Blanche: "I’ll never say no, and we will always investigate any evidence of misconduct, but as you know, it is not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein. And some of these men may have done horrible things, and if we have evidence that allows us to prosecute them, you better believe we will. But it’s also the kind of thing that the American people need to understand that it isn’t a crime to party with Mr. Epstein."
< Tim rubs his eyes >
The one thing I'm grateful for during these last 11 years is people have revealed their true selves. For some, their ambition overrides their moral compass (assuming of course they had one to begin with), and this is the case for Blanche. He knows deep down that his boss is a moral degenerate of the highest order, and yet because he desperately wants to be AG, he's willing to do **anything** to get there. There's a high probability that Trump had sexual encounters with underage girls, which is why he appointed his own lawyer to acting AG in order to bury the evidence.
Speaking personally, I believe the country deserves the embarrassment and shame that comes with this. The electorate made an amoral, corrupt bargain with Donald Trump, and because the electorate is largely stupid, it didn't occur to them that Trump would renege on that bargain.
Shots: "One may only wonder what Second Lady Usha Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants, thinks."
I, too, wonder what Usha Vance thinks, but -- like a lot of immigrants whose families made it -- I think she's mentally pulled up the ladder and dismissed the fact that it could have been her at one time. See the many people of Indian heritage in the Trump administration, along with people of other once-vilified ethnicities.
I think that you're completely correct. She's decided that pulling up the ladder is more important than having a conscience. My guess is that she and Vance bonded over both feeling like cultural outsiders (her coming from an immigrant Indian family and him coming from a blue collar family in the Midwest) and their naked opportunism.
Yes, I always wonder what fairy tales Harmeet Dhillon has told herself about her specialness and how she is an exception to all the MAGA vitriol spewed at brown people like her. "They'll never come after me. I'm part of THEM".
She and her family followed the rules, that's what she is thinking. And her educated self is far more important to the US than some strawberry picker who crossed the border.
Self-delusion is a beautiful thing, isn't it? 😃 Then again, that's what Trump voters do every single day. Delude themselves into thinking he cares about them.
I can't claim to understand why some immigrants align with politicians who disparage them, but to me it looks similar to the way so many women identify with powerful, misogynistic, abusive men like Trump. It's partly a way of seeking protection and partly a way of vicariously enjoying power they know they'll never have themselves.
This should put an end to the speculation over whether Trump truly believes that 2020 was stolen. And with that, any doubt that he is not mentally well.
I heard some phone caller today, say it was impossible for Biden to get more votes than Obama, duh, the pop increased by twenty million and perhaps more got off the couch
I have two comments on the MTP interview. It's hard to believe this irrational POS is president of this country. Trump's detachment from any fact not manufacture in his own mind or his or in his sycophants is clearly visible in this interview. This man has access to the nuclear codes!
And, with his standard vitriol for women, he could not keep from addressing Welker as "darling" as he left, just to make sure she knew he was "putting her in her place." This unhinged man needs to be removed immediately, he is a supreme embarrassment and unfit to lead this country... morally, intellectually, and physically.
I would like to point out that while it is not a crime to simply party with Mr. Epstein and his ilk, it IS a crime to fail to report what happened at his parties. It IS a crime to know about sex trafficking, particularly of minors, and not report THAT crime.
A lot of people, a lot, knew perfectly well what was on offer from uber-host Epstein. They all know, whether they participated in the sex trade or not, that their failure to report was/is criminal.
And they all know Trump is the only thing between them and prison.
If you can't handle an interview with Kristen Welker- an All-American pitcher of softball questions- without hobbling off in a huff, you are truly a snowflake.
She DID try. And I think she did as well as anyone could have. But I would like her to just let Trump cook. She kept trying to pivot to Todd Blanche. Trump wanted to go on and on about the election. I think she should have let him just get crazier and crazier and more unhinged. Just let him explode. America needs to see who's running the country.
Except it makes it obvious he can't really be running the country in the UberCaesar mode he imagines. Which is scarier in a way, since he still has a big role in the process, and the nominally sane but power-hungry patricians involved are OK with the horrid outcomes.
