Sheherazad of his thousands of ways to lie about an election

Yesterday I wrote about the world’s largest honeytrap operation – Jeffery Epstein inviting powerful people to his properties to have sex with underage children, filming them as they did so, and giving the recordings to Putin and the KGB. I based my writing on a post on Daily Kos by Thom Hartmann, who based his on an article in the British Daily Mail. My friend and debate partner objected. He asked Google about the reputation of the Daily Mail. What he got back included words such as: misleading, biased, sensationalistic, alarmist, dramatic language to drive reader engagement, and even fabricated. Good point. Amplifying sketchy sources is not something I should do. So I went back to Hartmann’s post. Yes, he linked to the Daily Mail article. However, when discussing various things that show the nasty guy is working for Putin rather than Americans Hartmann provided links to much better quality sources. His links go to: New York Times, The Hill, The Guardian, American Progress, NPR, BBC, CNN, ABCNews, NBCNews, Newsweek, Washington Post, Business Insider, Vox, Politico, Slate, and Daily Beast. So while Hartmann was inspired to write by a “deeply researched investigative report” (Hartmann’s term) in the Daily Mail he backed up his own post with reputable sources. My friend wrote, “Now, I'd love to see the world have the goods on Trump. And everything you wrote might be true.” Friend, I hope you can now think the world does have the goods on Trump. Whether anyone will act on the goods is a completely different hope. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that Germany has updated its travel guidance to tell its citizens that due to the violence of the nasty guy’s federal agents in Minnesota and elsewhere that travel to such cities is not advised. If you go stay away from crowds and follow the instructions of the local security forces.

The irony is not lost on us that Germany, which has a sordid history with fascist leaders who violently murdered citizens based on their ethnic backgrounds and political beliefs, is now warning about the same thing happening in the United States.

That advisory also contradicts what the nasty guy has been saying about the US to the world. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that the nasty guy has said he will close the Kennedy Center for two years for repairs. He says it is “tired, broken, and dilapidated” though people who have been there recently would disagree. Besides, it was renovated in 2019. The real reason he wants to close it is, after he slapped his name on it, many performers have refused to perform there, canceling performances. Membership has dropped. Tickets aren’t selling. New performers aren’t signing up. The place is good for propaganda, such as a showing of the Melania movie.

Internationally famous composer Philip Glass announced in January that he was canceling the performance of his symphony “Lincoln,” scheduled for the Kennedy Center in June. “Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony. Therefore, I feel an obligation to withdraw this Symphony premiere from the Kennedy Center under its current leadership,” Glass said in a statement. ... The conveniently announced closure is an effective way to bury stories of performers canceling in between propaganda screenings. The Kennedy Center joins the ever-growing lineup of failed Trump ventures, from Trump Steaks to Trump Airlines to Trump University. But this time a beloved part of America’s cultural heritage is also taking a hit.

My personal fear is this renovation will make the place look gaudy and tacky, like what he’s done to the White House. And somehow Kennedy’s name won’t make it back on the side of the building. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Amanda Marcotte of Salon:

To people outside the MAGA bubble, Trump’s obsession with the Kennedy Center is just plain weird. Obviously, he feels intimidated by the looming cultural power of the 35th president and his wife, Jacqueline, and excluded from circles of people with good taste, even though he has no interest in actually learning to appreciate art or music beyond middle-of-the-road Broadway showtunes from the 1980s. He won’t grow up and, as normal people do, be happy not to be included in pastimes that bore him. This manifestation of his deep psychological issues reflects a major resentment that fuels the larger MAGA movement: anger at the larger culture for not dumbing itself down to placate their own pedestrian tastes and bigoted blind spots. ... Yet the faith that they can seize people’s hearts and minds through force has not abated in Trumpworld. As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times recently wrote, “The only thing Trump and his allies know how to do is use the coercive force of the state.” It seems the president really did think he could just remake the Kennedy Center in his own trashy image, and that people would, like zombies, continue to book shows and buy tickets there. Instead, he got his stink all over the place, and now no one wants to be associated with it.

