Weekend at Donnie’s

 

Weekend at Donnie’s

Donald Trump Disappeared, and Twitter Rose from the Dead

JoJoFromJerz

Aug 31, 2025

 

Donald Trump disappeared for four days. Poof. Gone. No rallies, no photo-ops, no Fox call-ins, no fresh word salad leaking out of his dentures like Taco Bell hot sauce packets left in the sun. Four long, suspiciously quiet days where the president of the United States was basically doing cosplay as Jimmy Hoffa.

And let me say it up top: I don’t give a flying fuck about his heart, kidneys, lungs, colon, or whatever organ is left rattling around in that bloated polyester casing. He looks like someone tried to rehydrate a rotisserie chicken in a motel microwave and then spray-painted it orange. His skin has the pallor of a bruised tangerine left rolling around the back of a Walmart truck, his jowls sag like melted cheese sliding off a gas-station nacho, and his whole body carries the defeated slump of a party balloon three weeks after the party. He’s less “leader of the free world” and more “science experiment left too close to a tanning bed.”

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I don’t give a fuck if his hands look like grayscale rotisserie chickens left too long under the warming lamp at Costco. What I care about is this: when the leader of the free world vanishes into the Mar-a-Lago ether for half a week, the American people deserve to know if he’s still upright or if Melania finally succeeded at her greatest acting role: First Widow.

Which makes the hypocrisy even richer. Because these are the same people—Jake fucking Tapper repeating it with a straight face, Seb goddamn Gorka booming it like Dracula in a tracksuit, Steve Bannon frothing into his fourteenth shirt of the day, and every MAGA idiot in between—who built an entire campaign on Joe Biden being physically unfit for office. They’ve been shrieking for years that Biden is weak, frail, a walking corpse. And yet, now it’s their guy who disappears for four days straight without a peep, hiding from the press like it’s a subpoena.

Oh, the fucking irony.

For twelve beautiful, unhinged hours, Twitter was alive again. Not with discourse, not with doomscrolling, but with gallows humor at its absolute peak. It was like the site briefly remembered its golden era, back when it was a town square instead of a Proud Boys garage sale. Memes flew like confetti: Donnie Weekend at Bernie’s. Donnie frozen in carbonite. Donnie being wheeled around in a Rascal scooter with Ivanka working the pedals. For the first time in years, Twitter was unified, cackling in morbid anticipation, while somewhere Elon Musk was furiously trying to figure out how to monetize Trump’s obituary.

Honestly, the whole thing felt like the deleted timeline from Back to the Future where Biff becomes president and the entire country rots into a neon-lit casino dystopia. Only now, four decades later, Biff has slumped over in his Temu Versailles Oval Office and we’re all wondering if Doc Brown needs to swing by with the DeLorean to reset history.

And spare me the lectures about decency. This isn’t about us losing our humanity — it’s about him torching his. Trump dragged the bar so far underground it’s practically fracking at this point. You don’t get to spend a decade turning cruelty into a campaign platform and then act shocked when the world laughs at your silence. He made the rules, and now he’s choking on them.

Because this is who he’s always been. The man who flailed his arms to mock Serge Kovaleski, a disabled reporter. The man who turned Joe Biden’s lifelong stutter into a punchline, sneering “I’m gonna bring the country tuh-tuh-tuh-together” like a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving. The man who sneered at John McCain for being captured — “I like people who weren’t captured.” The man who insulted a military widow, attacked a Gold Star family, and called America’s war dead “suckers and losers.” The man who bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy.” The man who incited a mob to sack the Capitol, then pardoned them all like he was Oprah giving away sedition. And now, Ashli Babbitt — who died breaking into the literal beating heart of American democracy — is honored by the Air Force, while her family pockets a $5 million check from a government that won’t fund pediatric cancer research. That’s not irony — that’s depravity with a Pentagon stamp.

So when MAGA clutches its pearls because Twitter speculated about Dear Leader’s sudden game of hide-and-seek? Spare me. They can fuck all the way off. These are the same goons who treated every Biden stumble like the Zapruder film. Their guy vanishes like a mob accountant with a gambling debt, and we’re supposed to lower our voices out of respect? No thanks.

His disappearing act is the closest thing to a policy achievement he’s had in years — four straight days of him not actively making America worse.

Here’s the ugly, hilarious, tragic truth: we laughed because he trained us to laugh. Trump turned the presidency into a circus where cruelty was the main act. And when the clown disappears from the ring, the audience doesn’t cry — we scan the exits and crack jokes. That’s what he’s done to us: he broke the empathy reflex. He taught us that mockery is the only way to survive him. And while that’s funny, it’s also heartbreaking.