It never ceases to amaze me that MAGA suckered their supporters into believing that only liberals were part of the Epstein class when most of the coverups were done by Alex Acosta, Pam Bondi and Todd Blance.
I normally can’t bring myself to watch Trump, but I watched that “Meet the Press” interview, every second of it. At the end, when he was so rude and insulting to Kristin Welker, I was amazed she held her composure. If she had slapped him I would’ve cheered, he was so bad. She deserves combat pay and a raise. He cannot stand it when women act like journalists and seek an actual answer to a legitimate question. He’s used to the simpering, obsequious likes of Maria Bartiromo, whose questions are, “How do remain so singularly awesome day after day?”. Welker reportedly called him again even after that train wreck of an interview and said he’d agreed to another one. I hope there isn’t one, he should stick to the safety of MAGA media.
Right wing complaints about the slowness of the California vote count remind me of the kid in the car kicking the driver’s seat and chanting, “Are we there yet?”. This is just like 2020 election night, when he was whine by midnight. Patience is not a MAGA virtue.
With every allegation of criminal or sleazy behavior by Trump, we eventually get to the point where his people say, "Yeah, he did it. So what ?" That's where we're headed with l'affaire Epstein. Todd Blanche says it's not a crime to "party" with Epstein. Well. The word "party" is doing a lot of work.
As long as "family values" continues to mean "close your eyes and stop whining when the billionaires come for your children," then yes. Hey those Purdue Pharmaceutical guys need yachts.
“There’s tremendous evidence. There’s nothing but evidence. . . . All I have to do is look. . . . I listen to people.”
Welcome to “The World According To Trump”: Heads I win, Tails you lose!
So 62 lawsuits later—all which were thrown out. Several recounts and audits and the results remained the same—Trump Lost.
Do you know who never got a constitutional recount (Florida) thanks to our venerated Supreme Court with the vote count under 5,000: Gore!
And he had more reason to be wary since Jeb Bush was the Governor. Pam Bondi (Secretary of State) was Dubya’s State election chair and also oversaw the elections, and there was ample evidence of state troopers stopping bus loads of minorities—while a bunch of yuppie brown shirts stormed the Miami election office stopping the recount.
And yet here we are. Pam Bondi, The Federalist Society, Heritage and an even more devious, nefarious and corrupt SCOTUS allowed Trump to destroy our Republic. Coincidence! Just saying!…:)
YouTube ads are all well and good (the Wal-Mart spoof is particularly clever), and probably make consultants a lot of money, but algorithms will make sure that those who need to see them won't see them. What those who oppose Trump need to do is start buying ad space on highway billboards in Trump country that show Trump palling around with Epstein, Musk, Bezos, etc. with the simple caption, "Do you really think these guys care about you?" That will put that question in people's heads every time they drive somewhere.
I agree. Making ads for the people the algorithms send them to seems like wasted time and money. I love the billboard idea. It'd be so simple to come up with ads that can work.
The one good thing to come out of the Democratic autopsy was the idea that ad buys are simply funding Republicans and their right-wing media at this point.
Bill wrote: "The vote on Blanche can become, it should become, a vote on Epstein." Trump probably understands this (if he understands anything at all nowadays) and may decide to avoid the issue and leave Blanche as acting as Congress goes into its summer recess. Based on recent experience, Blanche will overstay his allowed time as acting, will perform some odius official act which will be challenged and set aside by a competent judge.
Oh, and the humiliation of Trump by Iran and Israel will continue until morale improves.
The media's coverage of elections over the years is part of what makes some people believe elections are manipulated. The horse race talk...who's in the lead, who is trailing, so and so caught up to the leader, the leader fell back. That image of a race with horses or people running on a track leaves the mental image of action going on during the counting instead of simple counting of what is already there. Really all an election is is counting votes that were cast either before or on Election Day. Most states have extensive laws on how the process is to work. It isn't something left to chance or to elections officials or workers. Large cities won't have immediate results because there are so many more ballots to count.
