The Trump Presidency, Season 2

[Innula Zenovka]

Trump betrays his conspiracy-addled base

From Epstein to chemtrails, they're learning it was all a scam.

www.publicnotice.co

But here’s the problem Trump now faces. Conspiracy theories are for those who are alienated from power, who seek to grasp on to some measure of control by convincing themselves that they have access to knowledge the rest of us don’t. That knowledge can only be found in the most obscure corners. They won’t believe a government report, unless it’s one that has been censored and suppressed. They know how things really work; they see the hidden gears and levers behind the facade.

Conspiracy thinking is not just a set of discrete beliefs about particular events and figures — it’s a way of looking at the world, one virtually immune to debunking. So what happens when you can’t think any other way, but your side is in power? And what happens when that administration doesn’t raise the curtain to reveal the truth behind the lies, as it said it would?

 

[Cristiano]

That hand is too big....

AI never gets hands right.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food

Federal workers warned for months that the high-energy biscuits would go to waste.

www.theatlantic.com

Evernote Link

Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it. Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash. (The sources I spoke with for this story requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions.)

 

[Free]

But but, the Trump administration campaigned on transparency!

Republicans block vote to release Epstein files

Republican lawmakers have blocked a move that could have forced President Donald Trump's administration to release the files on Jeffrey Epstein's investigation.

www.newsweek.com

Republican lawmakers have blocked a move that could have forced President Donald Trump's administration to release the files on the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's death and investigation.

All but one of the GOP members of the House Rules Committee voted against a Democratic amendment that would have allowed Congress to vote on whether the files should be made public.

Also, Biden destroyed the Epstein files (that don't exist)!

Jeffrey Epstein files likely "destroyed," Republican congressman says

Representative Tim Burchett said he thinks files related to Jeffrey Epstein were "destroyed" by the Biden administration.

www.newsweek.com

Representative Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, said he thinks files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were "destroyed" by the Biden administration.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

With Pete Hegseth in the pews, a Christian nationalist church plant launches in DC

WASHINGTON (RNS) — Christ Kirk DC is the latest example of pastor Doug Wilson's growing sphere of influence among a cadre of conservatives sometimes described as the 'New Right.'

religionnews.com

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

So what happens when you can’t think any other way, but your side is in power? And what happens when that administration doesn’t raise the curtain to reveal the truth behind the lies, as it said it would?

Easy - you invent an even MORE powerful but super-secret boogeyman called the Deep State that is magically able to prevent your side from doing everything it promised to do even though your side literally runs everything from top to bottom now.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Also, Biden destroyed the Epstein files (that don't exist)!

Curses, foiled again by the old guy supposedly so senile he didn't even know what his own name was! If only the administration who was in charge back when Epstein was being investigated and killed himself had released the files then, when they originally made them! Who were those masked men?

 

[Free]

Curses, foiled again by the old guy supposedly so senile he didn't even know what his own name was!

The autopen was running things.

 

[Free]

The gap keeps widening.

The FBI's Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Had Nearly 3 Minutes Cut Out (archive.today)

Newly uncovered metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut from what the US Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation described as “full raw” surveillance video from the only functioning camera near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead. The video was released last week as part of the Trump administration’s commitment to fully investigate Epstein’s 2019 death but instead has raised new questions about how the footage was edited and assembled.

WIRED previously reported that the video had been stitched together in Adobe Premiere Pro from two video files, contradicting the Justice Department’s claim that it was “raw” footage. Now, further analysis shows that one of the source clips was approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, indicating that footage appears to have been trimmed before release. It’s unclear what, if anything, the minutes cut from the first clip showed.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

 

[Beebo Brink]

There's something so incredibly wrong with Trump and all his family. Am I the only one who finds this photo disturbing?

 

[Essence Lumin]

There's something so incredibly wrong with Trump and all his family. Am I the only one who finds this photo disturbing?

She is a mail order bride. Now disappointed, but still showing up silently for events a couple of times a year.

After all, Trump said about his daughter, "Aides said he talked about Ivanka Trump’s breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her, remarks that prompted Kelly to remind the president that Ivanka was his daughter "

 

[detrius]

Curses, foiled again by the old guy supposedly so senile he didn't even know what his own name was! If only the administration who was in charge back when Epstein was being investigated and killed himself had released the files then, when they originally made them! Who were those masked men?

