Another Week, Another Batshit Trump Interview

Everyone's got their line that pushed them over the edge from President Donald Trump's interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios (motto: "When USA Today is too complex, you've got Axios"). Mine occurred when Swan asked Trump about why he didn't bother to ask Russian dictator Vladimir Putin about the reports that Putin had put a bounty on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump could have shimmied his hands around as he answered, "Well, he's my dom and when master tells me not to ask questions, I can't ask questions or he spanks my ass with the splintery switch." That would have made sense. I could have thought, "Well, I guess he's gotta do what a sub's gotta do. No one wants splinters in their ass. I assume. Better google that later." (Note: Of course there are people who want splinters in their ass.)

Instead, Trump harrumphed around the idea that the intelligence was real and then said that his recent call with Putin was about "nuclear proliferation." Trump said, "If we can do something with Russia in terms of nuclear proliferation, which is a very big problem...A much bigger problem than global warming in terms of the real world, that would be a great thing."

Putting aside that it's Trump who is allowing the New START treaty to expire and could extend it for five years with no difficulty at all, only someone whose brain, such as it is, is stuck around 1980 could actually say that nuclear weapons, in 2020, are anything approaching the shit-inducing threat that the growing fuckstorm of climate change poses. It's like Trump just saw The Day After, and he's thinking about how he might get stuck in a bunker with Melania and that kid she always has with her. In terms of the real real world, not the fake real world that Trump has forced us all to live in like that demented telepathic little shit on that Twilight Zone episode, climate change is the massive problem that Trump and the GOP insist on denying, like, you know, they did with the coronavirus pandemic, and that's worked out so fucking well.

This was how the whole thing went. There was Trump bumblefucking through every lie and delusion. There was the sociopathic denial of any hint of human empathy despite, as Greg Mitchell points out, the many chances that Swan gave Trump to show that he gives a jolly pig fuck about anyone other than himself. Swan's face multiple times looked like he was seriously worried if he was going to get out of the interview unharmed. He confronted Trump again and again with facts, but Trump would wave them off like someone was offering him a plate of broccoli with his well-done steak, either not acknowledging them or questioning whether it was a fact, like when Trump accused South Korea of lying about its coronavirus cases. 

The most appalling moment wasn't Trump's blithe dismissal of the over 150,000 dead from his seemingly proud refusal to act on COVID-19, given the now forever carved on his political tombstone "It is what it is." No, for me, it was that he obviously has no idea about anything to do with American history. I mean, we knew that, but it's always just pathetic when we see him flunk basic shit again and again. First, Trump had no idea who John Lewis was beyond the transactional, "the fuck he ever do for me" basis by which he measures everyone. Seriously, check out this exchange: 

Swan:  John Lewis is lying in state in the U.S. Capitol. How do you think history will remember John Lewis?

Trump: I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration. He chose… I never met John Lewis, actually, I don’t believe.

Swan: Do you find him impressive?

Trump: I can’t say one or the other. I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive. But no, but I didn’t go-

Swan: Do you find his story impressive?

Trump: He didn’t come to my inauguration. He didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches, and that’s okay. That’s his right. 

That's the shit you say when you don't know something. While everyone is praising Swan for simply doing real interviewing (which, admittedly, is tough to do with an Adderall-snorting, syphilitic hog beast), he should have asked Trump, "Do you know anything else at all about John Lewis? Do you even know what the Edmund Pettus Bridge is?"

But prior to that was just Trump's blatantly racist, insidious fucking attempt to assfuck American history until it is contorted around his deformed goddamned image. Trump was once again lying about how "I did more for the Black community than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, whether you like it or not," and Swan asked him: 

Swan: You really believe you did more than Lyndon Johnson who passed the Civil Rights Act?

Trump: I think I did, yeah.

Swan: How? How possibly did you-

Trump: Because I got criminal justice reform done, I got prison reform-

Swan: Lyndon Johnson-

Trump: I’ve done things. Well-

Swan: He passed the Civil Rights Act.

Trump: Ask. Ask. How has it worked out? If you take a look at what Lyndon Johnson did?

Swan: You think the Civil Rights Act was a mistake?

Trump: How has it worked out? 

There's so much to say here that it's almost impossible to articulate it. First, Trump has no fucking clue what's in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, let alone the Voting Rights Act or the 1968 Civil Rights Act, all signed by LBJ (although he might know the last one since it prohibited the very race discrimination in housing that he and his shitbird father engaged in). More importantly, Trump looks at his minor adjustments in laws as huge triumphs, not giving a damn that whatever African Americans have accomplished during his presidency comes from a long fuckin' line of struggles and triumphs involving more presidents than just him. But as far as Trump is concerned, African American history goes from Lincoln freeing the slaves, which he allows is possibly more important than Opportunity Zones, to him.

In a rational nation, this kind of embarrassing stupidity in a leader would cause an upheaval that would force them to run for freedom before the pitchforks and torches caught up with them. And while those of us who already despise Trump more than the dictionary has words to express are justifiably nauseated by the interview, in MAGA world, this was Trump just givin' it to the fake news who were trying to set him up to fail. 

You have to choose your reality in this America. And there are still tens of millions of people who want to live in the one filtered through Donald Trump's anus-mouth. Fuck them. 

Barack Obama Reminds Us That We Are a Nation

There is a tone that Barack Obama has whenever he's talking about something where you know he's thinking, "This is so damn obvious that I can't believe I have to say it out loud." It's a mixture of incredulity that people (generally Republicans and Fox "news" viewers) could be so fuckin' stupid and disappointment that he has to say something that's been said a million times before. But it's also got an air of optimism behind it, that maybe it needs to be said over and over and this is just the burden we all bear. Yeah, that's it. That's the tone, and, goddamn, I've missed it.

Former President Obama's eulogy at the funeral of Rep. John Lewis, one of the titans of the civil rights movement, was blissfully political. It was refreshingly confrontational. And it was in the spirit of Lewis's entire life, as Obama well-knew. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Lewis had asked Obama to bring the fire to his funeral, especially since it was held at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King had been pastor until his murder in 1968. What a better place and what a better time for Obama the fighter to finally, fully re-emerge. We missed you, man, and, holy shit, we need you.

The moment that had the tone was when he tied the current political and social reality to the past we try to believe we're better than. "Bull Connor may be gone," Obama said. "But today we witness with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans. George Wallace may be gone. But we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators." 

If there is one thing that Obama must recognize now is how easy it is to take away the promise of progress, to move backwards on the very things that you believe must move forward. Obama has had to watch for the last three-and-a-half years as Donald Trump and the GOP savages dismantled everything that had been accomplished over the Obama's two terms: deal, agreements, policies, the fucking pandemic response team. What remains - the Affordable Care Act - has powerfully changed millions of lives for the better, and it is the white whale that conservative pricks want to harpoon for no reason other than it gives people hope that government can be a genuine force for good. That must be undermined because if Americans believe that, then they are going to want their government to do more than protect the assets and property of the very wealthy.

On the same day that Trump frighteningly suggested that the presidential election be delayed because of deranged lies about nonexistent mass voter fraud, Obama was passionately advocating for making elections more free and more fair. "We may no longer have to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar in order to cast a ballot. But even as we sit here, there are those in power are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting — by closing polling locations, and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws, and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision," and here his voice rose in genuinely righteous indignation, "even undermining the postal service in the run-up to an election that is going to be dependent on mailed-in ballots so people don’t get sick." Right there was where that tone was at its clearest. It was as if he was rhetorically asking, "Isn't it clear that you have to be evil to do this shit? This is about keeping people healthy and alive and engaged in our democracy. If you don't want that, you don't believe in this country." 

And, of course, the evil motherfuckers don't.

Obama was just getting warmed up, as he attacked the conservative effort to undermine minority voters: "Once the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, some state legislatures unleashed a flood of laws designed specifically to make voting harder, especially, by the way, state legislatures where there is a lot of minority turnout and population growth. That’s not necessarily a mystery or an accident. It was an attack on what John fought for. It was an attack on our democratic freedoms. And we should treat it as such." If you treat something as an attack, then you get in the trenches and you fucking fight, with your body, with your soul, with your voice, and with your vote.

And then Obama laid out the plan of attack, taking it right to the Republicans who are scared for their electoral lives if people could vote as easily as they should be able to. If the GOP really believed that rights are "God-given" or some such magical hoodoo, then they would be doing everything they could to allow everyone to avail themselves of those rights. But, like voter fraud, conservatives don't believe it. It's just something they say to justify their hatred. So they attack, and here's how you fuck up their attack, according to Obama: By making sure everyone is automatically registered to vote, giving freed inmates their right to vote, making Election Day a holiday, enfranchising Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, and ending partisan gerrymandering. "And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster — another Jim Crow relic — in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do," Obama said, going after the very thing that had been weaponized against him by that rat bastard Mitch McConnell and his band of brutish racists. 

