Ray Hartmann

Trump mused about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. This is much worse

This is far worse than shooting someone on Fifth Avenue.

President Donald Trump is demanding nearly a quarter of a billion U.S. tax dollars to satisfy a claim of his — a frivolous, absurd and specious claim — that he had been maliciously prosecuted by the Department of Justice. He wasn’t. But that won’t keep him from trying to have a cool $230 million transferred from Americans’ bank accounts to his.

If Trump shot someone on Fifth Avenue, as he once famously mused he could do, it would be a terrible thing with blood, guts and gore. But at least there’d be only one victim.

What he’s doing now at the DOJ doesn’t involve the hypothetical of someone getting shot. But it is real life and would defraud an entire nation.

And we’re not talking chump change: Trump’s haul would more than double what thieves heisted last Sunday in jewels from the Louvre in Paris, in one of the most famous robberies in history.

And back here at home, the American taxpayer would be paying the thief.

Pulling off this con in plain sight requires only the approval of — wait for it — his very own lawyers, who Trump has conveniently placed in control of that very DOJ. Perhaps they’ll deliberate agonizingly over the ethics of this. I’m going to guess not.

The New York Times led with the story Tuesday. But early on, it’s not catching fire — not breaking through the partisan wall — as much as it deserves.

In it, Trump came off like the Joker.

“I have a lawsuit that was doing very well, and when I became president, I said, I’m sort of suing myself,” Mr. Trump said, adding: “It sort of looks bad, I’m suing myself, right? So I don’t know. But that was a lawsuit that was very strong, very powerful.”

Credit Trump for some uncommon candor. It sort of looks bad.

Actually, as the Times noted, it’s a civil claim — not a lawsuit — that’s involved here. Or more precisely, a “demand” now that Trump has returned to the presidency.

The Times summed up the outrageousness of the heist pretty well:

The situation has no parallel in American history, as Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president’s former lawyers atop the Justice Department.

Let’s not call this a “potential ethical conflict.” The word “potential” doesn’t belong in that sentence any more than the word “ethical” should find itself in the same paragraph with “Trump.”

And let’s not forget that this is the same Trump who told ABC News in 2019, “Article II allows me to do whatever I want.”

In this case, it means not just using the DOJ as his personal law firm. It’s more like an investment firm.

Before he was president, Trump had filed two administrative claims against the Justice Department. The first demands roughly $100 million for the Russia investigation. The second seeks $130 million for the Mar-a-Lago search and classified documents prosecution.

His legal theory? “Malicious prosecution” — that investigating him violated his rights.

But “malicious prosecution” requires proof that prosecution was initiated without probable cause. Trump can’t meet that standard because probable cause clearly existed.

On Russia: Intelligence agencies documented election interference. Trump campaign officials had documented contacts with Russian operatives. Multiple associates were convicted. Grand juries — ordinary citizens, not political appointees — reviewed evidence and voted to indict. That’s textbook probable cause.
On Mar-a-Lago: The National Archives requested documents. Trump’s lawyers falsely certified all were returned. A subpoena was issued. Trump still didn’t comply. The FBI executed a lawfully authorized search warrant — approved by a federal judge who reviewed probable cause — and found classified documents exactly where they said they would be.

The facts are obvious here: Trump has no serious claim against the DOJ, not anymore than he has some non-existent lawsuit he has been referencing publicly. But since former AG Merrick Garland and staff never got around to tossing the claim in the garbage — there’s a shocker — Trump has landed upon what he truly does best.

He has himself one brilliant con job.

Consider this: Justice Department regulations require approval by the Deputy Attorney General or the head of the Civil Division for settlements of $4 million or more.

And who might the deputy attorney general be? Why, it’s Todd Blanche — Trump’s former lead criminal defense lawyer — recently famous for his white-glove treatment of convicted child-sex predator Ghislaine Maxwell in an utterly inappropriate visit in prison.

Everyone knows Blanche is Trump’s legal muscle. And there’s Stanley Woodward Jr., chief of the Civil Division, who represented Trump’s co-defendant Walt Nauta in the classified documents case. And numerous Trump associates in January 6 investigations.

Oh, and in July, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired the Justice Department’s top ethics adviser — the person whose job was to flag exactly this kind of conflict. What could possibly go wrong now?

America can rest easy noting that these independent tigers will bring total objectivity to evaluating whether their master should receive the $230 million he so obviously deserves to cover a tiny piece of the pain and suffering he endured at the hands of horrible people trying to enforce so-called “laws.”

And the DOJ Trump team will not be alone. They’ll be joined by his Congressional servants and the MAGA state-media stars who undoubtedly will either bury the story or reinvent it as good deed by the president.

There was a hint in the Times story about how that might be spun:

“Asked about the issue at the White House after this article published, the president said, ‘I was damaged very greatly and any money I would get, I would give to charity.’

He added, ‘I’m the one that makes the decision and that decision would have to go across my desk and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.’”

Yes, awfully strange. If by strange you mean “openly corrupt.” But the real tell was Trump’s assertion about the heist benefitting charity.

What a comforting thought from the greatest grifter of all time.

A 2016 audit by the Washington Post found that Trump claimed to have given more than $100 million to charity over about five years, but in fact many of the contributions could not be verified and much of the actual giving appeared minimal.

Or as Vanity Fair noted that year, “We found less than $10,000 over seven years” given to charities that Trump claimed to have donated to.

But if Trump can pull off his con, the charity detail will get lost as a footnote. In fact, what’s as troubling as anything is how this scandalous conduct may get washed away by the “flooding the zone” strategy diabolically authored by Trump whisperer Steve Bannon.

Sure, what Trump’s doing with the DOJ “has no parallel in American history,” as the Times noted. That probably won’t matter because as wrongdoing goes, it’s not going to be nearly as famous as Trump’s Fifth Avenue shooting hypothetical.

Even though it’s worse.

Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox.

Behold, a Trumper so vile the only surprise is she didn't shoot this dog herself

Chop was a Rottweiler. He lived with his family in a quiet neighborhood in El Paso, Texas.

On September 9, Border Patrol agents showed up at their home to see if migrants were there. When the family’s son answered the door, he permitted the agents to search his home, saying he had nothing to hide.

But he asked if they could wait first while he put the family dog, Chop, a Rottweiler, away in the bathroom before they walked in, as the dog could be aggressive. He did so. But when he went out to his pickup to retrieve the ID agents had requested, the same agents opened the bathroom door and shot Chop.

What’s more, none of the Border Patrol agents helped the family, who desperately tried to render aid to Chop as he bled to death on the kitchen floor. And never mind the detail that, it turns out, Border Patrol terrorized legal citizens and murdered a family member while following a false lead.

Border patrol issued the following statement:

“On Sept. 9 at 7:15 a.m., a U.S. Border Patrol agent was involved in a use of force incident in El Paso, Texas during an investigation into alien smuggling at a residence. The incident involved a canine. The use of force is currently under review by CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility in accordance with CBP policies. CBP takes such incidents seriously.”

