramping up personal attacks on Ms. Harris that allies have urged him to rein in.

“When he’s good, he’s great, and when he’s off message, he’s not so great,” said David Urban, a Trump adviser. “I don’t think anyone is really changing their mind at this point, but when he distracts from his biggest, broadest messaging, it’s counterproductive because the Harris campaign uses it to turn out their voters.”

During a speech on Saturday in California, he described mail-in ballots as “so corrupt,” reviving one of his false attacks on the 2020 election results, and did a play-by-play of his internal thoughts when he watched SpaceX, Elon Musk’s spaceflight company, fly a rocket back onto its launch site.

On Sunday, in response to a question on Fox News about the possibility of foreign adversaries’ meddling in the election, he reverted to autocratic language by saying “the bigger problem is the enemy from within.” On Monday, he halted a town-hall event in suburban Philadelphia after five questions when two people in the crowd needed medical attention. He spent roughly the next half-hour playing D.J., swaying and grooving in front of his crowd to a playlist he curated from the stage. “Let’s just listen to music,” he said.

Last week, he canceled a CBS interview on “60 Minutes,” in which he and Ms. Harris were both scheduled to appear — and has not stopped talking about it. He complained about it during events in Detroit and Reno, Nev., and again on Monday in a social media post at 1:12 a.m.

All of this makes me wonder if he doesn’t care about winning or if he’s just relying on a country-wide repeat J6 event and his cronies planted in positions to disrupt the voting process in many states.  It might be he has other things on his rapidly disintegrating mind. Just a few hours ago, Judge Tanya Chutkin, keeper of the American Way and the U.S. Constitution, allowed the Special Counsel to open up the floodgates of evidence.  This is from CNN. “Special counsel releases trove of redacted documents in 2020 election subversion case against Trump.”  October Surprise, perhaps?  Care to Dance in the Moonlight with me?

Special counsel Jack Smith on Friday released a massive trove of heavily redacted documents in his 2020 election subversion criminal case against former President Donald Trump.

There are nearly 2,000 pages in a massive trove of documents released Friday, but nearly all of the pages appear to be completely redacted.

The redacted appendices filed on the public docket in the case are related to Smith’s expansive filing from earlier this month that laid out his fullest picture yet of the case against Trump and Smith’s belief that his actions around the 2020 election should not be shielded by presidential immunity.

One volume is filled with sealed pages as well as tweets and other social media posts from Trump, his campaign and allies, including some posted during the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

One of the tweets include Trump’s post that day that Vice President Mike Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done” that day in supporting his effort to change the election results.

Others include a myriad of claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election.

Prosecutors have argued that these tweets from Trump should be allowed to be used in the trial because they were personal in nature or part of his campaigning efforts and not his official duties as president.

The documents were released a day after Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected a bid by Trump to pause the release. Trump argued that posting the documents now could be seen as election inference and had asked them to remain under seal until after Election Day.

“If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute – or appear to be – election interference,” Chutkan wrote in a decision late Thursday.

Another volume contains memos from lawyer John Eastman with a plan for Pence to reject the congressional certification of the 2020 election. The volume also includes a public statement Trump released the night before January 6 claiming he and Pence were on the same page about the congressional certification, Trump’s prepared remarks for his speech on January 6, and fundraising emails sent out by his 2020 campaign in the days before January 6.

Pence’s letter to Congress on January 6 explaining why he could not reject certifying the election and a transcript of Trump’s 2023 CNN town hall are also included in the documents.

The redacted files were expected to include an array of materials, including grand jury transcripts and notes from FBI interviews conducted during the yearslong investigation.

This was a big news dump week.  Hopefully, the death of Yahya Sinwar will lead to a peaceful conclusion to this latest Mid-Eastern War.  I’m not sure that’s what Bibi wants, but I’m sure the return of the hostages and a ceasefire would be a good start to ending hostilities.  This is from Reuters. “Yahya Sinwar threw stick at drone just before death, according to Israel video. “

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was tracked by an Israeli mini drone as he lay dying in the ruins of a building in southern Gaza and filmed him slumped in a chair covered in dust, according to video released by Israeli authorities on Thursday.

As the drone hovered nearby, the video showed him throwing a stick at it, in an apparent act of desperation or defiance. Not long afterwards, the military said, a tank shell was fired into the building.

After an intensive manhunt that had lasted for more than a year, the Israeli troops that killed Sinwar were initially unaware that they had caught their country’s number one enemy after a gun battle on Wednesday, Israeli officials said.

Dental records, fingerprints and DNA testing provided final confirmation of Sinwar’s death for Israel and on Friday, Hamas confirmed their leader had been killed.

Intelligence services had been gradually restricting the area where Sinwar could operate, the military said. But unlike other militant leaders tracked down by Israel, including Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 13, the encounter which finally killed Sinwar was not a planned and targeted strike, or an operation carried out by elite commandos.