I know, I know, I should probably feel bad about laughing at all of this. I’m a mom. I’m a human being. I am capable of compassion and empathy and decency. But here’s the caveat: I don’t give a fuck about that creature. Not in the fucking least. The damage he has done to this country, to actual human beings, to groups already marginalized—LGBTQ people, immigrants, women, disabled folks—is incalculable. What he’s done to our public discourse, what he’s encouraged to crawl out of the shadows—racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, bigotry, cruelty—has poisoned everything.

Was I publicly rooting for him to be dead? No. Would I cry if he was? Fuck no. And I don’t feel bad about that. Not in the fucking least.

Because here’s the truth: the only shred of guilt I could possibly feel isn’t about him, it’s about us — about how much damage we’ll still be left to clean up when he’s gone.

But maybe, just maybe, when he is finally gone, we can have a national conversation about trying really fucking hard to shake off this madness. About clawing our way back to some semblance of accountability, responsibility, and basic decency. We’ve never been perfect. America has always had its sins to confront. But Trump has made the worst of us so much fucking worse. And maybe—just maybe—when he’s out of the picture, we can start to reverse the clock a little on all of that.

So no, I don’t feel bad. I don’t feel bad for the memes, the jokes, the obituaries drafted in advance. And I sure as hell don’t feel bad reminding every pearl-clutching MAGA sycophant that when you build your entire movement on cruelty, don’t be surprised when the internet finally returns the favor.

Because yesterday, after four long days, he finally surfaced. Not to engage the press, not to answer questions, not to reassure the country, not even to blurt out one of his half-digested “sir” stories—but just to show his face, looking like microwaved ass. Puffy, waxy, sagging like a hotel heat lamp carving station, with skin the exact shade of a rusted traffic cone. For a man who hasn’t shut up since the day he was fucking born, that silence was deafening. He looked less like a president and more like a bloated extra from The Walking Dead who wandered onto the set by accident.

And maybe that’s the most poetic irony of all: the loudest man in American history finally went quiet, and the country’s first instinct was to laugh.

 

 