Well, of course, they take it seriously. When you work for a soulless dog murderer like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, killing a canine is a badge of honor — and likely grounds for a juicy promotion.

It is a sign of our times that this particular murder didn’t become widely known until this week, when it went viral thanks to the account “We Rate Dogs” — and then others — posting it on Instagram. The initial news story reported by KFOX14 in El Paso had gone unnoticed in the media until then.

I learned about this at the Drudge Report under the blaring headline “ICE SLAUGHTERS FAMILY DOG.” Technically, that’s not precise — ICE and the Border Patrol are separate agencies working under Homeland Security for the same purpose under Donald Trump, which is to terrorize Brown people for sport and political gain.

So I offer no apology for using the headline shorthand of “ICE” — they’re all the same to me. If America can survive the Trump presidency, ICE in its current form should be dismantled and its legitimate functions restructured. After some of its perpetrators face justice.

We are living, in real time, through one of the darkest periods in the nation’s history. Look at what has happened this week alone:

In Everett, Massachusetts, ICE took a 13-year-old from police custody after a school arrest, moved him to Virginia, and never told his waiting mother. A “disappearance” — proudly modeled in the image of President Vladimir Putin.
In Washington, D.C., where the National Guard already patrols under Trump’s “crime emergency” declaration, ICE sweeps have forced businesses to close. City officials say they got no warning.
In Chicago, a community-run Facebook page used to track ICE activity was taken down by Meta at the request of the Justice Department. Nothing says North Korea better than a little state censorship of people trying to avoid being swept up by government forces.
In Los Angeles, ICE raids became so chaotic that the county declared an emergency. Shelters were overrun. Families vanished. And no one in the federal government gave a damn.

ICE and Border Patrol are no longer legitimate law enforcement agencies. They represent a paramilitary force with zero transparency and all the swagger of a dictatorship’s interior ministry.

And the moral fiber of Kristi Noem.

As for Chop? He wasn’t even an undocumented dog.

Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox.

How Trump's racism-fueled revenge tour came for workers in St. Louis

Donald Trump’s revenge tour has come to St. Louis.

But this time, it’s not about prosecutors or political enemies. It’s about dismantling civil rights programs — and it’s personal.

Nearly 2,000 minority and women-owned businesses at Lambert International Airport just learned they must prove they were discriminated against — with evidence locked in their competitors’ files — or lose their ability to bid on federal contracts.

Under new Trump administration guidelines issued last week, contractors must submit “personal narratives” detailing specific economic harm compared to “non-disadvantaged” businesses. They must prove, with a “preponderance of evidence,” that they were denied financing on terms their white competitors received.

How are they supposed to find the evidence? Bank loan terms are confidential. Competitors’ financing deals are private. The contractors are being asked to document discrimination they cannot possibly access.

They can’t. And that’s precisely the point.

The targets of Trump’s dismantling campaign? Civil rights programs created to remedy the exact kind of discrimination he was accused of — and denied — more than a half-century ago.

In 1973, the Nixon administration’s Department of Justice sued Donald Trump and his father for refusing to rent apartments to Black families across 39 buildings in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. The government charged that Trump Management refused to rent to people “because of race and color,” required different rental terms based on race, and misrepresented to Black families that apartments weren’t available.

Trump’s response to the federal civil rights lawsuit?

“They are absolutely ridiculous. We never have discriminated, and we never would.”

He settled without admitting wrongdoing, paid no fine, and faced no requirement to prove his innocence. The discrimination lawsuit — backed by DOJ lawyers, civil rights investigators, and documented evidence — simply went away.

Fifty-two years later, President Trump demands that minority contractors prove they’ve been discriminated against, using evidence they cannot access, or lose their ability to compete for federal contracts.

The double standard is the point: Discrimination you can deny, even with the Justice Department’s lawyers and evidence arrayed against you. Oppression you must document in triplicate, with impossible proof, or lose everything.

The timing couldn’t be worse for St. Louis. Lambert is planning a $2.8 billion terminal renovation — the largest construction project in the region in decades. From 2015 to 2019, the airport reported 28. percent participation by disadvantaged businesses under the old program. Those billions in contracts represented real wealth-building in communities systematically excluded from economic opportunity.

Now the rules change just as the money arrives. Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis City NAACP, had this to say to the Post-Dispatch:

“By shifting the burden of proof onto minority and disadvantaged business owners with these deeply subjective requirements, the federal government risks reviving old discriminatory barriers under the guise of ‘neutrality.’”

That word — neutrality — is a lie. In an unequal system built on centuries of exclusion, “neutrality” isn’t neutral. It freezes existing disparities in place. It has nothing to do with merit; it’s about returning to the days when white, male contractors got pretty much all the business.

The Lambert changes are part of a coordinated national assault on diversity programs. On his first day in office, Trump displayed his contempt for the civil rights movement of the 1960s by revoking the 1965 executive order requiring federal contractors to maintain affirmative action plans.

In May, the DoJ moved to dismantle the entire $37 billion Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program serving 49,000 contractors nationwide. All federal DEI staff have been placed on leave for eventual termination.

It cannot be overstated that the DBE program itself was created in 1983 during the Reagan administration. Republicans who go along with Trump’s treachery might want to keep Reagan’s name out of their mouths.

Reagan did, after all, sign off on a bipartisan acknowledgment that discrimination in contracting was real and required remedy. Federal officials estimate the new rules will cause a 10 percent nationwide drop in certified firms and cost $92 million to implement. But those numbers vastly understate the impact.

This follows the blueprint laid out in Project 2025, which explicitly called for prosecuting “all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers” with DEI programs.

As John Bowman, president of NAACP St. Louis County and an airport commissioner, aptly told the Post-Dispatch, the “political scapegoating … will have a devastating impact on minority and women-owned businesses.” Which, of course, was Project 2025’s dream outcome.

The contractors at Lambert aren’t asking for handouts. They’re asking for what the DBE program was designed to provide: a fair shot at competing for publicly funded work after decades of documented exclusion. Now they’re being told to prove they deserved that shot all along—to produce evidence of their own oppression as a prerequisite for economic participation.

This answers a fundamental question about who gets to build America’s infrastructure — and who gets built out of the American dream entirely. The man who said “we never have discriminated, and we never would” — while the Justice Department documented otherwise — now demands minority contractors prove their discrimination with evidence he never had to produce.

Say this much for Donald Trump. When it comes to settling old grievances about getting busted for racism, he has a fine memory.

Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox.

The lies have it: how Trump's most loyal trooper reached a new low

It’s a shame they don’t play entrance music for witnesses at U.S. Senate hearings.

Attorney General Pam Bondi came to the Senate Judiciary Committee to praise Donald Trump — and make sure no one tried to bury him — and she spent four defiant hours doing just that. Bondi, famous for choreographing her endless Fox News cameos, surely wishes she could have rolled out more production values on Tuesday.

Just imagine the potential.

“Pam Bondi strolled to the witness chair wearing a MAGA hat to the beautiful sounds of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” Sean Hannity could have reported. “If that didn’t bring tears to your eyes, you’re some radical leftist or squish. Definitely not human.”