I mildly bragged yesterday on T Miller's pod about the welker interview about MN
like more persons turn out, that was about it. and I got a reply, saying well in 2008 it took too long to get Franken across the line, the guy was weird, I simply said back, don't you have
your own U S Rep to worry about ? and I accused him of what about.
“It’s repulsive, bigoted demagoguery, all the more vile since it exploits an awful tragedy to praise the Trump administration’s efforts to stop “mass migration.” But what else is new?”
And an apt description of Vance. Let’s not forget how he weaponized the Haitians eating cats and dogs in Ohio incident.
Vance argued that repeating these claims was justified to draw media attention to the "suffering" caused by immigration policies, stating, "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention... then that's what I'm going to do". Vance—CNN
Bottom line, Vance and Trump will never let the truth get in the way of their nefarious agenda. To them and their movement it’s a zero sum game: The Ends Justify The Means! And the rest is history!…:)
It amazes me that anyone in Europe would respond to Vance with anything but "Oh, you're here because nobody trusts you in your own country, huh? Trump doesn't let you do anything, so sad."
1. Unfortunately, a lot of the places that vote en masse for Republicans do so because they perceive cultural and demographic changes (or ongoing tragedies) in their places as something being imposed upon them from outside, so they vote for Republicans to "stop the carnage." Amoral Republicans like Vance smell opportunities by finding useful scapegoats like immigrants. The problem is that the culprits of misery in Republican living areas are typically other Americans citizens, not immigrants. Case in point: Vance's mother was a nurse who became a drug addict by stealing drugs from her workplace.
2. I have a hobby of trolling Trumpers on social media by questioning them, and the Meet the Press interview interaction bears a resemblance to their behavior when they're asked about voter fraud:
-Me asking for evidence
-Trumpers not providing any evidence yet repeatedly claiming that it is happening and saying to "look around"
-After I point out that they're not providing any evidence and continue to ask for evidence, they mentally break down, call me names, and then disappear
The reason why a lot of Americans voted for Trump is because they share the same narcissistic beliefs about reality being optional.
3. Trump's quote "I love the farmers and the farmers love me" could simply be a wager that the average American farmer would pick their emotional needs of thinking that a wealthy celebrity really likes them over their pressing financial ones. He may not be wrong.
“it isn’t a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.”
Translation: Donald partied with Jeffrey.
Also, Epstein was not indicted for felony partying.
President Pedo
Blanche: "I’ll never say no, and we will always investigate any evidence of misconduct, but as you know, it is not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein. And some of these men may have done horrible things, and if we have evidence that allows us to prosecute them, you better believe we will. But it’s also the kind of thing that the American people need to understand that it isn’t a crime to party with Mr. Epstein."
< Tim rubs his eyes >
The one thing I'm grateful for during these last 11 years is people have revealed their true selves. For some, their ambition overrides their moral compass (assuming of course they had one to begin with), and this is the case for Blanche. He knows deep down that his boss is a moral degenerate of the highest order, and yet because he desperately wants to be AG, he's willing to do **anything** to get there. There's a high probability that Trump had sexual encounters with underage girls, which is why he appointed his own lawyer to acting AG in order to bury the evidence.
Speaking personally, I believe the country deserves the embarrassment and shame that comes with this. The electorate made an amoral, corrupt bargain with Donald Trump, and because the electorate is largely stupid, it didn't occur to them that Trump would renege on that bargain.
Surprise, motherfuckers.
Trump yelled at MTG in a phone call that “it would hurt his friends”- translation: him.
Exactly! The only true friend trump has is himself.
Roy Cohn springs to mind, though who’s the apprentice now…hmmmm? The conclusion here’s kinda risky “just desserts” but sure do get the sentiment.
Blanche's dinky law firm also netted a cool 5 million from his inept defense of Trump.
I think it was $9m, although I read $10m.