Notes from the Front Good News Roundup Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. Aug 31 Here's the recent good news from the front lines of the battle being waged in the courts and other legal arenas to protect our democracy and save our country’s soul. TRUMP ORDERED TO STAND DOWN IN WASHINGTON D.C. "After hearing arguments on an emergency request from D.C. officials to block the Trump administration’s takeover of the 3,100-member Metropolitan Police Department, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes forged a compromise of sorts between the two sides - without issuing a ruling - on the key question of who runs the police department." Speaking about the order that Bondi gave earlier this week to put DEA chief Terry Cole in charge of the D.C. police force, the administration offered to chance that to "We’re just going to say Mr. Cole is the designee of the attorney general for the purposes of requesting services (from the D.C. police).” “He’s going to have to go through the mayor. Alright?” said the Judge. If Bondi's order is not changed by 6:30pm (that's 15 minutes from now) to say that he must *request* services, not commandeer them, then the Court will issue a TRO against Cole. A MAGNIFICENT RESULT! PLAINTIFFS AND DEFENDANTS AGREE IN ICE DETENTION FACILITY CASE! The New York federal court ripped the administration a new one over its ICE detention facility in New York City. Basically the court said that the facility had to immediately provide the detainees with things that are necessary to "basic human dignity" (such as toothbrushes and their medication) and basic due process, such as better access to their attorneys. Well, the DOJ responded not with an appeal, but with a letter containing a polite request for clarification and to amend some of the language in the court order, for example they said that toothbrushes can be fashioned into shivs, so could they please use dental wipes instead? And of Plaintiff's request that Defendants took to mean that Plaintiff wanted the detention facility to provide interpreters, Defendants said that was not feasible because they didn't have the budget for that. And finally they said that with respect to asking that detainees be allowed to retain their prescription medicines, that represented a health and safety hazard (detainees could OD, insulin needles could be fashioned as weapons, etc.). And then in response to the DOJ's letter the Plaintiffs responded with a letter of their own clarifying that they were not expecting the facility to provide the interpreters, but rather they wanted to be sure the interpreters had access to calls between detainees and their attorneys. And the Plaintiffs pointed out that ICE policy itself provides for toothbrushes, and detainees at lots of other ICE facilities have toothbrushes. And then Plaintiff amended their request about meds to letting detainees keep inhaled medications with them, and just making sure they had access to their other medications, and that ICE had medical staff on hand. And then based on both of those letters the court issued a revised order. JUDGE "INDEFINITELY" BARS FURTHER CONSTRUCTION AT ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ, AND BARS ANY FURTHER DETAINEES FROM GOING THERE The Court ordered an indefinite stop to new construction at "Alligator Alcatraz," and barred any new detainees from being brought to the site, agreeing with the environmental groups who filed the lawsuit and who said the facility is endangering the Everglades and its wildlife. COURT BLOCKS TRUMP'S ATTACK ON THE PEOPLE USING THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND ACA MARKETPLACE!! The Federal court blocked the enactment of most of the Marketplace Integrity and Affordability rule, a rule recently enacted by Health and Human Services (HHS) in order to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act, saying that it was to get rid of “waste, fraud, and abuse.” It was supposed to take effect on August 25th. Judge Brendan Hurson of the Federal District Court in Maryland put a stop to the administration's shenanigans, with an order that halted the $5 premium penalty, the revocation of guaranteed insurance coverage for individuals with past-due premiums, the imposition of eligibility verification for the special enrollment period, and the imposition of a requirement that Exchanges verify household income inconsistencies when a tax filer's attested projected annual household income differs from "trusted data sources." INJUNCTION AGAINST TRUMP CUTTING FUNDING FOR SANCTUARY CITIES *EXTENDED* TO INCLUDE NEW CITIES! First, as a reminder, there is no legal definition for 'sanctuary city'. But nonetheless here comes Trump again trying to withhold federal funding to "sanctuary cities" because they are...wait for it..."sanctuary cities" (which, again...there isn't even a legal definition for). And Judge Orrick is ticked, because guess what? Did you catch that "here comes Trump again"?? Because he pulled the same stuff in 2017. And came before the same court! In fact, Judge Orrick starts the second paragraph with "Here we go again" The current cities and counties to whom this injunction applies are: Santa Clara, Portland, Martin Luther King, Jr. County, New Haven, Oakland, Emeryville, San Jose, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Seattle, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Santa Fe. Here's the fun part of the order: "Defendants and their officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, and any other persons who are in active concert or participation with them ARE HEREBY RESTRAINED AND ENJOINED from directly or indirectly taking any action to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funds from the Cities and Counties based on (1) the first sentence of Section 17 of Executive Order 14,159, (2) Section 2(a)(ii) of Executive Order 14,218, or (3) the Preamble and Section I of the February 5, 2025 Memorandum from the Attorney General entitled “Sanctuary Jurisdictions Directives” on the basis that the Cities and Counties have policies that limit (i) the honoring of civil immigration detainer requests; (ii) cooperation with administrative warrants for purposes of immigration enforcement; (iii) sharing of information with federal immigration authorities other than immigration or citizenship status; (iv) the use of local law enforcement to arrest or detain individuals solely for civil immigration violations; or (v) the use of local resources to assist with civil immigration enforcement activities" COURT DISMISSES TRUMP'S IDIOTIC LAWSUIT AGAINST MARYLAND JUDGES! Judge Thomas Cullen threw out Trump's challenge to the order issued by a district court in Maryland barring immigration officials from immediately removing migrants who are challenging the legality of their detentions. Said Judge Cullen "Much as the Executive fights the characterization, a lawsuit by the executive branch of government against the judicial branch for the exercise of judicial power is not ordinary. The Executive's lawsuit will be dismissed, and its motion for preliminary injunction denied as moot. Whatever the merits of its grievance with the judges of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, the Executive must find a proper way to raise those concerns." TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IMPOTENT TO INDICT 'SANDWICH GUY' WHO "ASSAULTED" A FEDERAL AGENT WITH A TASTY WEAPON Trump is having a bad court week. First his ridiculous lawsuit against all of the Maryland judges is thrown out, and now they can’t even get an indictment for a guy who not only was caught on video doing the crime, but who actually admitted " did it. I threw a sandwich." The administration actually filed felony charges against Sandwich Guy (his real name is Sean Charles Dunn), for “Assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and employees of the United States.” And either while or before the matter was with the grand jury, the judge, Judge Michael Harvey, issued what is known as a “minute order”. A minute order is an order that is entered right into the record rather than being written up and officially issued. In his minute order Judge Harvey ordered the administration to “produce all exculpatory evidence”, meaning whatever evidence the administration has that would go towards Mr. Dunn being able to defend himself. No way to know whether the administration actually produced any exculpatory evidence, and if they did whether it made it to the grand jury. But either way, the grand jury declined to charge someone who tossed a submarine sandwich at a Federal agent. So the Trump administration looks legally ridiculous again, and Sandwich Guy is a national hero. A GLORIOUS CATCH-22: ADMINISTRATION CAN'T FIRE VOICE OF AMERICA DIRECTOR ABRAMOWITZ UNLESS THE BOARD AGREES ON IT - BUT TRUMP ALREADY FIRED THE BOARD I imagine that this court challenge went something like this: Trump (through minion Kari Lake): You're fired! Abramowitz: You can't fire me (files