Unfortunately, Bondi had to settle for lip syncing the words. But in a MAGA movement so sexist as to publicly embrace submissiveness as a special virtue for its women — even though the men are just as pathetic — Bondi outdid herself.

Bondi “dodged questions on 14 topics” — which you have to admit is pretty impressive — according to the Washington Post’s scorecard. Here’s just a smattering of Bondi’s groveling devotion to her man:

Bondi stated, “My attorneys have done incredible work advancing President Trump’s agenda and protecting the Executive Branch from judicial overreach” — arguably the most blatant rejection of any pretense of DOJ independence from the presidency ever recorded in the Senate.
When asked by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) if the Epstein investigation files included incriminating photos of Trump with half-naked young women, Bondi didn’t say no — she chose to attack the senator instead.
She told Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL): “I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump. And, currently, the National Guard are on the way to Chicago. If you’re not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will.”
When questioned about reports that former FBI Director James Comey’s indictment came shortly after President Trump publicly called for his prosecution, Bondi refused to discuss any conversations she had with the White House, repeatedly stating, “I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House.”
Bondi declined to discuss internal conversations with the White House about National Guard deployments or DOJ decisions — then turned and attacked Democrats for politicizing law enforcement.
Declined to answer Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) about whether she was firing career prosecutors solely because they worked on January 6 cases Trump doesn’t like.
When pressed by Sen. Whitehouse on $50,000 in cash delivered to Trump border czar Tom Homan, she wouldn’t confirm or deny — instead telling him, “Senator, you’re welcome to talk to the FBI.”

Confrontational hearings between officials of any administration and senators are hardly new. But the degree to which Bondi disrespected the process — apparently in keeping with Trump’s new playbook in which witnesses attack the character of adversarial senators rather than respond to their questions — is in a league of its own.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) afterwards called it “possibly a new low for attorneys general testifying before the United States Congress,” saying, “Her apparent strategy is to attack and conceal. I have never seen anything close to it in terms of the combativeness, the evasiveness and sometimes deceptiveness.”

It really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. October marks the 12th anniversary of Bondi’s first act of public fealty to Trump. Back then, she was Florida’s attorney general and he was just a famous guy whose Trump University happened to be getting sued by the state of New York as a fraudulent “sham.”

Here’s how a Palm Beach Post editorial described what took place in October 2013:

Just days after Ms. Bondi’s office announced that it might join a lawsuit against Mr. Trump and his school, Mr. Trump’s foundation cut a $25,000 check to a Bondi re-election committee. Despite the timing, the political committee found nothing amiss. It kept the money and Ms. Bondi decided not to participate in the lawsuit.

Twelve years later, it was hardly Bondi’s first Trump rodeo when she bent the knee at the Senate hearing. It won’t be the last.

But she’ll be hard pressed to surpass the unintended irony she displayed in personally attacking Trump nemesis Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) rather than answering any of his questions.

“If you worked for me, you would have been fired because you were censured by Congress for lying,” Bondi told Schiff, without a hint of self-awareness.

Talk about a government shutdown. If Trump’s inner circle was subjected to that standard, he would be obligated under the Bondi standard to utter his famous “You’re fired!” to every single one of them.

Including, most definitely, Pam Bondi.

This GOP gov's National Guard ploy is an absolute scam — but ICE horrors are all too real

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe made headlines this week by “activating” the National Guard to assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The detail buried in most stories: He deployed just 15 people.

If the news landed in your inboxes, you might have been drawn in like this:

“Missouri Gov. Kehoe activates National Guard to assist ICE agents”

Or this:

“Missouri ‘authorizes’ National Guard to assist ICE’s deportations statewide”

Or this:

“Gov. Kehoe authorizes Missouri National Guard to assist in ICE enforcement.”

Bet you didn’t know from those headlines that this bold initiative involved 15 men and women in a state of 6.24 million people. Bet also you didn’t know that these poor folks will be assisting ICE’s creepy crackdown from the comfort of desks at undisclosed locations.

Far be it from me to minimize the potential impact of such an operation. I mean, dispatching 0.00024 percent of our population to work desk jobs is not nothing in the fight against crime.

At that rate, St. Louis County would qualify for two people. The city of St. Louis might proportionately receive three‑fifths of a person, in keeping with the prevailing thought patterns of many of our state legislators.

But let’s not diminish this bold commitment on the part of our governor. It was such a profound announcement that the media was captivated to the point of forgetting to ask some basic questions — or at least forgot to report the answers in all the excitement.

Such as these:

What exactly will these 15 guardsmen be doing? Are they answering phones? Filing documents? Processing detainee records? Is this top‑secret law‑enforcement support, or an upgrade to the ICE employee lunchroom?
Do they have security clearance to access ICE systems? These are federal databases containing immigration records, legal casework and sensitive personal information. If no clearance is needed, why not?
What training — if any — did these guardsmen receive to do ICE work? Clerical support in a federal law‑enforcement agency isn’t just about typing fast. It involves complex processes, legal standards and chain‑of‑custody rules.
How does pushing paper actually “free up” ICE field agents? In almost all law‑enforcement agencies, a clear distinction exists between personnel behind desks and those risking their lives in the field. Are we to believe that the guys wearing masks, kicking down doors and hauling off suspects also change printer cartridges in their spare time?
Where, exactly, are these guardsmen being stationed? Which ICE offices? For how long? Who’s supervising them? Who requested them? And who benefits from their presence?

These questions answer themselves. The security clearances alone take months. Desk work doesn’t free up field agents. But here’s what does work for scoring cheap political points: a press release. And nothing more.

From the standpoint of millions of immigrants — legal or otherwise — the United States is functioning as a dictatorship. Racial and ethnic profiling of citizens and non‑citizens alike (many of the latter being here legally) has been sanctioned by the Supreme Court.

Most of us don’t experience that terror personally. But that doesn’t make it any less dangerously un-American.

Donald Trump and soulless minions like Deputy Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller gleefully terrorize America’s immigrant community by the hour. Like Kehoe’s frivolous announcement, this filthy enterprise rages on a foundation of lies.

According to recent data, about 65 percent of people booked into ICE detention have no criminal convictions whatsoever. More than 93 percent have no violent convictions. The agents supposedly “freed up” by these 15 guardsmen in Missouri are being dispatched to raid workplaces and homes to arrest individuals whose only violation is a civil immigration matter.

But the evidence shows this campaign isn’t just cruel — it’s catastrophically counterproductive. The Peterson Institute for International Economics projects that if 8.3 million undocumented immigrants are deported, GDP will fall 7.4 percent by 2028. When 500,000 undocumented workers were deported through the Secure Communities program, the result wasn’t more jobs for Americans — it was 44,000 fewer jobs held by U.S.-born workers.

Back in Missouri, 15 guardsmen will shuffle papers they’re not trained to process, potentially accessing systems they’re not cleared for, supposedly freeing field agents who do entirely different work.