Maybe the five was just the Stormy Daniel's trial.
https://www.artofthesteal.org/actions/save-america-pac-blanche-law-legal-fees
some on the side, one could imagine
Oh no! The voters are so pure and good. They were just misled! 😎
Bill kristol, Andrew egger and Cathy Young standing up with the facts for democracy. Thanks
Shots: "One may only wonder what Second Lady Usha Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants, thinks."
I, too, wonder what Usha Vance thinks, but -- like a lot of immigrants whose families made it -- I think she's mentally pulled up the ladder and dismissed the fact that it could have been her at one time. See the many people of Indian heritage in the Trump administration, along with people of other once-vilified ethnicities.
Screw Usha. She married a man of empty ambition and situational ethics and deserves whatever is coming to do.
I don’t know how she lives with herself. Seems like the marriage from hell. Probably she mostly cares about her chy.
I think that you're completely correct. She's decided that pulling up the ladder is more important than having a conscience. My guess is that she and Vance bonded over both feeling like cultural outsiders (her coming from an immigrant Indian family and him coming from a blue collar family in the Midwest) and their naked opportunism.
Yes, I always wonder what fairy tales Harmeet Dhillon has told herself about her specialness and how she is an exception to all the MAGA vitriol spewed at brown people like her. "They'll never come after me. I'm part of THEM".
She and her family followed the rules, that's what she is thinking. And her educated self is far more important to the US than some strawberry picker who crossed the border.
Self-delusion is a beautiful thing, isn't it? 😃 Then again, that's what Trump voters do every single day. Delude themselves into thinking he cares about them.
She's thinking that her parents entered the country in the correct way so she is safe.
Michelle Malkin pulled this stunt years ago. Her mother wasn’t like those teachers who were trying to unionize, she was a real teacher.
Heck, currently vilified ethnicities!
Concerning pulling up the ladder -- see : Thomas, Clarence.
I almost wrote the same, exactly the same/ c thomas
Think? You can't stay with these moral degenerates and be thinking. That's why they all look blown out on booze and hopped up on goofballs.
I can't claim to understand why some immigrants align with politicians who disparage them, but to me it looks similar to the way so many women identify with powerful, misogynistic, abusive men like Trump. It's partly a way of seeking protection and partly a way of vicariously enjoying power they know they'll never have themselves.
Perhaps she's not fond of Sikhs.
You should link directly to the Meet the Press interview.
It is stunning how disconnected Trump is from reality.
Demonstrated through the interview, but particularly unraveling talking about paying J6 convicts.
At 34:00:
https://youtu.be/4EusZcKt5fs?si=xvtaGCkjzhGIdCQ-&t=2038
This should put an end to the speculation over whether Trump truly believes that 2020 was stolen. And with that, any doubt that he is not mentally well.
Eh, the only thing Trump truly believes is the little narcissistic voice inside his head. It tells him whatever it takes to protect his fragile ego.
I heard some phone caller today, say it was impossible for Biden to get more votes than Obama, duh, the pop increased by twenty million and perhaps more got off the couch
I have two comments on the MTP interview. It's hard to believe this irrational POS is president of this country. Trump's detachment from any fact not manufacture in his own mind or his or in his sycophants is clearly visible in this interview. This man has access to the nuclear codes!
He does, but he doesn’t know where they are or what they mean! We could only hope.
From your keyboard to God's ears.
And, with his standard vitriol for women, he could not keep from addressing Welker as "darling" as he left, just to make sure she knew he was "putting her in her place." This unhinged man needs to be removed immediately, he is a supreme embarrassment and unfit to lead this country... morally, intellectually, and physically.
I would like to point out that while it is not a crime to simply party with Mr. Epstein and his ilk, it IS a crime to fail to report what happened at his parties. It IS a crime to know about sex trafficking, particularly of minors, and not report THAT crime.
A lot of people, a lot, knew perfectly well what was on offer from uber-host Epstein. They all know, whether they participated in the sex trade or not, that their failure to report was/is criminal.
And they all know Trump is the only thing between them and prison.
If you can't handle an interview with Kristen Welker- an All-American pitcher of softball questions- without hobbling off in a huff, you are truly a snowflake.
