trump's ten

 

the epstein files

 

RUSSIAN STOOGE

 

The Know-Nothing Presidency

 

The Know-Nothing Presidency And a Memo to the Press: Step Up or Step Aside JoJoFromJerz Dec 13     When my daughter was three, she committed a felony against drywall. I walked into the room and found one entire wall absolutely annihilated by a Sharpie. Thick, black marker lines looped, slashed, doubled back, spiraled outward like chaos had been handed a marker and five uninterrupted minutes. There were rage scribbles, hesitation scribbles, and a few calm, chillingly deliberate strokes that suggested intent. It looked like a hurricane path redrawn by someone who expected the wall to cooperate. The wall didn’t look decorated. It looked like it needed a lawyer. Standing beneath this crime scene was my daughter, three feet tall, with bouncing Shirley Temple curls, enormous dark brown eyes, and cheeks soft and cherubic. The physical embodiment of innocence. A child who should have been holding a juice box, not the smoking gun of a domestic catastrophe. Abbie at 3 I asked her if she did it. She tilted her head and, in the tiniest, sweetest baby voice imaginable, said, “I don’t know.” Not flustered. Not nervous. Just calm. Serene. Delivered with the confidence of someone who believed that sentence alone might end the conversation. I asked if she knew who did do it. “I don’t know.” I asked if it might have been her. “I don’t know.” I held up the Sharpie, the still-uncapped, ink-glossy instrument of chaos, and asked if she used this Sharpie. She studied it solemnly, like it was cursed. “I don’t know.” She was three years old and already fluent in the most useless excuse in the English language. And let’s be clear: it doesn’t work when you’re three. It doesn’t work in kindergarten. That shit doesn’t fly when you’re a teenager either. Try telling a teacher, a cop, or your parents “I don’t know” while standing next to the front porch you drove your car into and insisting it came out of nowhere, and see how that goes. But somehow, if you’re a seventy-nine-year-old man who brags about having aced multiple dementia screenings like they’re Mensa admissions, it becomes sacred. Untouchable. A full conversational dead end. The room closes around it like wet cement, setting hard before anyone thinks to pull their foot out. Yesterday, a reporter asked him about the photographs. The kind pulled straight out of Jeffrey Epstein’s personal archive, excavated like evidence from a landfill of power, proximity, and predation. The kind where you’re standing there, smiling, leaning in, arm around a man who is now one of the most infamous child sex traffickers in American history. The kind where no one dragged you into the frame. The kind where you showed up, posed, and looked comfortable enough to say hey bud, how’s it going, like this was just another night and not a future true-crime montage. And he said he didn’t know anything about that. About his own fucking face. His unmistakable skull. His arm slung around a young woman. Him grinning, surrounded by young women like it’s spring break at a yacht club for predators. Photographs pulled straight out of Epstein’s personal files. Not fan shots. Not paparazzi ambushes. Posed, relaxed, comfortable little keepsakes of a man who knew exactly where he was and who he was with. Pictures of him with Epstein. Pictures of him with young women. Pictures of condoms with his face on them, for fuck’s sake. And when asked about them, he didn’t know anything. So he reached for the add-on. The minimization. The shrug disguised as context—that a lot of people were friends with Jeffrey Epstein. As if the argument is sure, I was friends with a pedophile, but so were lots of other people, which is not a defense. It’s a fucking indictment buffet.   