None of this matters to Kehoe. The fraud isn’t a bug — it’s the feature. He’s not protecting Missourians’ safety. He’s protecting his own political standing, giving his base red meat while economists warn this policy will devastate the economy and cost American workers their jobs.

Fifteen Guardsmen. That’s what protecting politicians looks like.

Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox.

You thought Trump couldn't go any lower. Guess what?

President Donald Trump disgraced America again on Tuesday.

That’s business as usual, in most contexts. But this time Trump projected his psychosis beyond the customary bounds of American politics.

Trump stood before the United Nations General Assembly and delivered a rant filled with insults and lies that might go down in history as the vilest of its kind.

Presumably speaking for all of us Americans, Trump told the entire world to f––– off.

Among the most vile lowlights of Trump’s tantrum:

He dismissed climate change as a “con job,” mocking decades of scientific consensus in front of world leaders who have committed themselves to fighting rising seas and burning forests.
He framed immigration as a global poison, attacking nations that take in refugees while offering no solutions — just fear, contempt and seething xenophobia.
He claimed Christianity is the most persecuted religion on Earth, an inflammatory lie intended to stoke division and grievance while pandering to his White Nationalist base.
He vomited falsehoods that he had presumably “resolved” seven major conflicts — including Israel-Iran and India-Pakistan, rewriting reality while of course offering no proof since none exists and drawing eye-rolls, not applause.
He told U.N. diplomats their countries are “going to hell” for permitting too much immigration, then basked in the moment like he was inflaming a rally crowd, not representing all Americans at a global forum.

Here’s how the Wall Street Journal news report characterized the speech:

In an hour-long speech filled with grievances about ongoing wars, windmills and malfunctioning escalators, it was Trump’s attacks against what he called a “double-tailed monster” that rang loudest in the ornate General Assembly room.

“Immigration and the high cost of so-called green, renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world and a large part of our planet,” he said.

“Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast because of their policies on these two subjects. Both immigration and their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe.”

Immigration in particular was ruining other nations, Trump insisted: “Your countries are going to hell.”

(Now, if you’re wondering about the escalator references, Trump was whining like a toddler about how an escalator in the UN building had stopped for a moment, briefly stranding him and First Lady Melania Trump. All our hearts go out to Melania.)

Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with a U.S. president calling out the UN for perceived ineffectiveness. Many Americans share that concern — and while some of us would rather see constructive, adult engagement to improve the UN’s efforts, that would remain perfectly within the bounds of propriety.

But that’s not what Trump did yesterday. He put on world display a level of hatred and boorishness — and a cringeworthy lack of gravitas — that certainly had diplomats the world over shaking their heads. Even beyond what they have come to expect.

Two days before the UN speech, Trump delivered one just as toxic at the memorial service for slain conservative icon Charlie Kirk. There, he proclaimed, “I hate my opponent, I don’t wish him well.”

That, of course, was a message to the sizable majority of Americans — at least 60 percent and counting — who disapprove of Trump today. Without apology, he let hundreds of millions of Americans know of his hatred for them.

But Trump didn’t just stop with us today. He also let it be known that he hates the world.

“Your countries are going to hell!” Trump raged.

That’s the only way he’d ever get to know them better.

Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox.

Trump's TikTok dealings should've set this GOP toady roaring. His silence speaks volumes

You're not going to believe this, but it appears the cat’s got Josh Hawley’s tongue.

The junior senator from Missouri — known for his unwavering ability to detect Communist infiltration in American tech companies from eight area codes away — has suddenly gone quiet.

Interesting timing, too.

Because on Friday, President Donald Trump announced progress on a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to block any U.S. sale or ban of TikTok in exchange for vague “national security commitments” that sound suspiciously like business as usual.

That would be the same TikTok that Hawley has passionately demanded be banned, or at least completely removed from Chinese involvement.

“TikTok — and its parent company ByteDance — are threats to American national security,” Hawley wrote in 2023, to then Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. He’s repeated that theme dozens if not hundreds of times as a senator.

So, you can imagine Hawley’s indignation when the Washington Post reported this:

“A ByteDance spokesperson in a statement Friday thanked Trump and Xi and said the company would work 'to ensure TikTok remains available to American users through TikTok U.S.'”

Shockingly, you could hear a pin drop. Hawley — arguably second to none among U.S. politicians in garnering attention and air time on every subject imaginable — has gone dark. No tweets, no press releases, no rushing to Fox News, no nothing.

So in the spirit of filling the void, let’s revisit what Josh Hawley has been screaming from the mountaintops for several years about TikTok — before it became a Trump-friendly enterprise. Here are just a few of his greatest hits:

“TikTok is digital fentanyl that’s addicting our kids and stealing their data!”
— Hawley, 2023
“TikTok is a surveillance tool for the Chinese Communist Party.”
— Hawley, 2022
“Every time you use TikTok, you're giving your information to Beijing.”
— Hawley, 2021
“We are literally subsidizing the destruction of our children’s mental health.”
— Hawley, 2023
“This is mind control by a foreign adversary — and Democrats won’t act.”
— Hawley, 2024

But now that Trump has personally intervened to compromise on TikTok’s Chinese ownership, Hawley apparently no longer thinks it’s all that big a deal, after all.

Just because he authored the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, which was successfully signed into law, and a broader No TikTok on United States Devices Act, doesn’t mean Hawley cannot mind “some TikTok.”

This is the same senator who once told Fox News that Democrats were “kneeling before Chairman Xi” for not banning the app. So what is that Trump’s doing?

Let’s put it this way. If President Joe Biden had done this, Hawley would have demanded a vote by this afternoon on Articles of Impeachment. He would have hosted a special tonight on Fox News.

Now, maybe not so much.

It turns out, according to the Post, sources are saying the deal Trump is working on with Xi would be hugely beneficial to Trump BFF Larry Ellison, “the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, a tech giant that will own a stake in the U.S. spin-off and provide it cloud-computing and technical services.”

Just can’t get wait to see Hawley teeing off in the Senate about this one.

In 2020, an Esquire writer aptly said, “The most dangerous place to stand in Washington D.C. is any place between Senator Josh Hawley and a live microphone.”

That was before we had a dictator.

Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox.

Jimmy Kimmel wasn't suspended for what he said about Charlie Kirk

It is important to get this right.

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel was suspended indefinitely Wednesday by ABC and his late-night show appears to have come to an end. It has been widely misreported that the action was related to the Charlie Kirk murder and its aftermath.

It was not.

Virtually every story about the sacking carried a headline referencing Kirk. The implication was clear that Kimmel was dismissed for something he said about Kirk. That’s the first thing I thought when the news broke.

That did not happen.

Donald Trump had Kimmel taken off the air — as he has suggested would happen after a similar fate befell Stephen Colbert as CBS — because he wanted to.

And because he could.

No need to call in Sherlock Holmes. Trump has long despised Kimmel, along with the entire mainstream media, which he routinely describes — in the grand tradition of history’s worst authoritarians — as “the enemy of the people.”

