Finally Friday Reads: Trump’s Hot Mess

“The upcoming E. Jean Carroll defamation trial has him in a total meltdown. It’s only going to get better.” John Buss @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

So far today, Trump keeps harassing E. Jean Carroll, recruits another excellent Dem candidate for Congress, and gets his lawyer to corner JustICE KavanaUGH!  It makes for some dark humor today.  It also makes me wonder about his cult.  Who could possibly take this hot mess seriously?

Let’s start with his excellent recruitment of Dem Candidates for Congress.  He has already brought Retired Army Colonel Alexander Vindman into the race in Virginia.  Vindman announced last month.  He’s been making the case for Ukraine and against Russia on MSNBC recently.  Today, Harry Dunn has announced that he will run to represent Maryland on Morning Joe.  This comes after the release of his book “Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer’s Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th”  last year. This is from The New York Times. “Officer Who Defended Capitol on Jan. 6 Runs for Congress in Maryland. Harry Dunn, who endured racist slurs as he fought off a pro-Trump mob and gained fame with his emotional testimony before the Jan. 6 committee, is joining a crowded Democratic primary.” Trump sure knows how to bring the nation’s heroes into politics.

In 2023, President Biden awarded Mr. Dunn the Presidential Citizens Medal in recognition for his role in protecting the Capitol.

Mr. Dunn grew up in the Washington suburbs of Prince George’s County, Md., and graduated from James Madison University in Virginia, where he played football and helped lead the team to its first national title.

He has written a book called “Standing My Ground.”

In an interview, Mr. Dunn said his last day at a police officer was Dec. 17. If elected, Mr. Dunn said he would fight for women’s reproductive rights, “common sense” gun reform, voting rights and affordable health care, among other priorities.

He said he believes he is the candidate in the field best equipped to combat the right-wing movement loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.

Tala Madani, Babyocracy I, 2021,

Trump not only can’t keep his trap shut, he forces his lawyers to open theirs and look positively bereft of brains. “Unprofessional”: Experts blast Trump lawyer for saying Brett Kavanaugh “quid pro quo part out loud.”  “Imagine for a second if a lawyer for Clinton, Obama or Biden said this. It’d be a massive scandal,” attorney says. This is from Salon.

Trump attorney Alina Habba on Thursday suggested that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh would “step up” and rule in favor of the former president because he “fought for” him.

Trump on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a Colorado Supreme Court ruling barring him from the presidential primary ballot under the Constitution’s “insurrectionist” clause. Trump has privately told people that he thinks the Supreme Court will “overwhelmingly” overturn the ruling but has also expressed concern that the conservative justices he appointed “will worry about being perceived as ‘political’ and may rule against him,” according to The New York Times.

Habba echoed Trump’s worries in an interview with Fox News.

“That’s a concern that he’s voiced to me, he’s voiced to everybody publicly, not privately. And I can tell you that his concern is a valid one,” she said. “They’re trying so hard to look neutral that sometimes they make the wrong call.”

But in a later appearance on the network with host Sean Hannity, Habba said the case should be a “slam dunk in the Supreme Court.”

“You know people like Kavanaugh ― who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place ― he’ll step up,” she said. “Those people will step up. Not because they’re pro-Trump but because they’re pro-law. Because they’re pro-fairness, and the law on this is very clear.”

CNN host Phil Mattingly was taken aback as he played the clip on Friday.

“If a Democrat said that about the Justice Department or Merrick Garland or fill-in-the-blank here, there would be an absolute implosion. That’s bonkers,” he said.

Francisco de Goya, The Madhouse, 1793

Then, there is his ongoing slander of E. Jean Carroll. This is from The New Republic. “Trump Is Absolutely Losing It Over His E. Jean Carroll Case. The former president could have just handed Carroll another chance to take him to court..”  This is crazy!!

Donald Trump has lost another battle with E. Jean Carroll, and he’s handling it in a classic fashion: by completely flying off the handle.