And that was it. No explanation. No denial. No distance. Just nothing. A blank space where accountability is supposed to live. And the room lets it go. No one says that’s you. No one says those came from Epstein’s files. No one says you’re legally required to release more of them in under two weeks. They just move on, like “I don’t know” is a safe word that makes facts stop mid-sentence and back quietly out of the room. How many times have we seen this same dumb fucking escape hatch over the last decade? Because it’s the same tired magic trick they’re pulling right now with his weird-ass black hands—hands smeared and darkened and wrapped, caked in makeup and bandages like a corpse being prepped for an open-casket viewing by someone who hates him. Hands that look like they’ve been shaking hands with a rabid gibbon, Edward Scissorhands, and a piece of industrial equipment that should have been taken out back years ago. Hands that don’t match the rest of him and don’t belong in public without an explanation. One reporter asked about it. One. The answer was that it was from shaking hands too much. Shaking. Fucking. Hands. With what? A belt sander? The press pool nodded like yeah, okay, that tracks. Never asked again. Same script with the “preventative MRI.” Preventative. MRI. As if that’s a real medical category and not something he made up like a kid inventing a science fair project out of dryer lint. No “preventing what?” No curiosity. Just mad-libs medicine accepted without a blink. Hands. Shaking hands too much. MRI. Preventative. Photographs with a pedophile. Doesn’t know anything about that. Okay. Great. Because this is his signature move. The whole presidency is basically a one-man community theater production called Oops! All Amnesia! Ask him about Epstein photos. Doesn’t know. Ask him about strikes. Doesn’t know. Ask him who he’s pardoning. Doesn’t know. Ask him about plans—military plans, policy plans, retaliation plans—and suddenly he doesn’t know who briefed him, doesn’t know what was discussed, doesn’t know who decided, doesn’t know what they decided, doesn’t even know if there was a plan, except for the part where something already happened. Decisions just occur around him. Wars bloom spontaneously. Pardons manifest. Ask him about anything that requires responsibility, memory, or cause and effect, and he’s suddenly a man wandering the halls of his own skull, knocking on doors, finding nothing inside. Which raises the fucking inevitable question: who the fuck is running the country if the president doesn’t know anything about anything? Honestly, give the keys to Britney Spears dancing with butcher knives. She has a comparatively better fucking grasp on reality than the man who doesn’t know shit about fuck. Because this man claims total ignorance about war, money, justice, medicine, photographs of his own face, and the visible condition of his own hands—yet we’re expected to believe he’s personally steering the ship of state with a clear mind. It’s not plausible. It’s not leadership. It’s not even a competent lie. It’s a rehearsed routine, run on muscle memory and rewarded with silence. This mythology didn’t just happen. It was engineered, reinforced, and maintained because silence was easier than accountability. It didn’t happen by accident. It happened because everyone in the room decided it was safer to let bullshit slide than to do the fucking job they’re paid to do. So here’s the fucking deal, because apparently this still needs to be said out loud. This is not a spectator sport. This is not access journalism. This is not a group project where no one wants to be the asshole. This is one of the last rooms where truth is supposed to be dragged out by the ankles and made to talk—not gagged in the hallway while everyone inside chooses access over honesty. Ask the question. When he dodges it, ask it again. When he sneers, ask it louder. When he attacks one of you, the rest of you should pick up that same question and throw it back at him. Same words. Same facts. Over and over. Make him sit in it. Because refusing to answer is the answer. And if all you bring is nods, notes, and safer questions, you’re not doing journalism. You’re laundering silence until it looks like legitimacy. This job fucking matters. Democracies don’t die because of one pathological liar. They die because everyone else decides it’s safer to play furniture than to push back. So do the job. Do it like it matters. Do it like you understand the stakes. And if you can’t—if you won’t—if losing access scares you more than losing the plot entirely—then get the fuck out of the way and let someone else do it. There are plenty of people who would kill to be in that room and wouldn’t accept “I don’t know” as the end of a goddamn sentence.