It’s obvious that Trump dispatched Brendan Carr, his sycophantic chairman of the FCC to put out the hit on Kimmel. Carr, a co-author of Project 2025, apparently did just that, and Disney — pushed by Nexstar, owner of roughly 30 of its ABC affiliates — rolled over.

This is the same Disney that folded a poker hand with four aces in December 2024, to “settle” for $15 million in a sham defamation lawsuit filed by Trump. It seems that Disney had far more to lose than $15 million — exponentially more — by crossing the incoming president.

So, it’s just another footnote to the story that Nexstar also has much larger fish to fry with the Trump administration — needing approval from Carr’s FCC for a pending, controversial, $6.2 billion merger with Tegna. It’s an instant replay of CBS putting profits above principle when it paid off Trump to save a proposed Paramount mega-merger with Skydance from sleeping with the fishes.

Carr offers no pretense of serving as anything but a corrupt political hack. Hours before the Kimmel announcement, he visited the friendly confines of Benny Johnson’s prominent conservative podcast and said this:

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

Sneering at the theoretical independence of the FCC, Carr made himself exclusively available to Sean Hannity and Fox News after the Kimmel sacking. It did appear, however, that lawyers had advised him by then to lose “easy way or hard way” gangsta rap.

As for Kimmel, he should have been the last one targeted for disrespecting Charlie Kirk. This is what Kimmel had posted on Instagram in the wake of Kirk’s tragic passing:

“Instead of the angry finger‑pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.”

Kimmel has said nothing on air since to disparage Kirk or even revisit Kirk’s previous statements that were inflammatory and now seem ironic. I happen to agree with that, having taken the old-school view that Kirk’s murder be “deplored without qualification.”

If you want to view the Monday monologue from Kimmel that has been absurdly linked to his suspension, knock yourself out. You can view it here.

If you do, you’ll be shocked as I was to find that nothing Kimmel said even remotely approached mean-spiritedness about Kirk. Kimmel ridiculed Trump, and deservedly so, for the president’s pathetic response to a sympathetic reporter’s question about how he was “holding up” in the wake of Kirk’s death.

Trump said he was fine and immediately changed the subject to how exciting it was that he was building a big, fancy White House ballroom. It was a singular validation of the daily, brilliant reminders from Trump’s niece — psychologist Mary Trump — that this a man suffering severely from untreated narcissistic personality disorder.

Humiliating Trump can come at a grave price to any company needing anything from Trump’s corrupt FCC. But, as I’ve suggested, Kimmel’s monologue Monday was just a fig leaf for going after him.

It was only a matter of time.

Just remember this: When Trump exerts his will and power over media that depend upon the federal government for their licensing — and in the case of giant corporations, far more — he is not acting like a dictator.

He’s acting as a dictator.

One senator's ignorant Charlie Kirk whine shows how far the GOP has fallen

Eric Schmitt tried to present himself as an intellectual at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

He came off like a little boy trying on his father’s clothes in the mirror.

It was all swagger and no fit.

Schmitt thoughtfully entitled his remarks, “There Can Be No Unity Between Good and Evil.” Even the subject of the hearing — smarmy FBI Director Kash Patel — must have been wondering to himself about how that could possibly be helpful.

The problem wasn’t merely with the content of Schmitt’s falsehood-laden messaging. His role, after all, was to parrot Donald Trump’s reprehensible words dividing the nation at a time of national strife, as no American president ever has before.

But Schmitt’s speech — which you can watch here or read here — was nothing more than a faux-intellectual diatribe delivered with the gravitas of Daffy Duck doing a TED talk.

Early on in his remarks, Schmitt sounded like a U.S. Senator:

Over the past week, leaders from across the political spectrum have come out and condemned Charlie [Kirk]'s murder and political violence more broadly. For that, we’re all very grateful. We should be grateful. There have been calls together to come together in the wake of Charlie’s murder and I want to do that. Someday, I pray we can be united as a country again and go forward again as one people under one flag.

That sounded fine to me. My reaction in this space had been that “we should all as Americans deplore — without qualification — Kirk’s murder. It’s a moment that could bring us all together in revulsion, across the great political divide.”

Unfortunately, Schmitt’s gratitude lasted just a few paragraphs. He cited some random polling which he claimed showed that liberals are fine with political violence and conservatives aren’t. That junk doesn’t deserve further mention here, much less — with no vetting or validation — at a U.S. Senate proceeding.

As for “coming together,” it was probably not all that helpful for the senator to spew lies like this one:

The George Soros empire has financed a vast ecosystem of radicals all working together — dropping off bricks at riots — to unleash a tidal wave of violent anarchists on our streets and prop it up with an army of researchers and experts and journalists and propagandists who downplay political violence.

Nothing like serving up propaganda to call out propaganda. It might soothe the sensibilities of MAGA faithful, but Schmitt’s just another politician making stuff up.

But what sets Schmitt apart is his veneer of solemnity while delivering such truly unserious drivel. With no self-awareness, Schmitt persists in trying to dress up the basest political tripe in a wardrobe of make-believe intellectualism.

Behold the philosopher Eric Schmitt holding forth with large words:

Upstream from the dehumanization and demonizing political violence and rhetoric tearing apart our country, is a divide on how we view America and Americans. Are we good? Are we evil? Is there something inherently special about Western civilization or is this 2,000-year project rotten to the core? And if it is something worth fighting for, which I believe it is, how do we do it?”

What?

Now, I’ve written quite a few clunky paragraphs in my day — and mixed more than my share of metaphors — but I’m not certain how to decode Schmitt’s gibberish.

We’ve all heard our nation described as a grand “experiment,” but arguably not one spanning 2,000 years. With apologies to those who maintain Jesus was an American.

And who describes “Western civilization” as a “2,000-year project?” Mind you, this wasn’t a slip of the tongue: it’s in his speech text and was faithfully repeated in his live remarks.

Are we good? Are we evil? Does dehumanization flow upstream? Were the Dark Ages part of Western civilization? Is this the sort of work product you’d get if Plato impregnated Laura Loomer?

I’m not so sure about those questions, but I am about this one:

Does Eric Schmitt truly not comprehend the outrageous hypocrisy of viciously attacking people’s character and motives who disagree with him — and calling them “evil” — and then whining like this?

And I would point out we’ve heard years of the left — their loudest voices — calling anyone on the right an extremist MAGA Republican, a fascist, a Nazi, an existential threat to democracy.

Check yourself. And don’t give me this both sides bullshit!

It’s hard to counter such eloquence from such a towering intellect.

Still, here’s a thought: If you truly hold the worldview that in American politics, everything comes down to good versus evil — and that you’re good and those of us who disagree with you are evil — say it all you want. It’s a free country.

But don’t bother pretending to be smart about it.

(Note: this is the first of a two-part post. Tomorrow’s installment will examine Schmitt’s premise that political violence in America is not a “both sides” matter.)

The suspect is not the stuff of rabid MAGA dreams. Thank God for that

This cannot be what President Donald Trump had in mind.