She's better than Dana Bash, at least.
She DID try. And I think she did as well as anyone could have. But I would like her to just let Trump cook. She kept trying to pivot to Todd Blanche. Trump wanted to go on and on about the election. I think she should have let him just get crazier and crazier and more unhinged. Just let him explode. America needs to see who's running the country.
Except it makes it obvious he can't really be running the country in the UberCaesar mode he imagines. Which is scarier in a way, since he still has a big role in the process, and the nominally sane but power-hungry patricians involved are OK with the horrid outcomes.
These weren’t softball questions, & she was dogged, God bless her.
It never ceases to amaze me that MAGA suckered their supporters into believing that only liberals were part of the Epstein class when most of the coverups were done by Alex Acosta, Pam Bondi and Todd Blance.
I normally can’t bring myself to watch Trump, but I watched that “Meet the Press” interview, every second of it. At the end, when he was so rude and insulting to Kristin Welker, I was amazed she held her composure. If she had slapped him I would’ve cheered, he was so bad. She deserves combat pay and a raise. He cannot stand it when women act like journalists and seek an actual answer to a legitimate question. He’s used to the simpering, obsequious likes of Maria Bartiromo, whose questions are, “How do remain so singularly awesome day after day?”. Welker reportedly called him again even after that train wreck of an interview and said he’d agreed to another one. I hope there isn’t one, he should stick to the safety of MAGA media.
Right wing complaints about the slowness of the California vote count remind me of the kid in the car kicking the driver’s seat and chanting, “Are we there yet?”. This is just like 2020 election night, when he was whine by midnight. Patience is not a MAGA virtue.
Watch her body language, too. As she pressed him on various points, she was leaning in toward him, not backing away. That probably drove him nuts.
You’re right, her voice was calm, but she was pressing the attack.
Too bad she didn't say "Shut up Piggy!".
I hope someday some woman reporter snaps and does that. (She’d probably get fired for it, though….)
I am so looking forward to it!
With every allegation of criminal or sleazy behavior by Trump, we eventually get to the point where his people say, "Yeah, he did it. So what ?" That's where we're headed with l'affaire Epstein. Todd Blanche says it's not a crime to "party" with Epstein. Well. The word "party" is doing a lot of work.
The party of traditional, family values was always destined to end up supporting a historical moral degenerate.
As long as "family values" continues to mean "close your eyes and stop whining when the billionaires come for your children," then yes. Hey those Purdue Pharmaceutical guys need yachts.
Traditional family values like being married to your cousin? Why do rural folks from WV and KY so identify with the orange Jesus?
It's definitely doing the heavy lifting!
Parties include raping children apparently.
“There’s tremendous evidence. There’s nothing but evidence. . . . All I have to do is look. . . . I listen to people.”
Welcome to “The World According To Trump”: Heads I win, Tails you lose!
So 62 lawsuits later—all which were thrown out. Several recounts and audits and the results remained the same—Trump Lost.
Do you know who never got a constitutional recount (Florida) thanks to our venerated Supreme Court with the vote count under 5,000: Gore!
And he had more reason to be wary since Jeb Bush was the Governor. Pam Bondi (Secretary of State) was Dubya’s State election chair and also oversaw the elections, and there was ample evidence of state troopers stopping bus loads of minorities—while a bunch of yuppie brown shirts stormed the Miami election office stopping the recount.
And yet here we are. Pam Bondi, The Federalist Society, Heritage and an even more devious, nefarious and corrupt SCOTUS allowed Trump to destroy our Republic. Coincidence! Just saying!…:)
YouTube ads are all well and good (the Wal-Mart spoof is particularly clever), and probably make consultants a lot of money, but algorithms will make sure that those who need to see them won't see them. What those who oppose Trump need to do is start buying ad space on highway billboards in Trump country that show Trump palling around with Epstein, Musk, Bezos, etc. with the simple caption, "Do you really think these guys care about you?" That will put that question in people's heads every time they drive somewhere.
They absolutely are doing billboards: https://newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/sticker-shock-summer-temperatures
Great to see that!