lawsuit) Judge: You can't fire him without the agreement of the board Trump: I already fired the board Judge: Sucks to be you Ok, what Judge Lamberth actually said was "To the extent the Board’s current lack of quorum institutes a practical barrier to removing Abramowitz, the Broadcast Act gives the President a straightforward remedy: replacing the removed members." BIG SPANKING! FEDERAL COURT OF APPEALS RULES MOST OF TRUMP'S TARIFFS ILLEGAL! The U.S. Court of Appeals has handed Trump a huge blow to his signature move, you know... making the American people pay a lot more for imported goods by slapping tariffs on all of the countries exporting those goods to us. First the finding of the 7-4 decision, which is short and sweet. Then a bit more about the decision. The court held: “The Government appeals a decision of the Court of International Trade setting aside five Executive Orders that imposed tariffs of unlimited duration on nearly all goods from nearly every country in the world, holding that the tariffs were not authorized by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), 50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq. Because we agree that IEEPAs grant of presidential authority to regulate imports does not authorize the tariffs imposed by the Executive Orders, we affirm.” Now, that is sweet enough, but here is some more sweet language from the main opinion: “In response to the declared national emergency of the trafficking of opioids into the country and the ostensible failure of Mexico, Canada, and China to meaningfully address this threat, the President imposed what this opinion refers to as the Trafficking Tariffs” “The Constitution grants Congress the power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises and to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations. U.S. Const. art. I, 8, cl. 1, 3. Tariffs are a tax, and the Framers of the Constitution expressly contemplated the exclusive grant of taxing power to the legislative branch; when Patrick Henry expressed concern that the President may easily become king (3 Debates in the Several State Conventions 58 (Jonathan Elliot ed., 1836)), James Madison replied that this would not occur because the purse is in the hands of the representatives of the people.” FEDERAL COURT PUTS A HALT TO ICE'S EXPANDED USE OF EXPEDITED REMOVALS INCLUDING AT COURT HOUSES Judge Jia Cobb's opinion in this case having to do with the Trump administration’s overuse of ‘expedited removal’ is exquisite. It is this overuse that saw ICE agents nabbing people as they showed up for their regular court appointments, etc.. The “January 21 Designation Notice” and the “January 23 Huffman Memorandum” together are what expanded the use of expedited removal. This is from the first part of the opinion: “For nearly three decades, the federal government has subjected noncitizens apprehended at the border to fast-paced summary removal. Using that procedure, these people are quickly turned back across the border, typically after a single conversation with an immigration officer. This process, known as expedited removal, has long been applied to noncitizens who are apprehended immediately proximate to the land border and [who] have negligible ties or equities in the [United States]. Recently, the Government departed from this longstanding practice. In January 2025, the Government expanded the scope of expedited removal to noncitizens apprehended anywhere in the United States. And in the last few months, the Government has made aggressive use of its newly expanded expedited removal power. When people have appeared in immigration courts for their normally paced immigration proceedings, for instance, the Government has moved to dismiss those proceedings, promptly arrested individuals inside of those courts, and then shuttled them into much faster movingand much less procedurally robust expedited removal proceedings. Days later, these people find themselves removed. The problem, though, is that unlike the group of people who have traditionally been subject to expedited removal those detained at or near the border shortly after crossing the group of people the Government is now subjecting to expedited removal have long since entered our country. That means that they have a weighty liberty interest in remaining here and therefore must be afforded due process under the Fifth Amendment. When it exponentially expanded the population subject to expedited removal, the Government did not, however, in any way adapt its procedures to this new group of people. But when it comes to people living in the interior of the country, prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the Government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process. That is because most noncitizens living in the interior have been here longer than two years, rendering them ineligible for expedited removal, and many are seeking asylum or another form of immigration relief, entitling them to further process before they can be removed. The procedures the Government currently uses in expedited removal, however, create a significant risk that it will not identify these disqualifying criteria before quickly ordering someone removed. And the lack of available review means that once the removal happens, it is largely too late to correct the error. In defending this skimpy process, the Government makes a truly startling argument: that those who entered the country illegally are entitled to no process under the Fifth Amendment, but instead must accept whatever grace Congress affords them. Were that right, not only noncitizens, but everyone would be at risk.” She then issued the following order: “For the reasons stated in the accompanying memorandum opinion, it is hereby ORDERED that Plaintiffs Motion for a Stay of Agency Action under 5 U.S.C. 705, ECF 22, is GRANTED. It is further ORDERED that, to preserve status or rights pending conclusion of the review proceedings, the effective dates of implementation and enforcement of the January 21 Designation Notice and the January 23 Huffman Memorandum, insofar as it implements the January 21 Designation Notice, are immediately postponed and stayed” CHICAGO MAYOR ISSUES EXECUTIVE ORDER PROTECTING CHICAGO AGAINST THREATENED FEDERAL ACTION Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson just announced an Executive Order hardening the City of Chicago against an anticipated federal incursion and military presence. Mayor Johnson says that it “Ensures every Chicagoan knows their rights, every family is prepared, and every part of city government is directed to protect the people of Chicago from federal action.” He goes on to explain: “This sweeping executive order directs our department of law to pursue any and every legal mechanism to hold this administration accountable for violating the rights of Chicagoans. This order affirms that the Chicago Police Department will not collaborate with military personnel on police patrols or civil immigration enforcement. We will not have our police officers who are working hard every single day to drive down crime deputized to do traffic stops and checkpoints for the president. This order affirms the CPD officers will be directed to wear CPD uniforms and refrain from wearing masks so that residents can clearly distinguish them from federal agents.We will protect our constitution. We will protect our city. And we will protect our people. We do not want to see tanks in our streets. We do not want to see families ripped apart. We do not want grandmothers thrown into the back of unmarked vans. We don't want to see homeless Chicagoans harassed or disappeared by federal agents. We don't want to see Chicagoans arrested for sitting on their porch. That's not who we are as a city and that's not who we are as a nation.” A few excerpts from the EO: “Whereas, the deployment of federal military forces in Chicago without the consent of local authorities undermines democratic norms, violates the Citys sovereignty, threatens civil liberties, and risks escalating violence rather than securing the peace…” “I, BRANDON JOHNSON, Mayor of the City of Chicago, do hereby order, as follows: Section 1. Chicago Rejects the Federal Militarization of Law Enforcement and Civil Immigration Enforcement The City of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson demands that President Donald J. Trump and any agents acting under his authority stand down from any attempts to deploy the U.S. Armed Forces including the National Guard in Chicago. The City will pursue all available legal and legislative avenues to counter coordinated efforts from the federal government that violate the rights of the City and its residents, including the Constitutional rights to peacefully assemble and protest and the right to due process. Consistent with local, state, and federal law, all City departments are prohibited from participating in any enforcement actions aimed at violating Chicagoans rights to peacefully assemble and protest.” ---