He ended this section of the eulogy by placing the responsibility on all of us. He said, "As long as young people are protesting in the streets, hoping real change takes hold, I’m hopeful but we cannot casually abandon them at the ballot box. Not when few elections have been as urgent, on so many levels, as this one. We cannot treat voting as an errand to run if we have some time. We have to treat it as the most important action we can take on behalf of democracy."

We're a goddamn nation, not 350 million islands selfishly at war with each other all the time in order to accumulate the most shit. We're citizens of a nation, and we're supposed to give a damn about that fact. While Trump and Republicans have done everything in their power to divide us, to set us against each other, to make every minor difference into a vast gulf and to make vast gulfs into uncrossable oceans, President Obama, evoking the legacy of a man who bled on American soil for his human, not divine, rights, asserted that it's time to act like a goddamn nation and actually give a damn. And isn't that just blindingly obvious? Did we forget about hope and change so quickly?

We may never live up to even those basic expectations, but we can at least make the effort, if for no other reason than to expel this poison that is weakening our system on the way to a painful death. We have responsibilities to each other. Too many Americans have forgotten that. 

AOC Fucks the Patriarchy's Shit Up

The line from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's calm evisceration of Rep. Ted Yoho yesterday on the floor of the House of Representatives that will likely be the one that is remembered is something that shouldn't need to be said: "Having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man. Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man." Too many terrible men have tried to use the fact that they're related to women as a defense for their shit behavior. Ocasio-Cortez was done with that, as we all should be. Ted Bundy had a mom. Bill Cosby has a wife and daughters. Donald Trump has had three wives and two daughters. Their proximity to women did nothing to ameliorate their hideous acts towards women.

Ocasio-Cortez said that she wasn't speaking so much because Yoho had called her a "fucking bitch" on the steps of the Capitol but because, the day before, Yoho had offered the fake apology of a fucking bitch. Yoho has long been a fucking bitch. He rode into DC on one of the racist Tea Party waves in 2012, representing a district in Florida that's 75% white. He's been a loyal gobbler of Koch money, the kind of piece of shit Republican who votes to defund Planned Parenthood, won't say if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is constitutional, and refuses to vote for a federal anti-lynching bill because that would be "overreach." What had so upset Yoho that he felt he had to confront Ocasio-Cortez? The Democrat from NYC had said a month ago that poverty leads to crime, something that we've fucking known since at least Les Miserables. But that set off Yoho because if there's one thing a Republican doesn't want to hear, it's that you might need to actually help people.

Then, proving that he's one of the littlest fucking bitches in the bitch-filled GOP caucus, Yoho went to the mic in the House on Wednesday to say, in essence, "Sorry if what I said upset you. Oh, and I didn't say it. Oh, and I might have said it but I didn't intend for her to hear it. Oh, and I only said the thing I didn't say because I love my country and God and my wife and daughters and I'm gonna hide behind all that because I'm a fucking bitch." More or less, that was it. 

Sure, one way to read and watch Ocasio-Cortez's response is that she ripped off Yoho's little nutsack and showed it to him, laughing as he looked at his torn scrotum in her clutched hand while he bled to death. It is more than gratifying to see it that way. "I want to be clear that Representative Yoho’s comments were not deeply hurtful or piercing to me, because I have worked a working class job," she said, adding, "I have tossed men out of bars that have used language like Mr. Yoho’s." And you totally know she could. It was cathartic, but it was so much more.

More importantly and more incisively on her part, Ocasio-Cortez universalized the insult to show how it's simply part and parcel of the patriarchal world that women have been forced to negotiate and, really, fuck that shit. Fuck this male-dominated institution and fuck all the men who fuck up women's lives and fuck them that they do it without consequences. Or, in her words, "I want to thank him for showing the world that you can be a powerful man and accost women. You can have daughters and accost women without remorse. You can be married and accost women. You can take photos and project an image to the world of being a family man and accost women without remorse and with a sense of impunity. It happens every day in this country. It happened here on the steps of our nation’s Capitol. It happens when individuals who hold the highest office in this land admit, admit to hurting women and using this language against all of us."

Yoho's pathetic little slap at Ocasio-Cortez is just another of the last gasps of a white patriarchy that has been on oxygen for at least a decade, kept alive by unholy medical procedures and the force of pure racist and sexist fear, like Sheldon Adelson or the thankfully dead Strom Thurmond, that their day may finally, at long last, after so much delay, be over. And it's going to be women like Ocasio-Cortez and the dozen-plus women in Congress who stood with her, as well as the daughters and granddaughters of soon-to-be extinct creatures like Yoho. 

Goddamn, it can't come soon enough. Please take the keys away from men, whether in Congress or in other positions of power and hopefully the presidency one day soon. God knows people like Ted Yoho have fucked this nation he supposedly loves for everyone, including wives and daughters. No, the people who really love the United States know it must change or it will die. Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal and Ayanna Pressley and Mikie Sherrill and Rashida Tlaib and so many more will keep giving the patriarchy a beat down in the Congress and elsewhere until it's finally yielded to the hope of progress.

Trump Assures That We Stay Angry with a Parade of Horribles

One thing that is remarkable about the remarkably bad presidency of Donald Trump, who is really just a sack of yams with a deranged parrot on top of it, is that every single time the mongrels of the media start to say that he's "pivoting" or taking "a new tone," he undercuts that by doing more scandal. It's either an offhand remark or tweet, like telling accused child sex trafficker and rapist Ghislaine Maxwell that "I wish her well," or the revelation of some other scandal, like the fact that Trump asked redundantly-named Woody Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, to convince the British government to move the British Open golf tournament to Trump's failing golf resort in Scotland.

There's always a danger that we simply get used to one form of fuckery, like Trump's constant violation of the emoluments clause in the Constitution, and it fades into the deafening background drone of crime and offense that marks this presidency and this administration and this party. You don't want to become complacent, but as long as Republicans are willing to cover up for Trump, many Americans have a "well, what are you gonna do?" attitude. Ah, well, we'll fix it in the election, we think, hilariously, since there's no guarantee we'll make it to the election or that the election won't be fixed in Trump's favor or that Trump would leave office if he lost. Our adorably naive belief and hope that the mechanisms of democracy will function as they're supposed to in 2020 might not be enough. 

But there's no fucking break here. Sure, sure, we keep saying, "This isn't normal," but systems have a way of adapting. Some of us think about the migrant kids who are still being separated from their parents or the mistreatment of the kids who are on their own, but most of the country has absorbed that horror as either forgotten or solved or "well, what are you gonna do?" We moved on from something so abjectly, objectively terrible, the very policy that Trump should have been impeached over, and that truly says something sad about all of us.

Fortunately, Trump is a bounty of crime and unethical behavior. Today, as I'm writing this, that piece of shit president and his evil walrus attorney general are announcing that they will be sending an alphabet soup of hundreds of federal law enforcement officers (or, you know, stormtroopers) to Chicago, since the ongoing dress rehearsal in Portland went so well, and that other cities will follow. Trump said, militaristically, "Today I’m announcing a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities plagued by violent crime." Of course, Trump spoke about this in the rapiest way possible, saying that the cities "need it badly" and "should want it." Of course, they don't want it, as governors and mayors have made crystal-fuckin'-clear, but der Trumpen-fuhrer will not be deterred from securing the fatherland (as in "I bet my father would love me if he saw how I'm treating this land"). And, hey, it's probably unconstitutional for him to be doing this specifically for policing purposes, as Walrus Barr said it would be, so throw another impeachment log on the dead fire.

Speaking of unconstitutional, Trump signed an executive order saying that undocumented immigrants aren't people and shouldn't be counted by the Census for the purpose of reallocating congressional districts, even if the Constitution is pretty fuckin' clear on this matter: minus some Native Americans, because racism, the 14th Amendment says you gotta count "the whole number of persons in each state." What's vaguely hilarious here is that Trump's memorandum cites (not by name) California as benefiting in the number of congressional seats it gets because of the number of undocumented immigrants, but the other states that get fucked by this include Texas, Florida, and Georgia. It's just more racist chum to the scavengers and bottom feeders in Trump's fucked-up base, real implications be damned.

And, of course, the titanic coronavirus fucktastrophe. But, sure, he said to wear a mask.