 

They Really Don't Care, Do They?

 

  

	They Really Don't Care, Do They? Trump and the billionaires don't even live on the same planet as the rest of us. David Rothkopf Dec 14   I try to stay focused on the present and what we can do today to ensure that we fix the mess we are in as a country at the moment. But I will admit, every so often my mind wanders to the past. For example, remember earlier this year when Joe Biden was president? Yes, that’s right. It was earlier this year and not some sepia-toned memory from grandpa and grandma times. But I also remember specific incidents. One has stuck with me all morning. I tried to remove it with a torrent of TCM movies and a chaser of TikTok, but it didn’t work. I don’t know why it is so resonant for me. Or so obstinately stuck in my brain box. It took place in the before times. Back when we had survived one bout of Trump but were recovering as a nation and our hearts were full of hope about the future. Sigh. Anyway, my wife and I were at a gala for a ballet company. I know that sounds like just the kind of thing that East Coast liberals do all the time, but to be honest, despite my love of ballet, it was the only time I was ever at a gala for a ballet company. (If you were there too, stop reading at this point because it may become offensive to you depending on who you are and your level of sympathy for assholes.) (I think I would like to invent some kind of AI equivalent of paywalls that block people from reading further based on their likely reaction to what follows. To protect them, of course.) In any event, everyone was beautifully dressed and looked very glamorous. Except for me. I was maintaining my resistance to wearing black tie to black tie events because, well, what was all the social progress of the past fifty years for if not to let me not wear black tie. I’ll admit, my resistance may not have been entirely political. It may also have had something to do with those being my pre-Zepbound days and my tux pants not fitting. But I prefer to think it had more to do with my role as a champion of social progress than my vanity. Anyway, my wife looked glamorous in a spectacular gown. (As an opera singer she has many gowns.) All the donors and would be donors and guests of donors were also glammed to the max. And the ballet company also was there out-glamming everyone. It was in a glitzy New York setting, one of those places that hosts a gala every night at events where the rich pay to soothe their consciences or for proximity with creative people or activists or just to be near other rich people. Trust me, although we were among the rich, we were not of the rich. We were the guests of a friend of Carla’s. (At this point, I think I had better stop identifying people or offering too many more details lest they get me in trouble and I never get invited back any such events again. Which would be a pity. Because the tux pants fit now. Actually, they are too big. Which is something that frankly, I’d like as many people to see as possible.) Thank you, Eli Lilly. Anyway, the meal began benignly enough. There was polite conversation. Flattery flowed like wine and the wine flowed like the flattery. About thirty minutes after everyone sat down for dinner and while the conversation was humming, we were joined at our table by a guy who plunked himself down while still in mid-cell phone conversation, ignoring the rest of us. From the call, he made it very clear that he was in the midst of a big deal. (I’m always tempted to narc on these guys who are spilling sensitive details, using too many companies’ and people’s names and inviting insider trading scandals…especially when they’re doing it just to let us know how important they and the investment bank they work for are. But I restrained myself.) Once the call was done, he plonks the phone on the table starts shoveling the salad into his mouth and says, while spewing arugula and pine nuts, “So, what’re we talking about?” The small talk around the table stopped and his wife informed him that we were having a nice conversation about pretty much nothing. She then introduced us and noted that my wife and I were from Washington, DC and that I was someone who was a “political commentator.” That’s not exactly accurate although every once in a while, as you know, drawing on the sense my Mama instilled in me that everyone was interested in my opinions, I do, when I can’t contain myself, opine. Anyway, that was enough to set him off on why he and his buddies were working hard to get Donald Trump re-elected president. He explained that Trump was the only one who really understood our economy and that the secret to America’s success was to enable the successful among us to do their thing because in the end, that was the way for all the rest of us to ultimately benefit. They were the sled dogs. We were the baggage. Feed the dogs. I gently pointed out a few problems with his theory—like the fact that the GOP had actually presided over most of the economic downturns of modern times and that Democrats basically spent their time digging out of holes Republicans had put us in. That’s not true, he said emphatically while demolishing a bread roll. So, calmly, with the warm tones of a friendly school marm, I enumerated each of the seven notable downturns of the past half-century and reminded