Howard Tullman Joins Lisa Dent on WGN Radio to Discuss A.I. and Chicago Politics

 Listen to the show here

Listen to the show here

COULD THESE SHAMELESS SCUMBAGS SINK ANY LOWER?

 

WHEN MONSTERS WRITE THE ENDING

 

When Monsters Write the Ending

The party of Trump crowned a trafficker as truth-teller, erased the victims, and marched our democracy one step closer to the abyss.

JoJoFromJerz

Aug 26, 2025

 

The truth isn’t disappearing by accident — it’s being buried alive with a predator’s grin. That’s the second season of this Trump shitshow: an endless mudslide of corruption, cruelty, and circus-grade distractions. Raids on enemies. Goons on the street. Manufactured meltdowns about autopens and football teams. It never stops. One atrocity piles on another until you’re gasping for air.

And that’s the point. They want you suffocating. They want you broken. They want you too tired to notice when Trump teases America about “needing a dictator,” and the crowd laughs like he’s delivering a punchline instead of a confession. They want you too numb to fight. Too overwhelmed to scream. Too exhausted to remember.

Are you f'ng kidding me? is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

And in that blur, the story that should stop the nation cold is being drowned out: the United States Department of Justice, under orders from Donald Trump, sat across from Ghislaine Maxwell — a predator in designer heels, a monster who hunted girls in gyms and malls, who promised them opportunity and delivered them into hell, who groomed them, trained them, broke them, then handed them to Jeffrey Epstein like offerings on a platter — and handed her the keys to rewrite history.

Picture it: a sterile prison room, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, a tape recorder blinking red. Across the table: Maxwell, convicted of luring children into Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit of velvet and violence. And opposite her, not a prosecutor. Not an FBI agent. Not anyone sworn to stand with the victims. Opposite her sat Todd Blanche — Donald Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer, now installed as Deputy Attorney General of the United States.

That’s the scandal inside the scandal. Blanche wasn’t there to serve justice. He wasn’t there to defend survivors. He was there for Trump — to secure a line, a soundbite, a scrap of theater he could parade as proof of innocence. Not innocence for the country. Not truth for the record. Innocence for one man.

And Maxwell gave it to him, with the smirk of someone who knows her leverage: “He was always a gentleman.”

One line from a convicted trafficker, and suddenly Trump had his shield. Within hours, Fox News was running it in banners. Marjorie Taylor Greene was tweeting it like gospel. MAGA influencers were calling it vindication. The same people who once demanded Release the files! now waved a predator’s blessing like a crucifix.