Over the span of about 30 minutes Thursday morning, Trump made 31 posts about Carroll on Truth Social. Although he didn’t say anything himself, he shared stories from conservative outlets attacking her and comments from internet users calling her “creepy.” He also shared media interview clips and social media posts that appear to come from Carroll, all stripped of context so as to paint her as some sort of sexual deviant.

Trump’s gross little rampage is likely the result of a Wednesday court ruling rejecting his latest attempt to delay his upcoming trial for defaming Carroll. The trial is due to start on January 15.

In May, a jury unanimously found Trump liable for sexual abuse and battery against Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her in 2022 while denying the assault. He was ordered to pay her $5 million in damages.

The upcoming trial is for comments Trump made in 2019, when he said Carroll made up the rape allegation to promote her memoir. Presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that since Trump has already been found liable for sexual abuse, his 2019 comments are by default defamatory. Carroll is now seeking up to $12 million in damages.

Nancy Pelosi has written an account of January 6 at The Atlantic. “What January 6 Made Clear to Me. Our democratic institutions are only as strong as the courage of those entrusted with their care.” Tomorrow will be the 3rd anniversary of one of the worst events the country has ever experienced.  This story was new to me.

Congressional leadership was taken to Fort McNair. As I left the Capitol, I kept asking if the National Guard had been called, a power reserved for the executive branch. While the governor of every state in the union has the power to call up their own National Guard, the District of Columbia’s National Guard is under the control of the Defense Department—and, ultimately, of the commander in chief.

When I got to Fort McNair, it was clear that no one had deployed the National Guard to the Capitol. As Senator Chuck Schumer and I watched the television coverage of the unfolding insurrection, we began to place urgent calls to the administration.

I contacted Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, who could not have been more casual. In response to our pleas to dispatch reinforcements, he said: “Well, I have to report to my boss. That takes time. I don’t know what we can do.” His answer was horrifying.

While the Pentagon dragged its feet, Chuck, Representative Steny Hoyer, and I called the governors of Virginia and Maryland to ask them for help. Virginia law enforcement and National Guard troops began arriving in D.C. around 3:15 p.m., and Maryland was cooperative too.

Chuck, Senator Mitch McConnell, and I then contacted McCarthy’s boss, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, to plead for more reinforcements. Mitch insisted that the National Guard “get there in one hell of a hurry, you understand?” I demanded an answer: “Just pretend for a moment it was the Pentagon or the White House or some other entity that was under siege.” Still, Miller delayed.

Hours later, the Capitol was finally cleared. While it was suggested that we continue the certification from Fort McNair for security reasons, it was always our goal to return to the Capitol that night to finish the count. The whole world had seen the vile “Stop the Steal” venom the president was pushing, and the violence that it had caused. It was essential that we continue our duties in the Capitol of the United States, for the American people and the world alike to see.

And, what is the instigator of this horrid event doing?

Egon Schiele, Self Portrait In Jerkin With Right Elbow Raised, 1914

This is from MTN. It’s crazy enough but then there are seriously demented White Evangelicals pushing the same meme.  If the Asylum is the Republican Party, White Christian Nationalists are its gatekeepers.  “Trump Posts Video Calling Himself a God-Given “Caretaker“ and “Shepherd to Mankind”. The video also appears to take a dig at Melania.”

On Truth Social, Trump posted a video with the caption, “God made Trump.” In the video, a narrator explains “God gave us Trump” because he was looking for certain qualities God allegedly needed in a leader including a “caretaker,” and working long hours. Trump, who said he would be a president who never took vacations, spent over 400 days visiting Trump properties while president.

Besides the “caretaker” description, the video also contains messianic descriptions of Trump as “man who cares for the flock, a shepherd to mankind who won’t ever leave or forsake them.” Similar language is found in the Bible.

In Psalm 23, David describes God as a shepherd who provides for the flock. The teaching that God will “never leave or forsake you” is found multiple times in the Bible. Jesus called himself “the good shepherd” who “lays down his life for the sheep” and taught he “is with you always.”

This latest video echoes the teachings we’ve seen by Christian nationalists who make Trump out as a divine figure sent by God to save the world. American Christian nationalists have not just woven Trump into their faith, they’ve placed him on the throne and are rewriting, ignoring, and breaking away from historic teachings on helping the poor, migrants, and upholding justice as these conflict with their MAGA agenda.

