Self-Distract Mechanisms Engaged

All of the following observations are related to Jeffrey Epstein, the investigation into him, and the Trump Administration’s desperate attempts to make it all go away. It’s a replay of the Greatest Hits: Obama, Biden, Clintons Male and Female… you name it. If it riles the base, they’re trying it on to see if it has legs, to see if it will walk everybody away from Trump’s increasingly-ugly relationship with Epstein.

Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal seems to have dug in on the story, reporting today that Trump’s Department of Justice alerted him in May that his name is “in” the Epstein files. How troubling. How tragic. How utterly expected.

To be fair, Bill Clinton’s name is probably in there, too, but as Trump went to war with the Clintons in 2016, it’s going to be awkward saying “I’m in the same boat with Bill Clinton as one of the few American Presidents credibly accused of statutory rape.”

Hence the refusal to release the Epstein files, and also the rather rapid modification of the narrative (presented here hilariously by influencer Joey Mannarino):

So pull out the stops on the distraction; and Trump ends where he began, by slanging Barack Obama. Keep in mind, this is just today. By the end of the week, MAGA will be gorging on tauri excretum from the end of a firehose.

MARCO YOLO

The accusation by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard of “treasonous conspiracy” against Barack Obama was going swimmingly until somebody asked why Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as a senator who had not yet surrendered his spine and soul, exonerated Obama of the same charge that’s being brought against him now.

Question: “What do you now have that refutes” the Rubio Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Department of Justice reports exonerating Obama and the thousands of pages now made public by them?

Answer: I’m DNI. Shut up. Here’s 200 pages you’ve already seen. Make something huge out of them.

Well, those aren’t precisely her words, but that was her meaning. You can watch it here:

Marco’s probably right. You only live once; life’s too short for integrity.

IF I CAN’T HABBA YOU, I DON’T WANT NOBODY, BABY

Alina Habba, formerly Trump’s personal attorney, has been the Acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. She ran into confirmation trouble, though, for the very good reason that she’s an awful attorney. She’s taken lead in only three cases, and she botched basic rules for procedure and evidence in her defense of Trump.

Democracy Docket explains what happened next:

While judges don’t typically weigh in on U.S. attorney appointments, federal law gives them limited authority to do so in rare cases. If the attorney general’s interim appointment expires without Senate confirmation, a district court panel can appoint a replacement. That’s what happened here — the judges chose not to extend Habba’s tenure after her 120 day interim appointment expired on July 22.

Understand what this means: the federal judges who have to hear the U.S. Attorney and her deputies argue important cases have a stake in continuity in that office. So they have a right to say, “Okay, stand down, and next man or woman up.” By protocol, the person with seniority, the First Assistant, takes the role on: it’s assumed that they’re a confirmed U.S. attorney who at least has the faith of the Administration for whom they will argue.

But this Administration never misses a chance to make a bad situation a lot worse:

Rather than accept the automatic elevation of the first assistant U.S. attorney, which is standard DOJ protocol when no confirmed leader is in place, [Attorney General Pam] Bondi swiftly fired that official.

“Politically minded judges refused to allow her to continue in her position, replacing Alina with the First Assistant,” Bondi posted on social media. “This Department of Justice does not tolerate rogue judges — especially when they threaten the President’s core Article II powers.”

There’s no mention here that Habba is a politically-minded attorney who doesn’t give a damn about “justice” or “fairness” or “competence”: her track record for Trump was what you might call feral.

George Orwell warned us: when up is down and right is wrong, you know where you are.

GO BIGLY OR GO HOMELY

All of the following are taken from transcripts of Trump speeches and press-conferences this week, and ask yourself what you’d think if you heard any other human say these things.

TRUMP: "At this moment, we have almost $17 trillion coming into this country. There's never been a period of time like that. And that's in a period of a few months."

(The entire American GDP is about $30 trillion. This isn’t happening.)

TRUMP: “This is something that nobody else can do. We’re gonna get the drug prices down. Not 30 or 40 percent, which would be great, not 50 or 60, no. We’re gonna get ’em down 1,000 percent, 600 percent, 500 percent, 1,500 percent [. . . .] We will have reduced drug prices by 1,000 percent, by 1,100, 1,200, 1,300, 1,400, 700, 600; not 30 or 40 or 50 percent but numbers the likes of which you’ve never even dreamed of before.”

(Apparently, we will be paid to take drugs. D.A.R.E. warned me about this, and was understating the problem if anything. Are we sure we don’t want to keep our medicine three times more expensive than anybody else?)

TRUMP: “Japan will invest, at my direction, $550 Billion Dollars into the United States, which will receive 90% of the Profits.”

(“At my direction”? Weren’t Republicans against nationalizing industry? If this analysis of the Japan “deal” were not fantasy, the best reply would be from libertarian / free-market economist Don Boudreaux: “Not only will this increased investment by Japan in the U.S. swell the U.S trade deficit, with the president personally directing this investment – and with the government laying claim to ninety percent of whatever profits emerge – the Trump administration moves the U.S. closer to genuine socialism. It now appears that the real winner last November was Bernie Sanders.”)