Last week Wednesday Willis reported that the FBI raided the Fulton County’s Election Hub and Operations Center in Georgia. The ballots from the 2020 election were taken. This county includes most of Atlanta and has been the center of the nasty guy’s efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election, lawsuits related to that are why the ballots haven’t been destroyed yet. Conspiracy theories about the election were in the news for months, though no evidence was produced in 60 court cases. The nasty guy has obsessed with this loss since then, including an attack on the Capitol in an attempt to overturn that election. The next day Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, reported this marks a significant escalation in the nasty guy’s breaking of democratic norms, something that has not happened before.

The warrant served on the Fulton County election center sought ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls, which it alleged might constitute “evidence of the commission of a criminal offense.” It cited stiff criminal penalties related to “the procurement, casting, or tabulation” of fraudulent ballots. ... Mo Ivory, a Democratic Fulton County commissioner, arrived on the scene shortly after the FBI agents and said that once an error on the warrant was corrected, they backed up lines of trucks to the elections warehouse and spent hours carting away boxes of ballots and other materials. The search began in the morning and was still going well past nightfall.

Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said the ballots had been safe in the county’s custody, but now the county can no longer say the ballots are still secure. The county will fight back through the courts. This action triggers fears of federal interference in the midterm elections. On Monday Singer took up the story.

Democrats have warned that the raid was a corrupt fact-finding mission in which Trump would concoct evidence to use as the basis to rig the 2026 midterms. And on Monday, that’s exactly what he said he’s trying to do.

Singer then quoted the nasty guy, which was his usual word salad, though the implication was clear. The nasty guy also threatened prosecutions against those who “falsified” the 2020 election results. Singer concluded, “If Trump keeps meddling in elections, at least he’ll finally get that fraud he’s been after.” On Saturday Jessica Huseman, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos reminds us that the nasty guy cannot cancel the November election, though he has been saying he wants to. He doesn’t have the legal authority and US elections are too decentralized for him to try – there are more than 9 thousand local elections run by local officials and more than 90 thousand polling locations. Even intimidation efforts would face challenges and injunctions and would not affect those who vote early or by mail. And all those election officials are talking to each other on ways to protect the vote. Wrote Huseman:

The election system is under real strain, and bad-faith efforts to undermine it are serious. But after talking with local election officials, lawyers, and administrators across the country, I don’t see evidence that upcoming elections are at realistic risk of not happening at all. Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local law that mandates them — and history shows they’ve done so before, even under immense pressure. The greater danger isn’t no election, but one that’s chaotic, unfairly challenged, or deliberately cast as illegitimate after the fact.

Want to help? Don’t spread fear or distrust. Don’t moan that the election is already lost. Know how the election system works and speak up when you hear something that is wrong. Be a poll worker or volunteer to register voters.

Elections don’t happen just because people assume they will. They happen because people — especially at the local level — show up and do the work.

Mark Sumner, Kos staff emeritus, wrote about Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence and a fan of Putin. Strangely, she was on-site when FBI agents hauled away Fulton County ballots. Maybe not so strangely – she made wild claims about the 2020 election. The important part of Gabbard’s story starts eight months ago. A US intelligence official serving as a whistleblower filed a complaint against Gabbard. It probably has something to do with a “grave threat to national security,” implicates another department in the government, and has something to do with executive privilege. But we don’t know the details. A whistleblower allegation is supposed to go to Congress. But in those eight months Congress is still hasn’t seen it. That’s a long time for a “grave threat.” Gabbard has decided that no one in Congress has the necessary security clearance to look at the charges against her. Revealing the contents would cause “grave damage to national security.” So it was locked in a safe. Gabbard claims the whistleblower was politically motivated – which, according to the law, is what Congress is to determine.