The point here isn't just to point out all the ways that Donald Trump is just awful, just the worst human being, the kind of gluttonous, greedy scumbag who thinks his success should be measured by how many models he's banged while married and how shiny his gold toilet is. We know that. It's that the real mistake Trump is making is, by not giving us a break from new outrages, he's assuring that we don't lose our anger. I think that the GOP and Trump and Trump's evil cockscab advisers think that if they keep hitting us, we'll give up. 

But look at those brave motherfuckers in Portland, man. The federal officers there are making every goddamn mistake in the goddamn book short of shooting someone with live ammo. Yet more and more people, less Antifa and more soccer mom, are showing up for the protests. He's fanning flames, and he thinks the fire makes his orange color shine brightly when it just makes him look like a fucking demon. What do you think is going to happen in Chicago? I don't put it past Trump to go full Kent State. Hell, I don't put it past Trump to cut unemployment benefits so that crime skyrockets in cities and he can justify his troops taking over. It's hard, man, really fucking hard to keep seeing what's happened to this country so quickly. It's heartening to see us not go quietly into that fascist night.

(Note: Of course, all of this would have been easy if news organizations had latched onto one fuckin' scandal with all the energy, resources, and time they poured into Hillary Clinton's stupid email server story.)

Portland Becomes the Testing Ground for the Next Level of Trump Fuckery

Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf, who has the douche name and the douchier face stubble of the asshole Wall Streeter who gets punched in the dick by, say, Michael J. Fox in a late 1980s comedy, issued a statement on "the Rampant, Long-Lasting Violence in Portland." The Portland is the one in Oregon, and it's been the site of ongoing protests in the wake of the police execution of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. In the last couple of nights, they've escalated into confrontations with police and other authorities (get to that in a sec), confrontations that have been provoked by the police and other authorities. For Wolf and DHS and the Trump White House, "Each night, lawless anarchists destroy and desecrate property."

What follows is a list of actions by day on, near, or against federal property, and, gotta tell you, it's just fuckin' embarrassing and overwrought, like trying to hype D-Grade meat as a quality Trump steak. This is really from the DHS doc: 

For three days, apparently anarchists violently spray-painted graffiti. I'm not really sure how you do that. Maybe you scream, "Fuck Trump" as you write that. Maybe you punch the wall. What I'm saying here is that you kind of water down your accusations of violence if you include wanton tagging in the category. Basically, you look like a pussy or a drama queen, which is really the two modes that Trump and his lackeys operate in. 

And even when Secretary Wolf's weak-ass list of alleged crimes gets to more serious stuff, any credibility has been destroyed by the image of the federal government shitting itself before the terrorism of the graffiti artists. Oh, and it's destroyed by the fact that most of it is complete hyperbole. 

Seriously, this is in there on June 7: "Portland Police were forced to deploy crowd control spray to disperse a crowd that was throwing animal seed at officers." The police are dressed head-to-toe in riot gear. Was it animal seed made of bombs? Because otherwise, we're talking extravagant overreaction on the part of the historically racist and violent PPD.

You've gotta go through a whole bunch of fences breached or torn down, fireworks being launched (no, really, like bottle rockets), and a lot more graffiti before you get to something that might make an objective reader think, "Okay, that's bad." Like on July 13: "Violent anarchists continued to assault law enforcement officers with lasers, slingshots and fireworks. Others were armed with sledge hammers, tasers, and stun guns, and dragged flaming debris into the scene." That seems bad. And no doubt there are people in the protests who would like to fuck cops' shit up. 

But if you dig into things, what you see are the cops using fencing and police lines to push protesters onto sidewalks on federal property, for instance, and using that as an excuse to declare a riot, when they go batshit beating people and arresting them. And then they fire tear gas and pepper bombs and they start using this fuckin' thing where they swing a smoking container, like a thurible in Hell.

Or maybe some "violent anarchist" throws a water bottle at the people gassing them, and then that's it. It's go time. 

Of course, then we have the unidentified federal officers, from Customs and Border Patrol, among other agencies, who are disappearing protesters off the streets and into unmarked civilian cars and vans, even when they are not on federal property (which is the only place they should have authority). It's like kidnapping except...no, wait. If they don't say who they are or what you're being arrested for, it's just kidnapping. And here's the deal on the attacks on protesters and the Pinochet-like random arrests: they don't give a fuck who they use the power of the state on. It doesn't matter if you were just down there marching or reporting or even offering medical care. They just want to force obedience and capitulation, preferably through violence. Legit violence, with batons and shit, and not just graffiti violence.

To at least some of their credit, the leaders in Portland and Oregon want the federal marshals and others the fuck out of there. Mayor Ted Wheeler said, "We do not need or want their help. The best thing they can do is stay inside their building, or leave Portland altogether.” The state's congressional delegation is demanding answers. And Governor Kate Brown went right at the real reason the feds are even there: "This political theater from President Trump has nothing to do with public safety. The President is failing to lead this nation. Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government."

That abuse is represented by the U.S. Attorney in the District of Oregon, who went back to a seemingly never-dry well of blaming Antifa. Billy Williams (seriously, everyone in this story on the Trump side has a punch-my-face-please name) said, "Portland is well known for Rose City Antifa, right? They’ve been around a long time. It’s hard to call it organized. Antifa is known for loosely organized versions of their group … I believe they’re a part of this." Meanwhile, Trump has been crowing about sending in federal officers to Portland because of course he is.

This is scary shit right here. I don't want to be like Chad "Punched Dick" Wolf and blow this up (I've avoided using the term "Gestapo," yet if the overcoat fits...), but when your government feels like it can just snatch you off the street without even the pretext of some kind of official reason, we're into new levels of necessary paranoia. 

And while we're a few steps from needing to find decent-sized attics to hide out in, we're damn far down the list of "they came for," getting preciously close to "me."

A Weary Nation Watches Trump and Asks, "What the Hell Was That?"

Today, President Donald Trump, who is really just three hogs stacked on top of each other while wearing a trash bag with a tie, called a White House Rose Garden "press conference," the ostensible purpose of which was to announce some half-cocked new way to punish China for trade shit. I'm not going to bother trying to figure out our trade relationship with China because it ain't something that I can comprehend, and that's what makes you a goddamn adult: the willingness to say, "I don't fuckin' know about this," not "I know more than anyone" as a way to hide your blinding ignorance.

Speaking with blinding ignorance, Trump pretty quickly jettisoned the idea of a press conference and decided to act like he was at one of his bullshitter rallies, where every shape of geek, ghoul, and goober screams their appreciation for Trump givin' those minorities what-for (until his speech goes on too long and they get bored and anxious because the goat waiting for them back home ain't gonna fuck itself). The major difference is that without the braying jackasses in the crowd giving him some kind of energy he could vampirically suck from them, Trump sounded bored, stoned, drunk, lethargic, distracted, and that was on top of the usual rambling incoherence, constant repetition, and irrational rhetoric. 

See, Trump had a list of shit that he said Joe Biden and the Democrats believe. Sounding like Willy Loman on quaaludes, Trump said, "Biden was here for 47 years. Eight years, the last eight years, not long ago as Vice President. He said, 'One in five miles of our highways are still in poor condition.' Well, we’re doing a good job on highways, but why didn’t he fix them three years ago? Why didn’t he fix them? Tens of thousands of bridges are in disrepair and on the verge of collapse. Well, that’s probably not a right number, but we have bridges that should have been fixed. Why didn’t he fix him? He was here for eight years with President Obama. Why didn’t they fix them? Tens of thousands of bridges." 

Is it worth fact-checking any of this? Is it worth talking about how most of Biden's career was as one of 100 senators and thus couldn't just "fix" anything? Is it worth talking about how President Obama desperately tried to get an infrastructure bill passed but was blocked at every turn by the infected congressional cockholes in the GOP? Or that Biden helped get the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed, which actually did do something for infrastructure, something that Trump hasn't done at fucking all?

No. It doesn't. It's a waste of time to make the effort (sorry, Daniel Dale). Trump's slavering idiot hordes actually believe he's telling the truth. People around Trump who know better stay silent or continue to back the lies. And the rest of us with, you know, eyes, ears, and non-Adderall-fucked brains understand that Trump's going to lie, he's lying now, and he's nothing but lies and scams and failure. He repeats lies even after they're shown to be lies. Lies are his lube and America is his blow-up doll and he's gonna fuck it until it pops and then he'll have it patched and blow it up again and go to town once more.

But, more than the lying, there's simply asking, "What the fuck was that today?" Because, seriously, "We did a travel ban in January. Nancy Pelosi was dancing in the streets of Chinatown in San Francisco a month later and even later than that and others too"? What the fuck? It's like something that's said for incels who are jacking off to the idea of Trump hate fucking Pelosi with his words, daring the cucks to cancel them (or something- I don't speak psychopath).