Authorities made an arrest in connection with the heinous assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The suspect is Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old white, male Utah State University student, the son of registered Republican voters from the southwest of the state.

Robinson’s appearance — just a regular-looking white kid in college — could not be further from what the MAGA’s mind’s eye would have loved to see. At least superficially, he doesn’t fit the mold of their preferred villains.

In a decent time, this of course would not matter. We should all as Americans deplore Kirk's murder, without qualification. It’s a moment that could bring us all together in revulsion, across the great political divide.

But that’s not happening because Trump would never stand for that. As you probably know, Trump didn’t even wait for the existence of a suspect to blame it on fictional “lunatics on the Left.”

On Wednesday night, Trump delivered the most vile and unpresidential statement ever uttered at a moment of national grief.

Here’s the transcript of Trump’s most significant comments:

“It is long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.

For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today and it must stop right now.

My administration will find each and every one who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and every one who brings order to our country.

From the attack on my life in Butler, PA last year which killed a husband and father to the attacks on ICE agents to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”

I think we can let it speak for itself that Trump indignantly called out “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”

The same can be said for Trump’s choices for examples of political violence in America. And, more importantly, his omissions.

But the key point — and it’s undeniable — is that all Trump cares about going forward is to exploit the Kirk tragedy to fit his own ends.

Just imagine what Trump and his MAGA acolytes would have done to exploit the Kirk tragedy had Tyler Robinson turned out to be a trans person. Or an undocumented migrant. Or a Black person. Or a Muslim.

So anxious was MAGA world to distort the murder for its narrative that someone leaked to the Wall Street Journal — well before Robinson’s arrest — that inscriptions found on shell casings related to the shooting contained messages of “trans ideology.”

It was confirmed on Friday that was empirically false.

So yes, Trump must have been apoplectic to learn that Kirk’s suspected assassin was just some white guy who grew up in a Republican household in deep-red Utah.

In dramatic contrast, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, did himself proud in the news conference announcing Robinson’s arrest.

“We can return violence with violence, we can return hate with hate, and that’s the problem with political violence — is it metastasizes. Because we can always point the finger at the other side. And at some point, we have to find an off-ramp, or it’s going to get much, much worse.

History will dictate if this is a turning point for our country. But every single one of us gets to choose right now if this is a turning point for us. There is one person responsible for what happened here, and that person is now in custody and will be charged soon and will be held accountable. And yet, all of us have an opportunity right now to do something different.”

Those off-the-cuff words from Cox came straight from the heart. The Republican Party needs more leaders like Cox, and so does the nation.

There’s a better path forward if we choose it, Donald Trump and his hatred notwithstanding.

This Trump move is illegal and immoral and should chill you all to the bone

There is arguably no better canary in the coal mine for the death of democracy than a president who seizes for himself the power to wage war.

We seem to be headed there.

President Donald Trump’s recent — and ongoing — unauthorized military aggression against Venezuela fails to meet even the minimal legal standard for presidential war powers.

Trump and his henchmen have largely dispensed with pretexts.

Citing no particular provocation, Trump blithely declared Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro America’s latest mortal enemy. That sort of gratuitousness is brought to you with a shrug by corporate media increasingly committed to a mission of stenography.

The administration has designated Tren de Aragua a “foreign terrorist organization” — which may well be accurate but does not seem to have come with any provable link to Maduro other than rhetorical. Even if true, nothing in U.S. law permits unilateral military action on that ground alone by a U.S. president.

But following the law has always ranked below the bottom of Trump’s “things to do” list in life.

Here’s how the United States has apparently begun to launch an illegal war almost overnight, without a millisecond of congressional debate. And with scant attention at best in the news media.

The Escalation — One Week, One Direction

August 8, 2025 — Trump designates Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization under the 2001 AUMF framework.
(AP)
Late August — U.S. naval and marine units mobilize in the southern Caribbean under an “anti-cartel” initiative.
(The Guardian)
September 2 — A U.S. drone strike sinks a speedboat allegedly linked to Tren de Aragua, killing 11. The administration justifies it as a drug interdiction.
September 3, 2025 — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro denounces the U.S. strike as a violation of sovereignty, orders militias to mobilize, and warns that Washington is laying the groundwork for regime change.
September 3–4 — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calls the strike “just the beginning.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio signals more strikes are being considered.
September 5 — Trump orders the Pentagon rebranded as the Department of War in communications and signage. Hegseth becomes “Secretary of War.”
September 5–6 — Ten F‑35 stealth fighters are deployed to Puerto Rico. Trump publicly states he’s weighing strikes inside Venezuela.

Trump’s posture toward Maduro wasn’t always so hostile. During his first term, he told Axios on June 21, 2020, he was “open to meeting” with Maduro and even called him “very smart.”

The timing was just astonishing, especially in today’s context. Trump publicly praised Maduro fewer than three months after his own Department of Justice had issued a press release headlined: “Nicolás Maduro Moros and 14 Current and Former Venezuelan Officials Charged with Narco-Terrorism, Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Criminal Charges.”

Apparently narco-terrorism didn’t concern Donald the First as much as it seems to concern Donald the Second.

Back in 2020, Trump did reverse himself on Twitter, but only after heads exploded among Florida Republicans. Taking issue with fellow strongmen has never ranked as one of Trump’s strengths.

Trump has always positioned himself as an isolationist — and his repeated campaign pledges of “no more endless wars” — arguably garnered more votes than most analysts credited. Trump mocked “globalist” entanglements, vowed to bring troops home and end foreign adventurism.

That’s all a thing of the past now that Trump openly aspires to become the world’s most dominant dictator.

He drools about invading and seizing Greenland. He muses obscenely about annexing Canada, or at the very least, waging a mindless economic war with it and many other close allies. He obsesses about seizing the Panama Canal.

His MAGA base has always been animated by extreme nationalism — ethnically and economically grounded — and it’s widely presumed that instinct mutates into isolationism. Even among those whose political philosophies can only be captured in five words or less.

It remains to be seen how Trump’s abandonment of isolationism might play out with the base. But never underestimate the power of a cult leader.

What’s more, we should not discount similarities to the dicey motives of previous U.S. adventurism — “war for oil” in Iraq springs to mind — especially given that Trump is exponentially more transactional than all previous U.S. presidents combined.

On Saturday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller defended Trump’s Venezuela policy by calling the country “so rich in resources, so rich in reserves,” while describing Maduro as “the head of the cartel.”

In poker, that’s known as a “tell.”

Let’s hope I’m wrong in thinking this Venezuelan adventure is far graver than a few news cycles of an unstable Trump cosplaying as a warlord. But, to me, this one has real potential for disaster.

I don’t like the looks of that canary.

This Republican may blow up her life's work — just to please Trump

As many of you know, I ran last year for Congress against Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), and lost. I have no plans to run again.

As regular readers know, I’ve hardly mentioned her since starting this Soapbox almost four months ago. She’s largely irrelevant.

But the upcoming bombshell decision facing the U.S. House of Representatives about whether to release the Jeffrey Epstein files is a test of Wagner’s fundamental integrity unlike any other she has faced in her years in Congress. And it is upon us.