I agree. Making ads for the people the algorithms send them to seems like wasted time and money. I love the billboard idea. It'd be so simple to come up with ads that can work.
I agree, too. They won't see it on social media, but they will see it when they drive.
If you have "Facebook friends" who are magats, share the videos. That way at least some magats see them.
Move On and Inequity in the Media are doing this.
I share them on "The Book of Face" where my magat acquaintances see them.
The one good thing to come out of the Democratic autopsy was the idea that ad buys are simply funding Republicans and their right-wing media at this point.
Bill wrote: "The vote on Blanche can become, it should become, a vote on Epstein." Trump probably understands this (if he understands anything at all nowadays) and may decide to avoid the issue and leave Blanche as acting as Congress goes into its summer recess. Based on recent experience, Blanche will overstay his allowed time as acting, will perform some odius official act which will be challenged and set aside by a competent judge.
Oh, and the humiliation of Trump by Iran and Israel will continue until morale improves.
The media's coverage of elections over the years is part of what makes some people believe elections are manipulated. The horse race talk...who's in the lead, who is trailing, so and so caught up to the leader, the leader fell back. That image of a race with horses or people running on a track leaves the mental image of action going on during the counting instead of simple counting of what is already there. Really all an election is is counting votes that were cast either before or on Election Day. Most states have extensive laws on how the process is to work. It isn't something left to chance or to elections officials or workers. Large cities won't have immediate results because there are so many more ballots to count.
I mildly bragged yesterday on T Miller's pod about the welker interview about MN
like more persons turn out, that was about it. and I got a reply, saying well in 2008 it took too long to get Franken across the line, the guy was weird, I simply said back, don't you have
your own U S Rep to worry about ? and I accused him of what about.
Yup, the media tries to pretend every race is a dead heat, which makes this problem worse.
“It’s repulsive, bigoted demagoguery, all the more vile since it exploits an awful tragedy to praise the Trump administration’s efforts to stop “mass migration.” But what else is new?”
And an apt description of Vance. Let’s not forget how he weaponized the Haitians eating cats and dogs in Ohio incident.
Vance argued that repeating these claims was justified to draw media attention to the "suffering" caused by immigration policies, stating, "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention... then that's what I'm going to do". Vance—CNN
Bottom line, Vance and Trump will never let the truth get in the way of their nefarious agenda. To them and their movement it’s a zero sum game: The Ends Justify The Means! And the rest is history!…:)
myself, I continually think of his speech in Germany
It amazes me that anyone in Europe would respond to Vance with anything but "Oh, you're here because nobody trusts you in your own country, huh? Trump doesn't let you do anything, so sad."
Great point. I would love to see them do that. So far, they still acting too cautiously and diplomatically—still deferring to the global decorum.
They need to wake up, the world has changed…:)
A couple of responses:
1. Unfortunately, a lot of the places that vote en masse for Republicans do so because they perceive cultural and demographic changes (or ongoing tragedies) in their places as something being imposed upon them from outside, so they vote for Republicans to "stop the carnage." Amoral Republicans like Vance smell opportunities by finding useful scapegoats like immigrants. The problem is that the culprits of misery in Republican living areas are typically other Americans citizens, not immigrants. Case in point: Vance's mother was a nurse who became a drug addict by stealing drugs from her workplace.
2. I have a hobby of trolling Trumpers on social media by questioning them, and the Meet the Press interview interaction bears a resemblance to their behavior when they're asked about voter fraud:
-Me asking for evidence
-Trumpers not providing any evidence yet repeatedly claiming that it is happening and saying to "look around"
-After I point out that they're not providing any evidence and continue to ask for evidence, they mentally break down, call me names, and then disappear
The reason why a lot of Americans voted for Trump is because they share the same narcissistic beliefs about reality being optional.
3. Trump's quote "I love the farmers and the farmers love me" could simply be a wager that the average American farmer would pick their emotional needs of thinking that a wealthy celebrity really likes them over their pressing financial ones. He may not be wrong.