him that only one, at the end of the Carter Administration, came while a Democrat was president. He then changed the subject, shifted from ingesting food to guzzling wine, and all too forcefully made the point that Democrats were addicted to spending. I couldn’t help myself and observed that the federal deficit had increased under Nixon, Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump and that the only times that it had decreased in modern memory were under Carter, Clinton, Obama and Biden. The conversation went on like this. He grew more insistent in his arguments. (He was after all, a moneybro and I was just an opinion-flogging middle-aged Jewish guy from New Jersey.) But GDP growth, he said insistently! Nope, I replied. GDP grew on average around 4.3 percent under Dems while under Republicans it grew substantially less fast, only about 2.5 percent. But…jobs! No. Of the 51 million jobs created since 1990, roughly 50 million were created under Democrats. He was furious. My wife nudged me. Or maybe she stabbed me with her salad fork. I’m not sure which, but I still have a mark on my upper thigh. I tried to change the subjects. He then went on to say that he knew that what Trump intended to do was stand up to the world in the way Democrats were too feckless and weak and woke and diverse to do. He explained, as if it would add weight to his argument, that he was talking with some buddies (undoubtedly over golf…I have a theory that if we closed all the golf courses in America we would be much better off…because there would be fewer inappropriately confident conversations among those who believe their wealth is validation of their wisdom)…anyway, he was talking with his Republican buddies at some club on the Upper East Side and they saw a new boom coming in America because Trump was going to bring back tariffs in a big way and that this was a good way to knock a few foreign heads together and get people to invest and make things here. I tried to gently bring up Smoot-Hawley and the colossal failure this strategy had helped trigger and he then challenged me, asking me where I, column writer and talking head, got off questioning him, big swinging dick, about this stuff. I pointed out that on trade I had a little experience, that once upon a time, I was Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Trade Policy and then for almost half a year I was Acting Under Secretary for International Trade. I also pointed out that most of the jobs he said would be brought back were actually exported to the past and not overseas due to tech-driven increases in productivity. (I did not point out that he probably had made a nice load of cash helping to finance those “efficiencies.”) Before I could get any more words out of my mouth, however, my wife explained that we needed to go home and change the channel so the dog could watch his favorite show. (Which was a lie. She knew the TV was already tuned to HGTV so he could watch “Love It or List It” all night as was his wont at the time. He has since moved on to “House Hunters International.”) We made our excuses and left and if I’m being honest with you, she was not happy with me during the car ride back to our hotel. But, hey, I didn’t bring the subject up. I didn’t escalate it. I didn’t go all New Jersey on the guy. I just served up some facts to go along with the filet mignon and the something something on the side that was served with a reduction of something. But now, in retrospect, after a year of Trump, the thing that sticks with me as I reflect on that moment was just how transcendently and smugly confident this Ivy-league educated, much-wealthier-than-me guy was about his views, which were all, entirely, completely, and subsequently proven again to be totally and inarguably, wrong wrong wrong. Wrong. He was wrong about everything. That’s clear now, right? I mean we won’t have to explain this again, will we? The whole myth that Republicans were better at economics just because rich guys liked them is done, right? That’s all dead and buried along with sensible trade or fiscal policies, our ability to attract the best minds to America, dependable rule of law, and (soon) the independence of the Fed, right? I mean it must be clear by now that the reason the rich guys like Republicans is that the Republicans were actually not interested in the overall economy at all, they didn’t care about outcomes for the country or the people. They just ensured that, over the course of the past half century, America’s wealthiest got wealthier and wealthier. They have proven that they-really-don’t-care-do-they that the cost to the economy, to society, was damaging in the long run…and that in turn is because they don’t really care about the long run. The long run is for schmucks. When you have a billion dollars, or even “just” hundreds or tens of millions, you never have to run again. People will run for you. Social collapse doesn’t touch you. Job losses and rising prices don’t matter. Even faltering American competitiveness doesn’t matter because the super rich and super empowered are global citizens, able to tap into upside and exploit downside wherever on the planet they may find it. They can live above the law. Do what they want. Shatter lives. And toast it all afterwards. The reason they supported Trump was that they knew he