Wagner has had one signature issue in her career — standing up, she claims, for the plight of women who are victims of sex trafficking. When I say it’s her one signature issue, let me add: whatever comes in second place isn’t even close.

The issue didn’t come up when I ran against her, because there was nothing to argue about. For years, she has spoken loudly and repeatedly and elegantly on behalf of the need to have better protection for sex-abuse victims, and particularly for those who have been trafficked.

Good for her. I never questioned her righteousness nor her sincerity on this point and there were plenty of other issues for me to campaign on, none of which needs to be rehashed here.

But the Jeffrey Epstein scandal is the definitive sex-trafficking story of our time, and maybe of all time. What this pervert did, who he did it with, how, when and why — and the ongoing coverup of his trail of evidence by Donald Trump — is about as major as news stories get.

As best as I can tell, Wagner, the self-proclaimed champion of trafficked women, has never once spoken Epstein’s name publicly — despite the fact that he used his power and privilege to traffic and abuse hundreds, if not thousands, of young girls.

Wagner faces a vote that is tough for her fellow Republicans — but should be a slam-dunk for her — which is whether to require the Justice Department “to release all the files related to Epstein’s case, including information related to his clients and close circle,” as reported today at The Hill.

The Trump White House, dropping any pretense of true innocence, has gone full-authoritarian with its own Republican Party on this one.

“A White House official commented on the discharge petition Tuesday night, saying that supporting it would be viewed as ‘a hostile act,’” NBC News reported.

Really? Releasing all the Epstein files — in accordance with Trump’s repeated pledges on the campaign trail to do just that — is now a hostile act. Those are pretty strong words.

Wagner’s vote, whenever it happens, will present a rare binary choice. So would her refusal to follow the leads of fellow Republican Reps. Thomas Massie (the disclosure bill’s co-sponsor), Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert in the event Trump’s lapdog House Speaker Mike Johnson manages to kill it.

Here’s the choice:

Wagner votes “yes” for full disclosure of the Epstein files, proving she is a woman of integrity and cares about sex-trafficking victims, as she has claimed for at least a decade

Wagner votes “no” or even fails to vote “yes” as a participant in Trump’s coverup, in which “integrity” and “Ann Wagner” should never be mentioned in the same sentence again.

You didn’t hear me talk like that during the campaign, because nothing had occurred in her record for me to question her personal character. This would be it.

If Wagner fails to stand with Epstein’s sex-trafficking victims — and with the basic principle of accountability for sex traffickers — then she at least should do the world a favor and renounce the following that she either sponsored or cosponsored:

FOSTA – Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act
Bill: H.R. 1865 (115th Congress)
Role: Primary sponsor (authored)
Summary: Amended Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to remove immunity protections for websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking, enabling civil and criminal liability. Passed the House 388–25 (Feb 2018), Senate 97–2 (Mar 2018), and signed into law April 11, 2018 as part of the broader FOSTA‑SESTA package.

SAVE Act – Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation Act
Bill: H.R. 4225 (113th Congress, 2014) & H.R. 285 (114th Congress, 2015)
Role: Primary sponsor
Summary: Made it a federal crime to knowingly advertise commercial sex acts involving trafficking victims, particularly minors or coerced adults. Passed the House 392–19; ultimately incorporated into the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA) of 2015.
Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA)
Bill: S. 178 (114th Congress, 2015)
Role: Key House co-sponsor and advocate; included Wagner’s SAVE Act provisions
Summary: A wide-ranging bipartisan anti-trafficking law that enhanced law enforcement tools, increased restitution, funded services for survivors, and strengthened training across federal agencies. Incorporates multiple bills, including the SAVE Act, and was signed into law on May 29, 2015.
Trafficking Survivors Relief Act
Bills: Multiple versions — H.R. 6292 (114th), H.R. 459 (115th), H.R. 3627 (116th), H.R. 8672 (117th), H.R. 7137 (118th Congress, 2024), and reintroduced in H.R. 1379 (119th Congress, 2025)
Role: Original sponsor or cosponsor in multiple sessions
Summary: Provides post-conviction relief—such as vacating convictions, expunging arrests, sentencing mitigation, and affirmative defenses—for survivors of human trafficking who committed non-violent crimes as a direct result of their victimization. Versions reported in the House and supported across party lines.

For cynics who might think Wagner believes Trump is entitled to some special exemption on the subject of sexual exploitation of women, I would direct them to her public comments on October 9, 2016 — in the wake of the release of the infamous Access Hollywood Tapes — in which she most clearly stated he was not. In fact, she felt so passionately about sexual exploitation of women, that she made this public statement:

"I have committed my short time in Congress to fighting for the most vulnerable in our society. As a strong and vocal advocate for victims of sex trafficking and assault, I must be true to those survivors and myself and condemn the predatory and reprehensible comments of Donald Trump. I withdraw my endorsement and call for Governor [Mike] Pence to take the lead so we can defeat Hillary Clinton."

It took Wagner less than three weeks in 2016 to decide that Trump wasn’t such a bad predator, after all. Or maybe that she didn’t need to be that true to victims of sex trafficking and assault.

Today, the “strong and vocal advocate for victims of sex trafficking and assault” has another opportunity to show that she means what she has been saying all these years.

What’s it going to be, Ann Wagner, when it comes to your chance to stand up and make a politically difficult statement on behalf of those victims? Even at the risk of seeming “very hostile” to Trump?

It is her moment of truth.

Trump's lickspittle-in-chief just made a very dumb move indeed

Donald Trump’s narcissistic personality disorder took quite a jolt last week.

Here’s what some are saying happened: Vice President JD Vance somehow short‑circuited his electric fence and gave an interview to USA Today where he spoke openly — and maybe a little too eagerly — about that moment in the future when he might have to replace Trump as president.

“I've gotten a lot of good on‑the‑job training over the last 200 days," Vance said in an exclusive interview published Aug. 27, when asked if he was ready to assume the role of commander‑in‑chief.

"Yes, terrible tragedies happen,” he added. “But I feel very confident the president of the United States is in good shape, is going to serve out the remainder of his term, and do great things for the American people.”

Oh no you didn’t, JD.

By the time he started flipping around like a vice‑presidential seal, blathering about Trump’s supposed super‑stamina, it had to be too late.

Did Vance really not get the memo that Trump leaves office when Trump decides to leave office? That’s the last we all heard.

He might want to revisit the North Korean manual on speculating about the Leader’s health. We know he owns a copy — the whole Cabinet just performed it in unison in meeting with Trump last week.

We don’t have details as to how Trump exploded upon learning of the blasphemy from Vance, but it’s safe to assume he wasn’t swelling with pride. So, he thought he’d teach Vance a little lesson.

“Trump Removes Secret Service Protection for Harris.”

Oops. Wrong vice president.

Where can we go to get a president with cognitive acuity?

There’s nothing funny about the story that Trump revoked Secret Service protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris — as he’s done with other political targets. In fact, it’s disgusting that the topic is even being debated.