Gabbard isn't performing the legal role of a DNI in terms of evaluating intelligence and coordinating a response to threats. Instead, she's leading Trump's efforts to exhume every false claim he's made over the last six years and create a unified narrative of election vulnerability. She's the chief fabulist to the fabulist in chief; the Sheherazad of his thousands of ways to lie about an election. And he can't afford to lose her.

Nasty guy ally attorney Cleta Mitchell noted that the president has a limited role in elections “except where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States.” The nasty guy has already declared national emergencies so he can send in ICE, attack renewable energy, bomb fishermen, and many more. He does so because declaring an emergency give him a long list of powers, some of which sound like they are for authoritarian regimes.

Trump may not be able to stop the elections, but he can declare a national emergency and station masked stormtroopers outside critical polling stations. He can make every effort to undermine the nation's faith in the election, to make voting seem both pointless and dangerous, and declare that the system of state-run elections is corrupt. The Georgia search and Gabbard’s involvement is happening at the same time that Trump is calling on Republicans to “nationalize elections” and take control away from states.

Don’t expect that safe to open soon. The Olympic Opening Ceremonies are tomorrow night. Until the Closing Ceremonies on the 22nd my usual posting schedule will be interrupted. If the TV schedule of the past is followed figure skating will be shown late in the evening so I may be able to do some writing before then.

The world’s largest honeytrap operation

My Sunday movie was Griffin in Summer. He’s 14 and a budding playwright. He wants to spend his summer producing a play that he’s writing and gathers friends together to make it happen. I was first concerned about the topic of his play – alcoholism and infidelity – but he writes about what he sees. Since Dad isn’t home Mom hires Brad, 25, to do some work around the house, like preparing the pool for the summer. Brad tends to use as few words as possible, but he was a performance artist in New York for a while. A friendship develops. And some of the things Brad talks about end up in Griffin’s play. Soon Griffin starts having feelings for Brad. Brad doesn’t respond. It’s an enjoyable little movie. Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community and an independent pundit discussed an investigative report by the British news outlet Daily Mail authored by Glen Owen, Dan Hodges, Mark Hookham, and Daisy Graham-Brown. It discusses how Putin owns the nasty guy, starting even before he ran for president in 2016.

Essentially, they’re arguing that Epstein was running an operation on behalf of the KGB/Putin that lured wealthy and powerful men to Epstein’s New York and Palm Beach mansions and his island where they were surreptitiously filmed having sex with underage girls. That material was then presumably passed along to Putin, who used it for leverage when he needed it.

Epstein ran “the world’s largest honeytrap operation” and doing it for the KGB. In exchange, Putin reportedly used Epstein to launder Russian money from theft, illicit drug and oil deals, sanctions evasions, and Russian organized crime oligarchs. Some of that money was laundered through real estate. The US has the most lax real estate transaction laws. These cash transactions would have been illegal in almost every other developed country. And some of that money was funneled through nasty guy real estate countries, to the point that the nasty sons preferred Russian banks (though part of that was American banks were tired of their bankruptcies). If Epstein gave Putin a video of the nasty guy having sex with underage girls, and the nasty guy has known about it for decades, how might that have changed his behavior? That is followed by a list of things the nasty guy has done that seem to benefit Putin. The list could be longer than it is by hundreds of items. Here are only some of them. + Compromised a US spy in Russia. + Told the world he trusts Putin over his own intelligence services. + Put a Putin fan in charge of US intelligence. + Damaged NATO and our relations with the EU that will take generations to restore. + Unleash ICE to turn Americans against each other. + Gut America’s soft power by shutting down USAID, prompting small countries to turn to Putin and Xi for help. + Outed an Israeli spy to the Russian Ambassador. The CIA became highly alarmed that the nasty guy would compromise their assets. And some were compromised. They listed the conversations between the nasty guy and Putin and the contacts between Russia and the nasty guy campaign. The discuss Paul Manafort, the 2016 campaign manager, and his ties to Russia, followed by his pardon by the nasty guy. They discussed the nasty guy’s habit of leaving top-secret info in hotel rooms in hostile nations. Were these documents to sell? Impress foreign leaders? Or because Putin told him to? The Mueller Report documented the ten instances the nasty guy obstructed the investigation.