Because that’s what this was always about. This wasn’t an investigation. It was a cover job. Trump sent his fixer into a prison to wring out the one thing he believed could bury the Epstein story forever — the one thing he could brandish to silence the demands for the truth he promised years ago.

And I am fucking sick of it. I am sick of watching the predators rewrite the script while the victims get erased. I am sick of watching the bad guys get away with bad things, over and over, while the people who were broken by them are told to sit quietly in the dark. I am sick of half of this country pretending not to see it.

But the survivors do see it. They always see it. They live with the weight every single day. They carry the memories in their bones, in their nightmares, in the silence they were forced into. They don’t get to forget — and that’s what makes it obscene that this government would hand the microphone to their trafficker and let her rewrite the story.

“It’s like letting her rewrite history while we watch,” one victim’s family member said, stunned at the spectacle. Another survivor put it even plainer: “It’s like being erased all over again.”

Even hardened DOJ veterans flinched. One called the meeting “bewildering.” Another admitted it was “not a vigorous interrogation.” Everyone knew what they were watching. It wasn’t justice. It was propaganda — Maxwell playing oracle, Blanche masquerading as a prosecutor while really acting as Trump’s defense attorney in government drag.

This wasn’t accountability. It was desecration dressed up as due process — a government in disgrace handing a trafficker the microphone and telling survivors their truth doesn’t matter.

Because this was never about evidence. It was about theater. Propaganda dressed up as transparency, spoon-fed to a public they think is too exhausted to resist.

Maxwell wasn’t confessing. She was bargaining. She wasn’t exposing crimes — she was covering them. She dangled absolution like bait, knowing Trump’s machine would bite, knowing loyalty was the only currency that mattered. And sure enough, the payoff came. Weeks later, she was quietly moved to a minimum-security camp in Texas — a transfer corrections experts called “unusual” for a convicted child sex trafficker. Reports even suggest she now has work release. Imagine that: a woman who hunted children for Jeffrey Epstein now strolling in and out of prison while the girls she destroyed remain trapped forever in the cages of memory.

That isn’t justice. That isn’t mercy. That is treason against every child who ever begged to be believed. It’s betrayal carved into the seal of the United States, a government signing its name to the erasure of its own daughters. It’s America spitting in the faces of survivors, telling them their pain is negotiable, their trauma disposable, their truth a bargaining chip to be traded away if it keeps Donald Trump safe.

And Republicans? They cheered. They applauded. They clapped not for truth, but for cover. Not for justice, but for survival. They clapped for the erasure of survivors because erasure is what loyalty to Trump now demands.

And the hypocrisy is obscene. Who leapt to endorse Maxwell’s word? Rep. Jim Jordan. Jim fucking Jordan — the man accused of ignoring sexual abuse at Ohio State while he was an assistant coach. The man who looked away while wrestlers were assaulted now looks America in the eye and declares he believes Ghislaine Maxwell. Think about that: a man accused of protecting an abuser choosing to sanctify the lie of a convicted trafficker. Not because she’s credible. Not because it’s justice.

But because her lie shields the madman he serves.

This isn’t coincidence. This is the blueprint. An administration that rewards predators with power. The man who bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” sits in the Oval Office. The man accused of ignoring wrestlers being molested chairs the Judiciary Committee. The woman who trafficked girls is treated like a credible witness. The man found liable for sexual abuse presides from the Resolute Desk while his fixer-turned-DOJ-executive engineers the cover-up.

This isn’t government. This is a carcass dressed up in ceremony, democracy hollowed out and stinking of rot — a grotesque theater where predators are crowned and survivors are erased.

And through it all, Donald Trump sneers and spins — one day dismissing the Epstein files as a “Democrat hoax,” the next promising lists of names he never produces. The photographs are everywhere: him and Maxwell, smiling, orbiting each other for decades. They were not acquaintances. They were friends. Personal friends. And when Maxwell was arrested, when she was convicted, when the world saw her for exactly what she was, Trump didn’t condemn her. He wished her well. Three separate times.

Not once has he denounced her crimes. Not once has he spoken for the girls she trafficked, the lives she shattered. Instead, he lets her play redeemer — her words treated like scripture while the testimony of hundreds of broken lives is shoved into a locked drawer.

Let’s not mince words: Donald Trump is no “gentleman”. He is a devourer draped in power, trailed by the accusations of more than two dozen women — their stories rising like a chorus of ghosts he cannot silence, no matter how loudly he rants. He is a man found liable for sexual abuse in a court of law, branded by the very system he spits on. He is not misunderstood. He is not falsely maligned. He is a beast who bragged — with the feral grin of entitlement, with the pride of a man who believed himself untouchable — about grabbing women “by the pussy.” Not in shame. Not in regret. But in triumph.