But liberals might not want to seize the bait too quickly on this one. As the New York Times reported, vice presidents typically receive six months of protection after leaving office as a matter of standard procedure.

President Joe Biden had extended that period by a year through executive order, given the unusually high threat level faced by Harris, the Times reported. Biden had done the right thing in the right way, which is to say quietly.

But it wasn’t a permanent step because the nation does not give lifetime Secret Service protections to former vice presidents and their families (unlike presidents). Maybe it should, but it does not.

I didn’t know that, and I’m guessing neither did you. But its important context because Trump and his right-wing state media wants our heads to explode on this one. Or any outrage that doesn’t involve mention of “Epstein.”

This doesn’t excuse the stench of Trump gleefully promoting diminished safety for his political opponents. It’s just the public version of how he privately chokes loyalty out of Republicans, in this view.

As a mobster, Trump has reveled in each opportunity to proclaim the withdrawal of Secret Service details from individuals — which would have taken place quietly under a decent president. He gets to thrill his bloodthirsty followers with the closest thing to “lock them up” presently at hand.

Best of all, Trump gets to bask in dishing out the one thing he’s never had to fake: brazen cruelty. Just another ugly trademark.

Meanwhile, the person who ought to be swallowing hardest is JD Vance.

After all, Trump tried to have his last vice president killed by a mob.

Firing Trump's most lunatic lackey is now a matter of life and death

Bear with me on this one.

I know that to 99 percent of readers, headlines reading “CDC Director Fired” fall squarely into the daily category of “Trump stupidity that I don’t want to hear about.” Fair enough. Especially if it reads, “Susan Monarez Won’t Quit” and no one knows who Monarez is.

This one’s a little different.

Monarez was confirmed as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director on Trump’s enthusiastic nomination just 29 days ago, on a straight party-line vote of the U.S. Senate. Nothing unusual there.

But here’s the rub: The 47 Democratic “no” votes were tied to Monarez’s refusal to distance herself from the rantings of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the twisted soul dubbed Secretary of Health and Human Services by Trump. Conversely, being Trump’s pick was the only possible consideration of 51 Republican senators.

Then an unusual thing happened. Shortly after Monarez received the keys to her office door, she started feuding with Boss Bananas because he (RFK Jr.) is, after all, not playing with anything resembling a deck of 52 when it comes to the public health. Or much of anything.

Here’s how it played out, according to New York Times reporting.

Kennedy Jr. summoned Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to his office in Washington earlier this week to deliver an ultimatum.

She needed to fire career agency officials and commit to backing his advisers if they recommended restricting access to proven vaccines — or risk being fired herself, according to people familiar with the events.

So what does Monarez do? She immediately starts doing precisely what all the Democrats demanded, which was to push back against RFK Jr.’s natural instincts to Make America A Dark Ages Pit of Death Again. (That’s MAADAPODA if you’re looking to put it on a T-shirt.)

RFK Jr. demanded her resignation on the spot, not surprisingly. Initially, the White House said nothing, briefly leaving a question as to whether an initial refusal to resign would matter. It didn’t.

Trump fired Monarez, five weeks to the day he had said this about her:

“As an incredible mother and dedicated public servant, Dr. Monarez understands the importance of protecting our children, our communities, and our future. Americans have lost confidence in the CDC due to political bias and disastrous mismanagement.”

Four top CDC officials resigned in protest within four hours of RFK Jr.’s attempt to evict Monarez. Mind you, they — and Monarez — were presumably part of Trump’s MAHA braintrust until, say, 15 minutes ago.

And the two who spoke out most vocally weren’t especially shy:

“People of dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor (are now) in charge of recommending vaccine policy. Their desire to please a political base will result in death and disability of vulnerable children and adults.” — Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

“Recently, the overstating of risks and the rise of misinformation have cost lives…If [Monarez] leaves, we don’t have scientific leadership anymore” — Dr. Debra Houry, CDC Chief Medical Officer.

As a footnote, the typically reticent American Public Health Association apparently snapped, calling Kennedy’s leadership “reckless mismanagement” and flatly stating: “RFK Jr. must be removed from his position.”

Unfortunately, that sort of condemnation from rational people with vast medical and scientific credentials might be precisely what Kennedy needs to survive. But it does seem to me that people who care about the collective health of our country — regardless of tribe or ideology — really ought to be speaking out.

As best as I can tell, Sen. Patty Murray, (D-Wa), has been the only Democrat willing to call for Kennedy’s firing. Where’d everyone else in her party go?

As Drs. Daskalakis and Houry told us, Kennedy’s derangement is a matter of life and death. We have no idea where this is headed.

But the nation will require a healthy dose of luck for this story to wind up as just more Trump noise.

Humiliation for Trump's hatchet woman is a win for everyone else

It’s a case of poetic justice made for the Internet.

Self-adulating U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro just received a large dose of humiliation, not mitigated in the slightest by her own inability to feel shame.

You know the famous adage that “you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich”?

Well, a Washington, D.C. grand jury sided Tuesday not only with the sandwich but with the young man who slung it at the chest of a Customs and Border Protection agent who Donald Trump wants to appropriate as a storm trooper.

The grand jury took the extraordinary step of declining felony charges against Sean Charles Dunn, 37, a former Justice Department paralegal, who had been enraged by the presence of agents in a peaceful D.C. restaurant-and-bar neighborhood.

Dunn has become something of an Internet folk hero since video captured him hurling his protest sub.

Undoubtedly, the grand jurors had to be pushing back against what they saw as a dramatic overcharging of Dunn with a felony. Good for them.

Why? Because ever since her broom landed in the U.S. Attorney’s office, Pirro has cackled that every Trumpian case on her watch must be charged up to the max. Just because she can.

There should be another adage for that: Bad people make bad prosecutors.

Get ready to be tired of losing.

And I’m enjoying the online backup that Dunn has been receiving, with my personal favorite being this one from poster Tim Massie raising the perfect question:

"What did Pirro want him charged with? Assault with a deli weapon?”

Let us not forget that this same Pirro was just fine with Trump pardoning as patriots 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists — including 14 commutations for full-out violent criminals — for their role in trying to overturn his election defeat on January 6, 2021.

Four policemen lost their lives, and at least 174 were injured as a result of the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s patriots were not known to attack police with a single sandwich. No — their weapons included firearms, tasers, knives, crowbars, flagpoles bearing the American flag, fire extinguishers, and pepper spray.

So we don’t need a single lecture from the former Fox News ghoul — nor the First Felon — about protecting police.

Allow me to share the insults Dunn hurled at Trump’s police-state platoon along with the sandwich, straight from the police report:

“F––– you! You f–––––– fascists! Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!”

Maybe Dunn shouldn’t have wasted his sandwich on this, but I’m fine with him speaking his piece as an American who doesn’t wish to live in a police state. Even better were the grand jurors who sent “Judge Jeanine” a loud-and-clear sandwich message Tuesday.

Now, let the good memes roll.