Nothing is more harmful than the insanity he spouts about COVID-19, which is literally causing people to allow themselves to get sick and die. Now kids are going to die or get other people sick who will die because of his refusal to face the reality of the virus. Here he is on it: "Frankly, if we didn’t test, you wouldn’t have all the headlines because we’re showing cases. And we have just about the lowest mortality rate. But if we did… Think of this, if we didn’t do testing, instead of testing over 40 million people, if we did half the testing, we would have half the cases. If we did another… You cut that in half, we’d have yet again, half of that, but the headlines are always testing." 

And you wanna scream, "Motherfucker, testing doesn't fill the hospital ICUS in Texas and Florida!" But you'd be screaming into a void, a soulless, sucking vortex that wants to devour everything in its attempt to be all there is that exists.

Everything I just described to you took place in the first 18 minutes of Trump's rant today.  He went on for another 35 minutes, mostly blathering on about how Joe Biden and the Democrats will be nicer to immigrants (including saying this weird shit: "[The Democrats will] grant work permits for illegal aliens, so if you come in illegally, you get a work permit. People that live here don’t get work permits, many cases," because we don't fucking need work permits, you stupid, rotting tangerine) and musing about punishing protesters while protecting Andrew Jackson's horse statue. Then he took a couple of token questions before fucking off to tweet.  The reporters should have walked out. They should have said, "Fuck this. We'll watch the video later. You misled us about what this whole bullshit was about" and just left Fox "news" and the One America ass remora who is always with Trump. 

We are watching last days of Jonestown here right now. And I just wanna ask Trump voters (or maybe I don't because I know what the answer will be): How do you trust someone who says this shit? How do you say that this is the man you will follow off a cliff? You fucking know he'd tell you to jump and, yes, absolutely, he'll be right behind; Trump's not even a good cult leader. But they'd be fine leaping anyways if he told them to. Because he told them to. 

What the hell was that? It was the soliloquy at the beginning of Act V of our national tragedy.

Hey, Where the Fuck Are You?

I'm taking the full week off because I'm in Louisiana visiting family. Gotta tell you: It's weird to go into a restaurant and eat a meal like a real person. Hell, they've even spaced the tables a responsible distance apart. 

Of course, mask-wearing isn't mandatory here in Cajun Country.  Lafayette Mayor Josh Guillory refuses to require masks in public places indoors, and when he was asked if he consulted his task force of health experts to come to that decision, he dickishly responded, "I didn’t ask them their favorite color, either." Because that's how Republicans roll down here. Well, everywhere, I suppose.

So I'll be back next week with more juicy rudeness. For now, enjoy this painting at the delicious Cafe Sydney Mae's in Breaux Bridge.

Biden and Trump: Who's the Demented One? A Comparison

Yeah, I haven't exactly been shy about my opinion of Joe Biden. I have a track record of shitting on him that goes back to the Clarence Thomas hearings. I have not been kind to him recently. And I sincerely believe that it's a toxic combination of sexism, racism, and Trump hatred that has made Biden not just the Democratic nominee, but leading Trump overall by big numbers, and, by varying margins, in every battleground state. He's the good, "here's five bucks" Grandpa to Trump's evil, shits and doesn't flush Grandpa. 

And since I goddamn well come as close as a stone-cold atheist can to praying Biden will be president come January, I better figure out times to say something more than, "Well, hell, I'd rather have the nice dementia patient instead of the cruel one."

So lemme say a nice thing here: Biden did pretty damn well at his press conference Tuesday after a speech where he ripped Trump another new one over Trump's brain-damaged response to the coronavirus. Trump had been repeating endlessly, and it was echoed across the conservative media circle jerk, that Biden was out of it, incapable of answering questions, lost in his thought, weak, confused, and every other synonym for that kind of thing. 

Except when it came time for Biden to leave the prepared remarks behind and take questions, he was more cogent than Trump has been in years, and smarter than Trump has ever been in his entire worthless life. For instance, here he is on whether or not Trump has fucked over the United States by refusing to do anything after learning that Russia is paying bounties for American heads in Afghanistan: "One of two things, this president talks about cognitive capability. He doesn’t seem to be cognitively aware of what’s going on. He either reads and/or gets briefed on important issues and he forgets it, or he doesn’t think it’s necessary that he need to know it." In other words, "You think I've lost a step or two? Have you seen fucko in the White House?"

Other than rage tweeting about it being another "hoax," Trump hasn't taken any questions about the Russian bounty story. But in a town hall with Fox "news" toilet Sean Hannity, he offered this not quite as nimble take on Russia: "Look at the Pulitzer Prize. The Pulitzer Prize is very embarrassed. It’s lost a lot of its credibility, because all these writers got Pulitzer Prizes on the Russia, Russia, Russia, and they were all wrong. But John Solomon and all of the people that you deal with. And you, by the way. Laura, Lou Dobbs, Fox and Friends, people that are great. Great group in the morning, including the weekends, to be honest, with Pete. You have some great people. But they got Pulitzer Prizes on Russia, Russia, Russia, and they were wrong." Honestly, that's more understandable, like on a basic language level, than when he tries to talk actual policy about Russia. It's like he's reading Page Six in the New York Post and wondering why the blind item he fed them isn't there. 

Asked about Black Lives Matter protesters taking down statues, Biden was again clear and empathetic, saying, "I think the idea of bringing down, I think all those Confederate monuments to Confederate soldiers and generals, et cetera, who strongly supported secession and the maintenance of slavery and going to war to do it, I think those statues belong in museums. They don’t belong in public places."

And here's Trump on the same subject: "Like the character on the horse the other day, he’s up there putting on the ropes. He’s in trouble, on the Andrew Jackson … beautiful, it’s beautiful, right opposite the White House. And you got to remember Andrew Jackson, the Battle of New Orleans and so much. He was a very good president. He was a great general and you can’t let that happen."  (To be a little fair here, Biden did say that he was against tearing down statues of Jefferson and Washington. But he didn't mention Jackson, who was a bloodthirsty motherfucker who we should be embarrassed to call one of our presidents.)

When he was questioned about everything becoming political, including wearing masks so you lower your risk of fucking killing someone, Biden dismissed Trump's bullshit and talked about how we've gotta do this for each other, you know, like a nation, not a mass of individual islands screeching about freedom: "We’re also talking about it in terms of the president talks about manhood and being strong and you don’t need the mask. I think we have to start appealing to the better side of human nature by pointing out that that mask is not so much to protect me. It’s if I have it, it’s to protect you against me. It’s to protect other people. And it’s called patriotism. It’s called responsibility. It’s called making sure you look out for the other person." 

In an interview with Eric Bolling for Sinclair Media Group (motto: "Trump's balls aren't gonna polish themselves"), the president offered grudging support for mask-wearing at last, but he put it this way: "Well, I've already had masks and I want a mask. And if I'm near people, you know, you were tested, right? Just now. And everybody that's around me as president gets tested, that's like standard. Uh, and I'm also -- I keep distances. I'm, you know, supposed to keep a distance and I keep distances. But if I needed a mask, if I was in a crowd of, you know, crowd, a lot of people and everything else, I'd wear -- I have no problem with a mask at all...I have no objection to masks whatsoever. Do what you're supposed to do and also do what makes you feel good." Not a single goddamn word about being kind to each other. It was purely about how he feels, purely selfish, with not even a nod to the larger good because he doesn't fucking see how that matters. 

Joe Biden is 77 years old. Donald Trump is 74 years old. It's not ageism to say that they have slowed down a bit, that they have moments when they're not as quick on their feet. It's not ableism. It's medical science. But Trump has made it a centerpiece of his reelection campaign that Biden is somehow suffering such grave cognitive decline that he can't function. It's absurd for Donald "Can't Complete a Sentence" Trump to make that allegation. That's projection to such an extreme extent that he may as well be accusing Biden of combing his hair like it's old cotton candy, fucking a porn star, and putting on orange makeup. Motherfucker, that's you.

Honestly, occasional lapses aside, the biggest difference is that Biden sounds like a regular old politician, and that just sounds fuckin' weird now, man. It's like we've dated someone who kept shoveling cocaine into our noises and screaming at us to tell him we love him for four godforsaken years and all of a sudden we meet a guy who says, "Just have some tea and lemme tell you how it can all be better." Jesus, you think, I wanna get off this fuckin' bender and here's my chance.

(Note: Full disclosure- I have praised Biden in the past, too, like when he debated Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin. Context is everything.)

Democrats Decide to Wait Until After the Election to Fully Attack, Just Like They Did in 2016. How'd That Work Out?