And now we’re supposed to believe that one line from a trafficker erases all of it. That Ghislaine Maxwell’s word is stronger than verdicts, stronger than survivors, stronger than history itself. That’s not hypocrisy — it’s surrender. It’s the Republican Party looking the country in the eye and saying: we will side with the predator if it keeps our guy in power.

And if you’re exhausted, I get it. I’m tired too. There are a million fires burning at once. It’s impossible to keep up with all of them. But that’s the plan. They are marching this democracy off a cliff, and in the avalanche of distraction, this story — of all stories — cannot be the one that fades.

Because if this story fades, so do the faces. The faces of fourteen-year-old girls, lured with promises of opportunity, vanish into shadows. The testimonies they gave — trembling hands, broken voices — gather dust in file drawers while predators rewrite the record in real time. The cries that once filled courtrooms are drowned out by applause for a trafficker calling a president a “gentleman.”

If this story fades, history itself is corrupted. Survivors become footnotes. Their scars invisible. Their courage erased by propaganda. The predators don’t just win in courtrooms. They win in memory. And what is memory, if not the foundation of justice? What is justice, if not the refusal to let monsters edit the record of what they did?

This one matters. It matters more than a thousand petty scandals, more than the churn of daily outrage. It matters because it tells every survivor in this country that their pain can be bartered away, their trauma is expendable, their truth disposable if it inconveniences power.

And I say this as a survivor myself: I know how isolating it can be, how dark and lonely it feels to carry something unspeakable inside you while the world looks away. I know the silence that sits like a stone on your chest, the shame that was never yours to begin with, the nights when it feels like no one will ever believe you, no one will ever stand with you. That is what makes this moment unbearable — to watch a government hand a microphone to a predator and let her erase the voices of those she abused, the voices that already had to fight like hell just to be heard once.

And if we let that slide — if we shrug it off, if we scroll past it, if we let ourselves believe it’s just another grotesque episode in the Trump circus — then we are complicit in the silence predators depend on.

This is the line in the sand. This is the scandal that cannot be forgotten.

I am sick of the bad guys winning, and I will not stop until every fucking one of them is dragged into the light. History will not remember the excuses — it will remember those who shielded the monsters, and it will remember those who had the courage to confront them instead.

I love you guys.

Stay safe, stay strong, and keep demanding the answers these survivors deserve.

💙 Jo

SIX CORRUPT SCUMBAGS ARE KILLING OUR COUNTRY AND ENABLING THE ORANGE MONSTER EVERY DAY

 

New INC. Magazine column from Howard Tullman 4 Reasons You Need to Right-Size Your AI

 

4 Reasons You Need to Right-Size Your AI

Sometimes it’s smart to be careful—and slow—when you’re dealing with new technologies.

EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1

Aug 26, 2025

This is a very complex and challenging time for startups and small businesses in terms of how they should be addressing all of the issues and concerns around artificial intelligence and, more specifically, how they can incorporate the new AI tools and technologies into their own businesses. I realize that every startup in the world already professes to have built AI into their current offerings as well as into their future plans but, at best, many of these claims are nothing more than adaptations of machine learning or pattern recognition with a new shiny coat of paint and some text prediction capability. Sometimes it’s smart to be careful and slow when you’re dealing with new technologies. The last thing you want to do is be the latest victim of the fake-it-‘til-you-make-it disease.

It’s not remotely clear that a surface-level solution built on top of a generic large language model system will be of much value or benefit to many midsize businesses with very specific needs and nuanced market dynamics. One size almost never fits all these days. The implementation and operating costs alone of many of these systems would likely exceed any concrete internal improvements that addressed the user’s real needs. On the other hand, a smaller, more targeted, and clearly focused system whose objectives and functions the company’s management understands could be a valuable aid and time-saver if properly deployed.  

A side note that should be obvious but is often overlooked in top-down implementations of new tech is that you must secure buy-in from your key management and other pivotal team members and address in advance their concerns and the typical misunderstandings they may have about the plans, the short- and long-term job consequences, and other implications of the new systems and their roles in the process. 

We’re all rushing to employ these things before we fully understand them and, worse yet, it’s easy to come to depend on these seductive tools even when we know in our hearts that we’re not fully in control of them. You don’t need to cross the chasm in a single bound. Hallucinations and biases are only two of the most obvious risks and concerns when you start looking under the hood of some of these programs and discover that even their makers have only a passing idea of how they really work. 

The big guys in the corporate world can now rush to join the line of lemmings willing to pay OpenAI a consulting fee starting at $10 million to send a team of its eager engineers into their shops to build them custom solutions based on its GPT-4o technology. You would think that—given the havoc that the DOGE monkeys and minions brought about across our entire government—these corporate honchos would take a breath or two and ask themselves whether turning over the keys to their futures to Sammie’s smarties is the wisest course or whether it’s roughly akin to giving expensive whiskey and your car keys to the neighbor’s teenage son and wishing him well on his journey. 