I keep coming back to Umberto Eco's "Ur-Fascism":

8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

Ur-Fascism

Umberto Eco Ur-Fascism June 22, 1995

theanarchistlibrary.org

 

[Innula Zenovka]

To be fair, her allegations have never been tested in court, either, because she voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit. Her attorney at the time said this was because she'd been subjected to numerous death threats but, again, this has never been tested either.

Since, as we know, people say all sorts of things, for all sorts of reasons, in civil lawsuits that it turns out they can't actually support (e.g. in multiple lawsuits alleging the 2020 presidential elections were rigged and Trump actually won) I'm rather wary about giving credence to unsubstantiated claims like this.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Link to Guardian article

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

To be fair, her allegations have never been tested in court, either, because she voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit. Her attorney at the time said this was because she'd been subjected to numerous death threats but, again, this has never been tested either.

Since, as we know, people say all sorts of things, for all sorts of reasons, in civil lawsuits that it turns out they can't actually support (e.g. in multiple lawsuits alleging the 2020 presidential elections were rigged and Trump actually won) I'm rather wary about giving credence to unsubstantiated claims like this.

I give a lot more credence to allegations from victims than I do something like the 2020 election lawsuit against a mysterious "they." In the USA sexual assault victims are often told their cases won't go anywhere regardless of their own personal credibility. Courts often seem to view them as just a "he said she said" when there is no hard evidence such as video or a correctly timed rape kit. It's also not much of a stretch that Trump would do the kind of thing he's bragged about doing. We obviously don't know for sure that this accusation is correct, but I think it is very likely true.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I give a lot more credence to allegations from victims than I do something like the 2020 election lawsuit against a mysterious "they." In the USA sexual assault victims are often told their cases won't go anywhere regardless of their own personal credibility. Courts often seem to view them as just a "he said she said" when there is no hard evidence such as video or a correctly timed rape kit. It's also not much of a stretch that Trump would do the kind of thing he's bragged about doing. We obviously don't know for sure that this accusation is correct, but I think it is very likely true.

Quite so, but while we can speculate about whether Trump is likely to have behaved in the way described in the affidavit, and similarly speculate about why she asked for the case to be dismissed, all we have is an unsubstantiated allegation that has never been tested in court and is never likely to be.

Obviously I don't know much about US courts, other than that judges allow the defence in sexual abuse cases to get away with lines of questioning that are prohibited in English courts as abusive and oppressive to the complainant, but here most sexual assault and abuse cases do rely very much on whether the jury believes the complainant or the defendant's live evidence, often about events that took place several years previously, and they frequently convict because the complainant is so much more credible than the defendant, particularly under cross-examination.

Thats what happened in E. Jean Caroll v Trump, of course.

As it is, though, all we know in this case is that the allegations were made but never tested in court because the complainant dropped the case. While they may very possibly be true, and she may very well have dropped the case because of intimidation, there's no way of knowing, so it would be dangerous to rely on them.

 

[Free]

Cutting at the core.

Two-thirds of DoJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit

The US justice department unit charged with defending against legal challenges to signature Trump administration policies – such as restricting birthright citizenship and slashing funding to Harvard University – has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff, according to a list seen by Reuters.

Sixty-nine of the roughly 110 lawyers in the federal programs branch have voluntarily left the unit since Donald Trump’s election in November or have announced plans to leave, according to the list compiled by former justice department lawyers and reviewed by Reuters.

“Many of these people came to work at federal programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system,” said one lawyer who left the unit during Trump’s second term. “How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?“

Critics have accused the Trump administration of flouting the law in its aggressive use of executive power, including by retaliating against perceived enemies and dismantling agencies created by Congress.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

To be fair, her allegations have never been tested in court, either, because she voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit.

Let us not forget who she was accusing - a man who is not opposed to doing any illegal maneuver in the world to avoid responsibility. That includes bullying his victims into NDAs and suing the living crap out of everybody else.

Legally, you are correct. But The Real World suggests that she could very well have a valid accusation. Going on the history of Trump, I tend to believe her.

Her attorney at the time said this was because she'd been subjected to numerous death threats but, again, this has never been tested either.

^^^ right there. That's the signature.

 

[Free]

Boebert wants Matt Gaetz to lead special counsel investigation into Epstein files

Lauren Bobert suggested that Matt Gaetz was an appropriate figure to deliver the ‘truth’ about Jeffrey Epstein

www.independent.co.uk