There's a reason why the campaign of Donald Trump and Trump himself can't lay a glove on Joe Biden: we want Trump fucking gone. It's pretty goddamn hilarious to see Trump throw everything he can at Biden, including the shit he got impeached for, and nothing sticks. Trump's out there talking about Biden as a puppet of the "radical left," that Biden doesn't even know where he is, that "Sleepy Joe" can't handle the job, that Biden is owned by China. Trump's flailing and desperate because the motherfucker has seen his shit go south before. He sees the writing on the wall and it says, "Fuck you, Donald."

And unless you prove to us that Biden will somehow fuck up the response to a pandemic as badly as Trump did or that he'll let the economy crash and prance around like the thirstiest cheerleader at the prep school instead of fucking helping people or that he'll shit all over every alliance that the United States has ever had around the world while buffing the balls of dictators, it would take some kind of cataclysm of Epsteinian proportions to turn even an electoral college-clinching number of voters in Trump's favor. Or massive cheating and voter suppression, which is frighteningly possible and means we shouldn't take anything for granted.

Back in 2016, an anxious American left wondered how Democrats would respond to Mitch McConnell's refusal to consider President Obama's choice to replace the gratifyingly dead Antonin Scalia, Merrick Garland. It was perhaps the most brazen assertion of power in eight years of abject obstructionism to no purpose other than to obstruct, animated by the racist hatred of Obama that defined the GOP during his term. 

Democrats needed to burn down DC, they needed to go on the air with massive ad buys, they needed to organize mass protests, they needed to refuse to pass any legislation, and more. Control the message and spread it wide and make people invested in it. That's the tactic. Create the narrative and don't just react. Obama had a chance to give the court a more liberal majority for the first time in a generation, a transformative appointment that would have solidified his legacy and created a bulwark against right-wing fuckery for at least a decent period of time. It was damn well worth fighting for.

And Democrats more or less shrugged. Oh, sure, there was a little bit of posturing and harumphing, but, likely with guidance from the White House, they pretty much decided, "Nah. Hillary Clinton's gonna win. And then even if Mitch McConnell is still Senate Majority Leader, we're sure he'll be a good guy and let Scalia be replaced by a Democrat." It was laughing-until-you-sob naive. They legit thought Clinton was gonna be president, but McConnell wouldn't have fuckin' budged. That seat would still be open because they would have declared Clinton illegitimate or under investigation or some such shit. And it would have still been because Democrats didn't mobilize in rage in the first fuckin' place.

This is not just the realm of hindsight. Right now, in 2020, Donald Trump's absolute refusal to have a unified, national policy on a fucking virus that is fucking killing tens of thousands of people every month should be the organizing principle for Democrats, prompting them to propose radical action like health care for everyone or at least that the government pay for coronavirus shit (since, you know, people are ending up with massive bills for catching COVID-19). Yes, House Democrats are having hearings. Why not have some social-distanced town halls with people who suffered because of Republican incompetence and cruelty? Why not take out ads of their own and not rely on the scum-fucking Never Trump Republicans (who will savagely turn against Democrats as soon as Trump is gone, and they'll pretend like Trump didn't happen, just as they pretend like they aren't the reason that Trump is there in the first place)?  On the pandemic, you can make the case that we can't wait until January to have a coherent strategy because, really, we fucking well can't. 

Or maybe, on another shitpile in the cow pasture of Trump's scandals, they could impeach Attorney General and man who looks as if he masturbates to animal-stabbing porn William Barr. Yet today Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, "One hundred and thirty-one days from now, we will have the solution to many problems, one of them being Barr," adding that Barr "is contemptible. There’s no question about that. But at this point, let’s solve our problems by going to the polls and voting on Election Day."

And all I could think was "How'd that work out in 2016?"

I know, I know, I fucking know that Trump isn't gonna be removed from office. But Democrats could unify around a message that Trump has extravagantly failed at the pandemic and should resign. Why not? Why not make that the rallying cry? Why not say that the nation needs to put saving American lives in places like, oh, shit, maybe Florida or Arizona or Texas, hey, not just traditionally blue states anymore, above politics?  

It won't happen. (Or it might, in which case, whoa.) But the message comes in clear that this is a failed presidency and that those who still follow Trump are supporting a failure. It's not that he's vulgar or racist or insulting. The narrative is that he's killing us. He's hurting our bodies, and he's hurting our businesses, and he's hurting our future. 

Stop being afraid to name the enemy as the enemy. And, more importantly, stop being afraid to treat the enemy as the enemy now, not as a battle in some hoped-for future. 

Deep Cuts from Trump's Racist, Rambling, Ridiculous Speech in Tulsa

Imagine Donald Trump looking out at the 2/3 empty arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday. Imagine him finally seeing what his team had been prepping him for: the whole event was a bust. An expensive, overblown, time-wasting bust, reminiscent of so many things in Trump's pathetic life. Imagine him trying to figure out the greater insult: that he would have to go out and do his dog-and-pony hate show for the stinking rubes who had been standing in the Oklahoma heat, some for 2 days, or that the seats of the arena are blue, a wave of blue, if you will, that looked as if it would crash over him. Imagine him wondering if he could concoct some fake emergency that would whisk him away from the whole shitpile he had walked into and he could let his terrible children or Pence take the hit. 

But, no, fuck it, he decided to go out there and vent it all, let it all hang the fuck out, talking for over an hour and forty minutes, all repetition and grievance-airing and shit-stirring. It's like something has finally clicked for Trump: he no longer even makes the slightest attempt to pretend that any of this is about anything other than himself. He doesn't give a goddamn if thousands more people die, if he rips the nation asunder, as long as he gets what the fuck he believes he's owed: the devotion of those he deems as lessers and a "Get Out of Jail Free" card, along with whatever coin he pocket in the meantime.

So, yeah, you've heard about the lowly highlights of the future Tulsa vector of death, about the "kung flu" and the slowing down of testing and the endless, just plain fuckin' deranged explanation of his halting walk down a ramp at West Point, along with his inability to lift a glass of water like a healthy human. You've seen that shit. But, like I said, it was 100 minutes long, and there was no way to demonstrate how completely bugfuck the whole thing was. So lemme hit you with some of the deep cuts from the speech.

You want more racism and advocacy for police violence? Here he is on how ICE should arrest gang members: "ICE, they’re rough guys. they’re great Americans, but they’ll walk into, they caught them in a pack. They’ll walk into a pack of tough MS-13 gang members. And we shouldn’t say this, it’s not nice. They want us to negotiate. They start swinging. And the other such way, everybody’s swinging, at the end, they carry them back and they throw them into the paddy wagon. They’re great." Yes, Grandpa Donny said, "Paddy wagon," and he once again praised law enforcement officials for beating up non-white people while mass protests are going on about law enforcement killing non-white people.

Trump talked about a Democratic presidency and Democratic Congress in apocalyptic terms. "If Biden is elected, he will surrender your country to these mobsters 100%... If the Democrats gain power, then the rioters will be in charge and no one will be safe...Joe Biden and the Democrats want to prosecute Americans for going to church, but not for burning a church. They believe you can riot, vandalize and destroy, but you cannot attend a peaceful pro-America rally. They want to punish your thought, but not their violent crimes." Damn, I must have missed a meeting or two of the liberal cabal because I thought we wanted Medicare for All and a fair tax system that allows us to provide better opportunities for all Americans. How wrong I've been.

And then, in a shit tossing moment that would do a cage full of monkeys proud, Trump threw it all together and topped it with a special sauce of baby murder: "If Joe Biden were to become president, an emboldened left will launch a full scale assault on American life. You know that. They’ll expel anyone who disagrees with them. Look what happens when you disagree. You use a term that’s perfect and they’re not happy with it. They call you a racist. They call you a horrible person. They want to crush religious liberty. They don’t want religion. Silence religious believers, indoctrinate your children with hateful and vicious lies about our country, subsidize late term abortion and after birth execution." By the way, that's verbatim. He leaped from subject to subject like a jackrabbit that get into the meth stash. And, by the way again, what would that "perfect term" that happens to be racist be? 'Cause "kung flu" isn't perfect by any stretch of the bigoted imagination.

Oh, and you know how Biden is the center point of all the evil shit that liberals want to do?  Well, not really, because he's actually completely incapacitated and unable to function. In the middle of talking about energy and regulations, Trump said, "And with the help of our great energy workers, many of them come from the great state of Oklahoma. Do you ever notice that Biden, no, do you ever notice that Biden oftentimes gets the state wrong? He’s in Iowa and he says it’s good to be in Idaho. No, no, you’re in Iowa. He’s in New Hampshire and he says it’s great to be in Ohio. No, no, no, you’re in New Hampshire. That happens to him all the time, hasn’t happened to me yet." That's right. In the middle of a completely distracted tangent, Trump talked about how he thinks Biden gets confused. The man has all the self-awareness of a rat eating its own babies.