These aren’t just “a few bad judgment calls” or a president with “strange foreign policy instincts.” These stories (and literally hundreds of others) point to a man who’s behaved, consistently and predictably, like someone under leverage, someone whose personal fear of exposure of some sort of major crime — like the ones we know Epstein was holding over other billionaires — outweighs his loyalty to the nation he swore to serve. ... This is not about politics or personality. It’s about whether a country can survive being led by someone who looks captured and compromised by a foreign power.

Scott Detrow of NPR talked to reporter Stephen Fowler about the three million pages from the Epstein files that were released last Friday. Said Fowler:

The way that they've done the release of the Epstein files has made it virtually impossible to tell a full story about anything. There's no rhyme or reason to how these pages are ordered. There's no context surrounding information released here or there. There are multiple copies of just about everything, and you have some cases where there's information redacted in one version and not redacted in another, so it's hard to know if you're looking at the most recent or most complete or most accurate version of anything. And so when you may see things on social media about XYZ person here, or file, or thing, it's taken a lot more time to try and connect all of these dots.

They then discussed some of the names that have appeared in these documents. Fowler said, “You can take a look at pretty much any industry or political ideology and they're in the files.” One of the prominent names was Elon Musk. Appearing in the files does not necessarily mean there was wrongdoing or knowledge of crimes. But see the way the files were released. Detrow also talked to Annie Farmer about the release. She testified in court against Epstein and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. She said about victims names in these documents.

There's just no explanation for how it could have been done so poorly. They've had victims' names for a very long time. I don't think this is just about rushing to get this information out.

Then NPR host Michel Martin talked to Elie Honig, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York and now a CNN legal analyst. A few things he said. There are three other codefendants who could have been indicted and were not, but their names were redacted. Epstein could have been indicted on more serious crimes than what he was charged with. The released documents were under-redacted, as in exposing victim identities, and over-redacted, things blacked out that the law said should not have been. There are documents (possibly 3 million more) that, contrary to the law, the DoJ says it will not release, and the only remedy to that is Congress. Jesse Duquette tweeted a cartoon. On one side are 15 boxes under the heading “Pictures of Trump in the Epstein Files.” Under the heading, “Pictures of Trans People in the Epstein files” is a blank space. Duquette added:

Every last one of the creepshows demonizing trans people has some dark s--- they don’t want anyone seeing on their hard drives

Walter Einenkel of Kos posted the song Bruce Springsteen created to protest ICE. It is titled “Streets of Minneapolis.” This isn’t my kind of music, I don’t think the song is all that musically good, and the video, showing ICE in action between shots of protests, is hard to watch (so I mostly didn’t). Even so, I’m glad a singer of Springsteen’s stature recorded a protest song. Because he did it there will be lots of people listening. Emily Singer of Kos reported on a special election in Tarrant County, Texas (Fort Worth) for a state Senate seat. The nasty guy had won that district by 17 points in 2024, so it’s bright red. This election gave the seat to a Democrat by 14 points, a 32 point (after rounding) swing. The winner, Taylor Rehmet, will serve only until the term ends at the end of the year. Republicans tried to brush off the loss, saying there was low turnout because it happened in an ice storm. But turnout wasn’t low. And numbers show a great number of independents and Republicans voted for the Democrat. Also Republicans spent $2 million more than Democrats. An important factor may have been the nasty guy strongly endorsed the Republican candidate. When she lost he claimed he “had nothing to do with” it. Max Burns of Kos reported a week ago on Abigail Spanberger settling into the governor’s chair in Virginia. The Gov and the Democrats in the legislature quickly passed four constitutional amendments to go before voters. One amendment protects access to abortion and states a fundamental right to reproductive rights. The issue played a role in flipping key districts to Democrats. The next amendment returns the right to vote to felons who complete their sentence. The third is for marriage equality. It would overturn the same-sex marriage ban approved by voters in 2006, which is overridden by the Supreme Court ruling permitting same-sex marriage – the ruling some on the high court would like to overturn. The fourth is more controversial, even for Democrats. It would redraw Congressional districts to give Democrats a 10-1 advantage. Yes, this is in response to Texas’ effort to redraw their maps. Spanberger and Democrats are also working on an “Affordable Virginia” agenda.