was like them and vice versa. Their metrics of success were his metrics of success. Their blindspots and lack of concern for the world at large meshed with his. While Democrats were foolishly hung up on economic and social and national security policies for America, these guys were focused on getting through the programs and policies that would ensure they never had to care about any of those things ever again. And frankly, thinking back on this guy, they actually may even have liked it a little bit that they would do well while everyone else was being screwed. One of the appeals, you see, of being elite, of traveling in the world of galas and limos and dancers performing just for you is that it is all just for you…no crowds…no lines…no wait…no anxiety…no worrying about the rent…no glum talk. No bothersome facts. No ugly realities. And if you’re lucky, no obnoxious former economic officials to point out just how wrong they are about well, pretty much all of it. (I’m pretty sure that’s where he came out on all this because we were never invited back again.) Needless to say, the rich guy was right about the election results in 2024 and the earnest ink-stained wretch and sometime Dem activist and wonk was, as it turned out, wrong. But I was right about what would happen if Trump were elected. To which, I can hear this guy saying through a fine spray of micro greens, who cares? Because he is getting what he wanted. And then some. Forty years of GOP and Centrist Dem engineered gains in inequality in this country have been kicked into high gear. Taxes are lower. Regulations are being expunged. Regulatory agencies are being shuttered. Anti-fraud and corruption lawyers are being assigned to help round up Latino nurses and school teachers in Chicago. Corruption at the highest levels of our society is in bloom as never before. The power centers of the entire U.S. government and political system—from White House to Congress to Supreme Court to the donor class who pick so many of our maintstream candidates for high office—are all working to serve the interest of a smaller and smaller subset of America’s elite while the rest of us are left inhabiting the world they are rapidly trying to exist and dealing with the consequences of their rampant, pathological greed. That said, one other thing strikes me: Just as they are raping the system as never before, the consequences of their action are more visible than ever, more painful to millions. The patter of their con artist front man in the White House is being revealed daily to more and more people as bullshit. Trump can say affordability is a hoax but if your healthcare bill is tripling, energy costs are rising by double digits, food is more expensive and there is no relief in sight…while Trump paints the White House gold and builds a ballroom for billionaires that will dwarf with gut-wrenching metaphorical accuracy “the People’s House”…then the message is clear. The modern GOP has betrayed its voters, betrayed the country and is just now playing a cynical game of stealing the valuables out of a house it has set alight. Fortunately, that kind of pain can motivate the masses as it has in the past when the era of trust-busting followed the last Gilded Age or when the nation pulled itself up by its own bootstraps in the wake of the Great Depression. Around every dinner table in this country…far from the galas and the White House ballroom…there will be Americans who can speak from experience when they debunk the lies of MAGA and Trump, of “trickle down” and “rising tides lift all boats.” Lessons are being taught in real time. Lived experiences are communicated more forcefully than recounted historical facts. The politicians may not get it. The rich guys who write the checks for them may not get it. But the abuses are now so egregious, the failures touch so many tens of millions among us, the contempt for those on top for all the rest of us is so clear, that I truly do believe the tide will turn politically for America over the next months and years. 2026 will be an important watershed as Democrats regain control of one or both houses. 2028 will be the year the lies of MAGA are buried with their leader, the most promiscuously dishonest leader in American history. I don’t necessarily trust our political class and their hired gangs of communicators to get this message through nor do I trust the American media, much of it now largely compromised, to tell the story as they should. But they won’t have to. Because we can see the truth with our own eyes. And as in the past, that kind of reality can finally silence the arrogance and smugness of those who think they have outsmarted us all, who think they have gamed not just financial markets but the country and the world. We know the difference between the myths on which they have depended and the reality we wake up to every morning. I only wish that after our collective voices are heard, I could once again sit opposite my dinner debate opponent and ask him, gently, of course, what he thought was behind the political earthquake that came once Americans demanded leaders who put the people ahead of the billionaires and their buddies. But, I don’t expect it will happen. Because, as you may have guessed, we’ve never been invited back to join these people at that or any other fancy dress galas.