Trump is deeply, deeply invested in trying to make Biden look old and in mental decline because, well, by the Trumpian law of projection, Trump is old and in mental decline. "Joe Biden is a helpless puppet of the radical left, and he’s not radical left. I don’t think he knows what he is anymore," Trump said. "Biden is fully controlled by the fringe of his party. He is their pawn. He doesn’t even know where the hell he is. Let’s face it. He installed socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be in charge of his environmental policy and his energy." 

You get the idea.

What gets me is that in a presumptive campaign speech for a second term, Trump gave not a single plan or idea for what he'd do. And that's because, in essence, all he'd do is continue what he's doing: making appearances where he can bray like a donkey with a giant butt plug shoved in his asshole and fucking over anyone who doesn't worship him. He's pretending he got shit done, but I don't get why no one is asking him, "Hey, motherfucker, you said Mexico would pay for the wall. In fact, you made all of us say it with you. What the fuck's up with that?"

But the people in that crowd, the geeks and lepers and goons and whores and crazies, don't fuckin' care. They just want him to be their surrogate, their subreddit made flesh, pledging to hurt anyone they've been told has hurt them, never realizing that the enemy is the one making them cheer for him sipping water when he really wants to spit it at them. 

Trump Doesn't Know Shit or Give a Shit About African Americans or History or Anything, Really

It's hard to pinpoint the most blitheringly fucked tangent that Donald Trump, our cracked vinyl beanbag chair of a president, went off on during his speech to announce a few bullshit, milquetoast little suggestions to the brutal, militarized police forces of America (seriously, if you think "reform the police" is weak, try the title of this pussy-ass executive order: "Safe Policing for Safe Communities"). 

But I'm gonna go with when he brought up school choice. "We’re fighting for school choice," he insisted, and added, "which really is the civil rights of all time in this country.  Frankly, school choice is the civil rights statement of the year, of the decade, and probably beyond — because all children have to have access to quality education." Yeah, fuck you, Brown vs. Board of Education. School choice pisses on you.

Just a recap: "School choice" is about giving parents vouchers that they can use to help pay for private schools, taking money away from public education (or "failing government schools," as President Dickhead called them) and giving it to churches and private organizations and, yes, Secretary of Education and hideous greed beast Betsy DeVos. Oh, and Trump's proposal on this also includes a tax credit that would benefit the wealthy because of course it would. Calling this a civil rights "statement" (whatever the fuck that is) or anything related to civil rights just because it would end up benefiting some non-white people is so laughable that you can't tell if those are tears of joy, rage, or sadness.

But what this points to with Trump is that he doesn't know jack shit about African Americans. He doesn't understand issues surrounding their community, he doesn't give a fuck about their lives, he can't be bothered to learn their history, and, if you ask, he'll tell you that no one knows more about black people than he does. 

As racist as Trump has been his whole worthless life, the last few weeks have given him ample opportunity to relish his role as bigoted ignoramus-in-chief. Oh, he'll tell you how amazing he is for African Americans. He'll tell you, as he did on Tuesday and every other time he opens his gaping burger maw, "We created Opportunity Zones with Senator Tim Scott...I think it’s probably one of the great things that we’ve done in this administration.  Tens of thousands of jobs, billions and billions of dollars being brought into areas and neighborhoods that would never, ever, ever be taken care of, monetarily." (Again, a reminder, this was during a speech about alleged reforms to stop police officers from murdering black people.)

The problem is that Trump's full of shit. "Opportunity Zones" are another motherfucking tax cut to get wealthy people to, yes, invest in communities that need the investment. But guess what? They're fucking using it to gentrify areas and very little is going to black entrepreneurs. No, it hasn't created "tens of thousands of jobs" any more than Ivanka Trump has created 80 gajillion jobs or whatever the fuck number we're up to. But he's not letting go of that lie. "The Opportunity Zones have been incredible," Trump told Sean Hannity last night. "It's been one of the great -- really one of the great things, in terms of investment in areas and in terms of unemployment." 

Trump'll shuck and jive about low unemployment pre-COVID or criminal justice reform, which he thinks makes him the Greatest President for the Blacks Since Lincoln (although, you know, even Lincoln's "questionable"). But the low unemployment is just a continuation of the progress made under Obama. It went down 9 percentage points during Obama's administration. It's gone down an additional 2 at its lowest last year under Trump. So that makes Obama worth over 4 times as many Trumps. And it's back to where it was in 2010 now in the fucked economy after Trump dickered around and didn't do a goddamn thing to mitigate the job losses during the shutdown. 

And it's not just his fake accomplishments that he keeps tooting his fleshy orange horn about. Trump's grasp of how Americans understand black history is goddamned embarrassing. This motherfucker is taking credit for Juneteenth. No, really. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said about scheduling his hate rally in Tulsa on June 19, "I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it." 

Think of the framing of that. "Nobody" means him and white people. It excludes, for instance, African Americans, most of whom have fucking heard of Juneteenth because it's so goddamn important. Trump said, "I had political people who had no idea." And then he asked an assistant, "Did you ever hear of Juneteenth before?" who, in a hilarious moment, responded that she learned about it when the White House put out a statement last year for the date, as it had every year. Even then, Trump couldn't help but be a fucking dickzit. "I don’t think it was put up by others. But we made people aware of it," he said, implying that no previous president had recognized it, despite the fact that both Barack Obama and George W. Bush issued multiple statements for Juneteenth. Trump did admit, "Actually, a young African-American Secret Service agent knew what it was." No shit.

Even on the most pressing racial issue, the one that caused him to have his fucking weirdo police event, the protests over the deaths of black people at the hands of police and people who took the law into their hands, Trump's proud ignorance just highlights his unabashed racism. He's pissed that people are still even talking about how he's failed to lead (as if he ever led a goddamn thing in his life other than the line to the omelet bar at Mar-a-Lago). The New York Times reported, "The remarks he made about [George] Floyd when he attended the launch of the SpaceX spacecraft should have been enough, the president told aides."

He couldn't be bothered to learn the names of the people who were killed. Asked by the WSJ about meeting with the families of murdered black Americans, as he did on Tuesday before speaking, if any stories stood out, Trump said, acting like he was asked about favorite passages of the Bible, "All of them." Pressed on it, he offered, "Ahmed. Ahmad. He is the young man who was running. It was just sad to see. Mother was a fantastic woman. Made a great impression. They all made a great impression on me." And then, forgetting Ahmaud Arbery's name, he moved on to how important his law enforcement speech was. 

By the way, the families declined to appear at the ceremony where Trump gave that speech and signed his bullshit executive order. A lawyer described the meeting with Trump as "very contentious." Did they think this void of a human-shaped rage vessel would want anything more than to hear their praise? Did they expect empathy when, really, Trump probably thought they should comfort him for all that their loved ones' deaths had put him through politically? What a fucking tragic farce.

And, when it comes to Rayshard Brooks, the black man who was sleeping in his car at Wendy's drive-thru in Atlanta and got shot in the back running from police, well, Trump isn't gonna try to pretend to give a jolly donkey shit. On Crazy Sean Hannity's Circus of Self-Fellatio, Trump said, "I heard today and just got a report that the police officer's lawyer said that he heard a sound like a gun, like a gunshot. And he saw a flash in front of him. So, that's an interesting -- you know, I don't know that I would have necessarily believed that. But I will tell you, that's -- that's a very interesting thing." That's the kind of punk-ass shit he does all the time. He's not saying something's true. He's just asking questions about things he "heard," whether it's about the supposed "miracle" of hydroxychloroquine or the possible sinister motives of the elderly man pushed over by police in Buffalo. We call that the "little bitch" approach to arguments.

Trump's actually going along with much of conservative media on Brooks. As far as Tucker Carlson's bitch face and the rest of the right-wing machine are concerned, they're done pretending that cops do anything bad. Brooks pointed a taser at a cop and didn't listen to every word the cop said, so he deserved to die. Trump is always an echo chamber for whatever he saw on the TV just before speaking. 

Back at the police "reform" event, Trump concluded his speech, in part, with this odd statement: "To go forward, we must seek cooperation, not confrontation; we must build upon our heritage, not tear it down." Yeah, that cruel orange bastard wrapped up an event that happened because white people murdered black people by saying we shouldn't tear down symbols of the Confederacy. Motherfucker, if we really were tearing down our heritage of American racism, almost nothing would remain standing.