The cult is definitely as insane as its leader.  “God Made Trump” is trending on the X-crement site. It’s pretty evident that the Republican Party, and its Mega Donors, are basically schoolyard bullies with more money and access to Media. This is from The Guardian. “A bully’: the billionaire who led calls for Claudine Gay’s Harvard exit. US hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posts 4,000-word screed decrying ‘racism against white people’ after Gay’s departure.”  This wasn’t about anti-semitism.  Unlike most of Gay’s white male critics, Ackman actually graduated from Harvard.

Chief among the campaigners celebrating the resignation of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University was a man who arguably did the most to push Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, out the door: Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge-fund manager and Harvard alumnus.

Ackman, who accused Gay of antisemitism and plagiarism, was a major player in what increasingly became a rightwing campaign against the Harvard president – who said many of the attacks against her were “fueled by racial animus”.

In the past month alone, the 57-year-old has tweeted about Gay, Harvard, or both, more than 100 times to his 1 million followers. On Tuesday, he topped that with a rambling 4,000-word X post about “racism against white people”; universities’ efforts to increase diversity; and accusations that student groups were “supporting terrorism”.

Ackman’s campaign came after “years of resentment”, the New York Times reported, in part because his donations to Harvard did not give him greater influence over the university.

A previous donor to the Democratic party, Ackman has denied he has rightwing politics. But his campaign has been seized upon by conservatives and a Republican party that have long been resentful of an alleged liberal bias, and of affirmative action efforts, on college campuses and elsewhere – something commenters pointed out after Gay’s resignation.

Ever The Women Watchful, 2017, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’

AI, the final frontier.  Women aren’t even safe from men there.  This horrifying article came to me via JJ.  This is from The Guardian. “A girl was allegedly raped in the metaverse. Is this the beginning of a dark new future?” This is reproted by Nancy Jo Sales.

The cheerful language with which tech companies describe their platforms is often in stark contrast to the dark possibilities lurking within them. Meta, for example, describes its virtual world, the metaverse, as “the next evolution in social connection and the successor to the mobile internet”, a place where “virtual reality lets you explore new worlds and shared experiences”. But for a young girl in the UK recently, that “shared experience” was an alleged gang rape perpetrated by several adult men.

British police are investigating the sexual assault of the girl, identified only as being under the age of 16, in what is said to be the first investigation of its kind in the UK. The girl was reportedly wearing a virtual reality headset and playing an immersive game in the metaverse when her avatar was attacked.

Was this really rape? some have asked. The comments on an Instagram post for a story about the case in the New York Post were characteristically skeptical: “Couldn’t she have just turned it off?” “Can we focus on real-life crime please?” “I was killed in [the war video game Call of Duty],” one person said sarcastically: “Been waiting for my killer to be brought to justice.”

The difference, of course, is that while Call of Duty players can expect to be virtually killed sometimes as part of the game, the girl had no reason to expect that she would be raped. It isn’t yet known what game she was playing when the alleged assault occurred, but obviously there isn’t an online game where the goal for adult players is to rape children. The fact that they are able to in the metaverse is the issue at the heart of this case, which has attracted international attention.

The question of whether virtual rape is “really rape” goes back to at least 1993, when the Village Voice published an article by Julian Dibbell about “a rape in cyberspace”. Dibbell’s piece reported on how the people behind avatars that were sexually assaulted in a virtual community felt emotions similar to those of victims of physical rape.

As did the girl whose avatar was attacked in the metaverse, according to a senior police officer familiar with the case; he told the Daily Mail: “There is an emotional and psychological impact on the victim that is longer-term than any physical injuries.” In addition, the immersive quality of the metaverse experience makes it all the more difficult for a child, especially, to distinguish between what’s real and what is make-believe.

So while it is necessary for the police to investigate this case – with the courts to decide on the appropriate punishment for the alleged offenders – it is equally important for Meta to be held accountable.

I’d say that 2024  is getting off to a worse start than even I expected.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?