If Democrats nationwide want to replicate Virginia’s success, they’ll need to run statewide races not as a collection of individual candidates but as a governing coalition with a clear and unified plan for action. Spanberger is proving how quickly Democrats can move when they are focused. It’s time for Virginia’s strategy to go national.

The very banality of evil is its greatest weapon

In an article posted last Tuesday Oliver Willis of Daily Kos gathered together several mainstream news headlines that say the nasty guy has softened his tone in Minneapolis. Willis says to not trust that. The supposed shift in tone came after the murder of Alex Pretti when the nasty guy had a congenial talk with Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, then pulled out Greg Bovino, the guy running ICE there, replacing him with Tom Homan, the “border czar.” I wrote about all this last Wednesday (before I read Willis’ article), saying the ongoing and huge protests in Minnesota worked. Perhaps I bought into the softened tone as well. Willis wrote:

But the administration’s pullback doesn’t change the main thrust of Trump’s policies and actions: pursuing a mass deportation campaign targeting people because of their race and ethnicity. The mainstream coverage is ignoring or minimizing this reality, even though it is the driving force behind everything that has occurred. ... Characterizing the administration’s spin as a legitimate softening of tone ignores the current situation and Trump’s track record.

Tom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit also says this is not the dawn of a new era.

Fascist governments don’t rise in one giant arc, nor do they collapse that way. It’s more of what electrical engineers and ham radio operators would call a “sawtooth pattern.” Climb an inch up toward fascism, get pushback from the public so you back down a half-inch until things quiet down, then move up another inch in another step toward the ultimate goal of total tyranny. Learn from your own mistakes, while getting the public used to each step, so Trump and his lickspittles can move onto the next falling domino in the process of ending democracy and replacing it with strongman oligarchic autocracy.

ICE agents still assume complete immunity. They still kick in doors without a legal warrant. They still can kill us without answering for it. And they know it. “We are still on the path to dictatorship.” The steps from democracy to fascism start with steps that people see as reasonable to handle a real problem. It may seem a bit weird, but makes sense. Then the mask drops and we see the true intent. By then the recognition is usually too late. A tyrant learns how far he can go before hitting resistance that can’t be bludgeoned through. Then they work out what messages to get the people to accept the changes.

Fascism doesn’t arrive with jackboots; it arrives with media and voter fatigue. As the political theorist Hannah Arendt warned, the very “banality” and “ordinariness” of such evil is its greatest weapon.

They push. We get used to it. They push some more. We begin to see resistance is pointless. They tell us the situation is so complicated we couldn’t understand, or it is bound by national security (heard that one lately?) and we should defer to their expertise. We assume the good guys will eventually win. If we didn’t resist at Step A, Step C isn’t all that much worse, so why resist Step C? Soon our principles are compromised. We still get a paycheck, socialize with friends. The world around us, the houses, stores, restaurants, cinema, and holidays still look the same. But the look is deceiving because the world is now full of hate and fear, which is so universal it is not recognized or is seen as normal. Stephen Miller mused that habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. That is to lock up immigrants and protesters without a trial. There was little reaction in the news media. If, a decade ago, Obama said that there would be swift hearings and maybe impeachment. Miller’s comments have become normalized. Democrats have shut down part of the government by demanding guardrails be put up around ICE. They may get their demands. But ICE is now so corrupt and has such a toxic culture those guardrails will have little effect. This ICE needs to be shut down and replaced, along with ICE leadership, and Homeland Security leadership. Why aren’t Democrats talking about the leadership?