Donald Trump Wants More Violence at the BLM Protests So He Can Pretend He's Tough

Look, I'm just gonna spitball here on what I really think happened on Monday, June 1, when protesters at Lafayette Square, right near the White House, were pushed out by a bullshit combination of Park Police, National Guard, and Secret Service, along with various other law enforcement officers. Sure, sure, the story we've heard, that the peaceful crowd was violently ejected to make room for President Donald Trump to undulate a few hundred feet to St. John's Church for a bizarre and worthless photo op, is fuckery of the highest order.

And it's probably just idiotic enough to be the truth. But if you've watched these motherfuckers as long as I have, and if you've seen them devolve into the kind of motherfuckers who will fuck any mother who crosses their path - human mother, dog mother, goat mother, it doesn't matter as long as they're a mother with a place to fuck - then you know that they will not lose a chance to fuck that mother because that's what motherfuckers do. It's right there in the word.

See, Trump was supposed to do his fake tough guy act by giving his pissy little "law and order president" speech earlier than it was delivered at around 6:45. Trump's notorious for never starting anything on time because he's one of those pricks who gets off on making people wait for him. The final time he was scheduled to start was 6:30, but, instead, that was when the big push against the protesters started.

Now, here's where I'm gonna go off into "Huh, maybe" territory: Trump's speech was all about violence in the streets of the United States. "Our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa, and others," he slithered, adding, "We are ending the riots and lawlessness that has spread throughout our country.  We will end it now."

I think, sincerely, that Trump and his people wanted to provoke the protesters near the White House to violence. They wanted a riot that could be put down by overwhelming force. They knew that the news networks would play the speech in split screen and what could be better than Trump declaring that "I am your President of law and order" as order was being beaten and tear-gassed into the savages who would dare attack our brave cops and soldiers. Trump wanted to justify his call for violence by showing the world that he could control the burgeoning uprising.

Except that's not what happened. No, instead, the protesters were outraged but they moved. They resisted with voices and with bodies somewhat, but that was it. And the images that were pouring out were not those of brick-throwing "Antifa rioters" being stopped by Trump-ordered force. Instead, they were of peaceful protesters being beaten and tear-gassed. The cops and the troops looked like the savages, the animals, not the protesters.

I think that after ten minutes or so of this, when Jared or Hope or whichever completely amoral puke stain who thought this up realized that they weren't getting their riot, they had to come up with some fuckin' reason for clearing the park (originally, it was supposedly to move barriers), and then Jared or Hope or whichever useless shit smear in the Oval Office quickly said they could walk to that church and take some fuckin' photo and, oh, shit, Ivanka, put this Bible we found on a shelf in your purse to bring because we're takin' a stroll together, all of us, like a group of sheep to the slaughter and hope no one notices how fuckin' dumb this all is.

That's what I believe happened last Monday. And ever since then, Trump has kept making statements and doing things that are calculated to try to push the social, cultural, and historical buttons of the Black Lives Matter marchers. Change the names of forts from Civil War generals to maybe the names of people who weren't traitors? No, fuck that, Trump said, even though the military wants it to happen. First rally since the pandemic shut shit down? Fuck it, let's hold that shit right in the city where white people devastated a successful black community, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and let's do that shit on June 19, Juneteenth, celebrating the emancipation of slaves. And the National Guard's actions at Lafayette Square last Monday? Fuck you, Trump says in a sub-schoolyard taunt, it was awesome because the protesters were pussies.

Right now, the nation - hell, the world - is convulsing in revulsion at what the United States is and has been. We've finally reached a moment when real, actual structural change may happen. At the very least, we're purging our public displays of blatant racism by knocking down statues and banning the flag of traitors. Performative empathy on the mistreatment of African Americans by white people isn't enough anymore, and it's about fucking time. Shit has needed to be burned down for a long time, and it's finally seeming like it won't be the fire next time that does it.

And the presidency of Donald Trump is going up in those flames. So he's going to push harder and harder to cause explosions, real ones instead of emotional ones, in the protest movement. I wouldn't be surprised to see Proud Boys and other racist fucknuts show up to try to provoke it, too, in even greater numbers than they have been. He knows his reelection chancer are plummeting, and he's gotta discredit this movement that is walking all over his stupid face. He's gonna get more and more desperate, like a snarling, cornered rat who thinks it can snap and scamper to its freedom.

Trump's like all those fuckin' yahoos who stand around and watch the marches with their hands on their pathetic AR-15s, itching for the opportunity to use it. Except he's the yahoo with an entire military at his disposal. The greatest hope right now, sadly, is that the military leaders seem like they're just embarrassed by all of this. Let's hope that is enough for them to reject the order that Trump so badly wants to give.

One White Guy's Understanding of George Floyd's Murder

My great pal Andrew Overton lives in the western area of Virginia, close to the Tennessee border. It's beautiful country and racist as hell. Drew is from the South, but he's lived in the big city and definitely doesn't share the racial opinions of his neighbors. Lately, he's been posting more and more of his open opinions on Facebook, and when he put this one up, I asked if he minded if I shared. I remember talking to him after each of these incidents. The farcical one that took place in NYC was shortly after we had hung out.

Read to the end to understand why he's telling these emotional stories. White people can never really understand the reality that black Americans have experienced for the entire history of this fucked-up country. But there are emotions we can grasp.

Take it away, Drew:

I have three more stories to tell regarding the current state of our country and all that's happening. These are all true stories. The first addresses violence. The second addresses race, and the last addresses politics. After these posts, I'm taking a break.

I've been mugged 4 times. I thought it was 5, but my friend explained to me that I won 400.00 playing Ms. Pacman and tripled that on the pool table. Then, apparently, we decided it was a good idea to take a cab from downtown Chicago (we lived in the South Loop) to one of the casinos in Indiana. None of this was particularly unusual except we woke up at a train station in Indiana with no money and no wallets. I never went to the casino with my wallet, only cash. According to him, we ate a lot of drugs. So, don't eat a lot of drugs and go to a casino. You weren't mugged. You just made bad decisions

Back to the muggings! Working backwards, I was mugged twice in 10 minutes last year in Long Island City, NY. I won't bore you with the details, but neither one of them got anything from me. Amateurs. Did we tussle? Yes. A lot. In the street. A driver took the time to point out we could do this on the sidewalk. Fair point. Welcome to NYC! Mugger 1 bails and I continue walking to my hotel. The second mugger appears. Demands my money! "Are you fucking kidding me?" is my response. He picks up a police barricade (Plastic. For parades or traffic) and threatens me with it. Now, I think I'm being punked. Worst Mugger Ever! We tussled. I keep thinking "I'm 50 years old. How does this end well for me?" Then, I remembered that I am mean as fuck. Sometimes. There's a phone on the ground. He thinks it's his. I think it's his. I have the phone. I tell him to walk away and I'll leave the phone at the front desk of my hotel; otherwise, this phone is hitting the train tracks. Blue lights are in the distance. Mugger 2 disappears. Cops arrive. They offer me a ride to my hotel. Cool. We took that 20 foot ride and laughed the whole way. Also, the phone was mine. So fucking glad I didn't destroy it!

My first mugging? Lincoln Park, Chicago. Armitage and Sheffield. I walked past two guys with hoodies on. Alarm bells went off. Liberal pride said, "Chill." Listen to your alarm bells. There is a gun to my head. There is a man telling me he's going to kill me. Repeatedly. I'd never really known fear before that moment. "I'm going to kill you." Repeatedly. My wife was one block away. Terror. Fear. Tears. I closed my eyes and told him I could not identify him. I didn't want to see it coming. I believed he was going to kill me. He let me live.

Derek Chauvin did not let George Floyd live. An officer sworn to serve and protect killed George Floyd.

A ruthless criminal put a gun to my head and let me live.

Note: Drew added in a comment, "I cried typing it, and it's been 25 years. The fear that George Floyd felt is unimaginable to anyone who has not faced death. He faced it for 9 minutes. I cry now."

The Terrorist Cops of America

Black and brown and LGBTQ and so many other people know this already: What we call "policing" in too many places in the United States might more properly be called "government-sponsored terrorism." For what else is the purpose of the way in which police around the country have responded to anti-racism and anti-police violence protesters than to try to make them cower before their helmeted, riot-geared presence? To terrorize them into giving up the protests? What we're seeing in video after video from the last week plus of protests is terrorism in action on a large scale.