If there’s a single statement that says it all for me right now, it’s the various versions of the observation that no one’s going to lose their business to AI, but most will lose their businesses to competitors who are more effectively using AI to streamline and accelerate their operations, to reduce their headcount without sacrificing customer connections and satisfaction, and to give them a far broader and more accurate overview of their marketplace, their competition, and timely intelligence and data to react to emerging positive and negative trends. 

The best and quickest of the players will rapidly realize that the hours and days they previously spent pouring over voluminous market data, analyzing their often incomplete and delayed compilations, and attempting to extract actionable information from the mess will now be replaced and made available in real-time detailed summaries crafted by young and clever prompt engineers.

The truth is that—with regard to the introduction of any new and disruptive technology—it will take every business a significant amount of time to learn how best to deploy it and how to deal with the displacements, interruptions, and new responsibilities and job descriptions that will accompany it and inevitably cause problems.  

Walking before you run—especially if you’re trying to do this development and implementation basically on your own—is the only rational and cost-effective course. It’s critical to keep in mind that you can always circle back and build better and more robust versions of what you’re initially experimenting with. It’s not likely to be an overnight project or an overnight success, but each iterative step will teach you a great deal, further empower you, and also help you to better understand the capabilities of the tools you are using—even as those abilities continue to grow and expand every day.  

What’s most important is for you to take the time to gather your team and review your operations and outline the areas where some intelligent automation could speed and simplify your own processes and actually produce a better result. In the first instance, none of this needs to be rocket science. Guesty is a legitimately AI-assisted property management system that was designed specifically for short-term rentals handled by Airbnb owners and operators.  

While this sounds about as mom-and-pop as can be, these folks face many of the same issues you do in your businesses—albeit at perhaps a smaller scale. The point is that, if this kind of simple use-case can show dramatic improvements in their metrics and their bottom lines, then shame on you if you haven’t figured out how to replicate these tools and techniques in your own shop.  

Here are four simple examples that a satisfied Airbnb operator told me has increased his yield and profit, dramatically decreased the time he was spending each week on his side business, improved his ratings and rankings with Airbnb, and led to repeat business and referrals from satisfied customers. And to be clear, I think he spends about $30 a month for the app. Eat your heart out.  

1. Hundreds of stored FAQ responses are delivered automatically in context-sensitive and narrative serial fashion 

You would be surprised and possibly shocked to learn how many times a day your team members waste their time repeatedly responding to and answering the same questions over and over again. Often, they do it slowly or inaccurately and eventually they do it impatiently—human nature being what it is—and none of this is good for your business. Automated responses can satisfy a significant number of callers who have simple, redundant inquiries and, more importantly, can deflect the wrong callers by simply and quickly making it clear to them that they are looking in the wrong place. 

Pricing is dynamic 24/7 and throughout each week based on a variety of factors and competitive offerings in the market as well as available capacity 

While in theory you could spend your entire day checking out competitive offerings and prices and adjusting your offers accordingly (and clearly Amazon does its pricing in this fashion every minute) and you could also constantly check your bookings through the week and determine whether price reductions might absorb available and empty units, rooms, or beds (just as American Airlines does all day long), the fact is that neither you nor anyone on your team has the time or interest to do anything like this, but the Guesty system does it automatically for you according to your guidelines and parameters instantly every day.  

Publish and sync your listings in real time across more than 50 major listing services including all the major sites  

You may use programmatic tools (with very little actual accountability) to get your messages out to the masses, but, in truth, you have little idea of who is seeing them and absolutely no real time ability to change or update the content or distribution plan. Intelligent systems using open APIs across multiple platforms give you a one-stop solution to precisely target and deliver your messages to qualified, interested viewers in the proper context with the ability to vary and alter any portion of the listings that you wish at any time.  

Responses to every inquiry are immediately replied to even if the reply is merely a placeholder and conversation starter 

Not surprisingly, response time is a measurable metric that firms like Airbnb use to evaluate the owners and operators on their site who use their services. Automated intelligent systems can respond instantly to every inquiry even if the response isn’t a substantive answer, but only a request for further info, details, or specificity to continue the conversation. In addition to managing the Airbnb metric, this immediate reply improves customer satisfaction and engagement without consuming any incremental resources until the lead is further qualified.  

Bottom line: While these examples may not directly apply to your company’s needs and current operations, each of them is an invitation and a suggestion to explore similar kinds of concerns and friction within your own organization and to see how AI and intelligent automation can help to address and improve things.