The antidote to normalization is outrage and resistance. Not just in voting booths, but in the streets, in courtrooms, in classrooms, in boardrooms, in pulpits, and at dinner tables. ... History won’t forgive us for sleepwalking into tyranny. And our children won’t either. ... If we still believe in this republic, in its ideals, and in the sacred value of a free and fair society, then our answer to Trump’s authoritarianism must be more than words. It must be peaceful action.

I had mentioned this idea before, though Kos of Kos says it well. The change in Minneapolis (what little there is) was because of an increase in protests. The protests didn’t surge because of the kidnapping of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, the boy in the hat with bunny ears. He’s brown. It didn’t happen when Renee Good was murdered. She’s a lesbian. It happened when Alex Pretti was murdered.

He was white. He was male. He owned a gun. He worked as an ICU nurse helping veterans. He fit comfortably inside the cultural boundaries conservatives instinctively protect. That made him difficult to erase.

He died doing something humane – protesting injustice. Pretti broke the script. He made denial harder. He exposed the lie that propaganda said “this violence was targeted, controlled, and righteous.”

His death made clear that the machinery of state brutality was not staying neatly confined to its intended victims, and that compliance offered no protection from a system built on brutality and subjugation rather than law. ... His loss is immeasurable. It is also the moment that cracked the narrative armor protecting Trump’s immigration campaign, forcing a public reckoning that a year of evidence alone had failed to trigger.

In Friday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted David French of the New York Times, discussing voter reaction to ICE tactics in Minneapolis:

Voters don’t like the sight of masked officers dragging people out of homes and stores and cars. They don’t like the hype videos on social media in which ICE and the Border Patrol cosplay as low-rent versions of SEAL Team 6. They don’t like it when the administration lies and slanders the very people that it hurts and kills, and they get especially angry when cellphone video immediately debunks the administration’s spin. And to the extent that they pay attention to court proceedings, they definitely don’t like it when the administration is caught lying and defies court orders. … At each and every step along the way, the administration is squandering whatever good will it had and increasing the chances of a blue wave in the midterms. The problem, however, is that the administration is playing a different game. It’s not trying to win hearts and minds, but rather impose its will.

Dan Pfeiffer tweeted:

Here's what people don't like about ICE: - The agents are heavily armed, masked, and poorly trained. - They think the agents are unaccountable and see themselves as above the law. - That their actions are unconstitutional. - That ICE is targeting the wrong people.

George F Will of the Washington Post:

Governments around the world are using myriad technologies, some of them sinister, to surveil their populations. U.S. governments — national, state local — are not impervious to the temptation to overdo this. But today, a salutary effect of the ubiquity of smartphones is the surveillance of the government by citizens. Including those exercising their constitutional right to petition government for redress of grievances, and people watching other people do this.

In today’s roundup Dworkin quoted Politico:

“The big muscular show of force — you invite too much confrontation,” said a second person close to the White House, also granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Let’s try to be quieter about it but deport just as many people. Be a little sneakier. Don’t have the flexing and the machismo part of it. There’s a certain element of that that’s cool but as much as we can, why can’t we be stealthy and pop up all over Minnesota?” “We were almost provoking the reaction,” the person added. “I’m all for the smartest tactics as long as the end result is as many deportations as possible.” But the person warned that any perception of backtracking could depress a base already uneasy about the economy. “Our base is generally not wealthy and they’re not doing well,” the person said. “They’re struggling. If you take away immigration — if they don’t believe he means it — holy cow, that’s not good.”

Adam Klasfeld tweeted about how badly the nasty guy’s attempt of accusing his enemies of crime are going.

Let's speak plainly. In legitimate criminal cases, political appointees don't have to first hollow out U.S. Attorney offices of objecting career prosecutors with integrity; federal judges don't kill the cases at the cradle, and the government doesn't fight tooth and nail to revive them. This happened THREE times with Trump's DOJ to date. NONE of the criminal cases against Trump featured those antics.