We shouldn't have to see a video of cops pulling black people out of protests to beat them for talking shit at them or of cops pepper-spraying peaceful young women, sometimes in custody, directly in the face or of cops shoving over an old man because he approached them to be outraged. It's obvious in so many interactions with the police that we've reached the saturation point of where it's just not surprising. What is surprising is that we're finally getting the genuine uprising that was necessary to change the public's perception of the cops, a reckoning that we've needed for decades, if not over a century. Finally, we're seeing the public shift to "Ok, we've given these motherfuckers too much power."

Police around the country are taking advantage of the curfews imposed in different cities as an excuse to terrorize protesters. As we've seen in Minneapolis (where George Floyd was murdered), Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Seattle, police are using tear gas (which can kill people with asthma and other respiratory ailments), flash grenades, rubber bullets (which are not benign and can cause lasting damage), batons, and even police vehicles to subdue, disperse, or arrest protesters. Journalists have been attacked by cops. Medical personnel have been attacked by cops. Now, in DC and elsewhere, law enforcement officials aren't even identifying themselves. That's scary shit because who knows what right-wing cosplaying fucknuts will join in.

In New York City, where the police have gone what we can politely call "fucking batshit," the cops have engaged in "kettling" protesters, which means essentially pinning them between buildings on a block, for instance, sealing off exit paths, and preventing anyone from being able to leave before heading in to beat the hell out of people for being out after curfew. As the New York Times explained about Wednesday night at 8:45 p.m., "For the next 20 minutes in Downtown Brooklyn, officers swinging batons turned a demonstration that had been largely peaceful into a scene of chaos."

Think about that for a moment. For the crime of being out 45 minutes past curfew, you get assaulted and maybe arrested. The fucking stupidity of the curfew aside, how about handing out tickets, huh? Or, even better, how about just waiting out the protest and letting everyone go home?

The method of using overwhelming force in pretty much any situation is garbage. Look at the video of Mia Wright and her family in a parking lot in Chicago. They pulled up to go to a mall, but when they discovered the mall had been looted (and why wasn't it roped off?), they turned around to leave when the car was confronted with a police officers in riot gear. Soon, a dozen cops were there, and they smashed the windows of the car, dragged Wright out by her hair, and an officer kneeled on her neck, on the ground, with glass digging into her eye. Yeah, really. And they took her to the station and charged her with being "assembled with 3 or more persons for the purpose of using force or violence to disturb the peace." All four people were in the car and leaving, but, you know, they were doing it while black.  Oh, and while she was in the police station, a cop called her a "fucking savage."

A dozen officers for disorderly conduct isn't policing. It's terrorism. There was no attempt to de-escalate, no attempt to reason, no attempt to do anything but enforce the will of representatives of the state on the bodies of black people. And watch the cops when they're doing this shit. They are gleeful. They love it. They get off on it. They want us to fear them.

This is what we get after years of the militarization of police forces in training and equipment. It's a transformation of policing that is rooted in racism, since the biggest expansion of this militarization happened because of the crack epidemic and the paranoia over gangs. And because of 9/11, which the reaction to was also rooted in, you know, racism. But one factor that is often left out here is this change in policing was made in large part because of the madness of the National Rifle Association in assuring that citizens would be armed with bigger and deadlier and more guns.

Ultimately, we're confronting something we should have confronted long, long ago: that this is a failure. That it's all a failure, from the policing to the gun laws to the failure to root out racism and white nationalism (especially in law enforcement) to the ludicrous idea that the United States has ever dealt with its greatest sins. And the failure to do that has allowed the terrorists free rein, except now they are meeting a force that is fucking tired of feeling terrorized, tired of being victimized, and tired of shit not changing. The cops are learning that you can't do the shit you've always done when everyone has a camera. Instead of trying to solve shit, the police are amping up their terrorism.

Frankly, the restraint of the protesters against the cops has been remarkable.

George Floyd Protests and Trump's Walk of Shame

Like many of you, I watched it happen on Monday when cops, military police, and other law enforcement advanced on a group of about 1000 peaceful protesters at Lafayette Park, right in front of the White House. We fucking saw it with our own eyes. We saw them approach threateningly, walking right up to the crowd and then rushing into them, firing tear gas (yes, a gas that caused tears, motherfuckers - we saw on live television as people were washing out their eyes), shoving people with shields and batons, shooting rubber bullets. and charging with horses. Fuckin' horses, man. At some point, these racist motherfuckers are gonna think the way to make America great again is to break out the firehoses and dogs (Trump already mentioned the possible use of dogs because of course he did).

And we knew that it was being done at the whim and for the pleasure of the vile man-child president, the bloated shitsack topped with a worn-out basketball. We knew it because his jolly jester of injustice, Attorney General William Barr, was there in the park just before shit went down, smirking like he's secretly got a tiny hard-on in his fat man's pants because he just looked at kiddie snuff porn, and he ordered it to happen. We knew it because the clearing of the area near the White House happened just as Donald Trump, who we are damned to call "president," was about to speak. He wanted the chaos to be happening as he announced, "I am your President of law and order," followed by "and an ally of all peaceful protesters," with no sense of the irony of what was happening to peaceful protesters within earshot.

I thought the moment was depraved enough. He knew that news networks would show a split screen of him with his faux tough guy act, standing there like a dollar store Mussolini, tossing cheap meat to his idiot hordes by saying he would defend "your Second Amendment rights," and threatening to send in the U.S. military if violence wouldn't end. It was pure, unadulterated weakness and cowardice. He didn't talk to protesters as if they are fellow Americans. He talked to everyone like we're his subjects. He was another punk, a pussy-ass bitch, pretending like he gave a shit about anything other than how his little performance would look on a campaign video, his toad head, his ostrich posture, and his voice like Ronald Reagan injected with monkey rabies, all seen as assets by the grifters who shit on his moron followers and laugh about how fucking easy it is to fool the blind.

But then we learned the real reason for the police violence against the people who were peacefully protesting police violence against black people. The speech wasn't the photo op. No, all those people needed to be cleared out because the most powerful person in the world was embarrassed that he had scooted his bovine ass into the bunker in the White House because he was shitting himself about the protesters outside, so he wanted to seem strong because he felt he looked weak. So he decided that after his pussy-ass speech, he would take a stroll across the park to St. John's Episcopal Church.

We were treated to the spectacle of this dump truck of a human being waddle on the sidewalks, leading the way as Barr and other cabinet members, along with assorted lackeys, lickspittles, and Jared, as well as daughter Ivanka in stiletto heels and a purse so white that it looked like it was made from a KKK robe. That purse contained a Bible because the reason that Trump lumbered over there after the people protesting the racist murder of George Floyd by a white police officer and the racist legacy of America were gassed and beaten to clear the way was so he could have his picture taken holding the Bible like a fraudulent preacher in a Flannery O'Connor story. Then he took an awkward photo with several of those who had accompanied him, all white as Ivanka's designer handbag, as the protest against the murder of African Americans was happening a couple of blocks away.

And, sure as shit, the White House released a video of the walk, complete with martial music and images like Trump walking with rows on either side of soldiers and cops in riot gear, holding shields, lined up like knock-off Roman centurions, ready to battle for their Little Caesar. If you had said it was a parody of a dictator, I'd have believed you because it was like Trump took the lines between church and state, between the military and civilians, and fist-fucked them in public. It was that startling and, frankly, unbelievable. But nothing really should be anymore.

Like so many moments over the last 4+ years, this should have been the end of it, of Trump's political career, of his moronic movement that elevates belligerence over intelligence, of a cruel narcissism that is best understood as evil, of the entire facade that any of this had anything to do with leading the American people instead of self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement. All that should have been torched. Alas, it was not because we are not a country capable of that kind of transformation. So we gotta fight it out.

Now we're getting the excuses, the distancing, the lying to make the whole thing seem far more anodyne than the insidious clusterfuck it was.
- Absurdly, Trump says that he didn't go hide in the bunker like an obese dachshund pissing itself under the bed in a thunderstorm. No, it was "more for an inspection" during the protests, a coincidence, really, in an excuse that's just so embarrassing that I don't even wanna be in the same species as him anymore.
- The Trump campaign wanted the media to retract that tear gas was used to break up the peaceful protest, despite the Park Police admitting that it used both smoke bombs and pepper balls (which essentially explode and release a gas that causes, well, tears). Media Matters kicked the retraction demand right in the taint.
- Trump was severely criticized by area leaders of two Christian faiths. The DC Episcopal bishop was pissed about the fascistic photo op. And the DC Catholic archbishop was pissed that Trump undulated over to the shrine to Pope John Paul II for another creepy ass photo with Melania, who looks as if she's thinking that sweet kiss of death can't come soon enough.
- Military leaders are scrambling to say that they thought the Lafayette Park assault was wrong, and Defense Secretary Mike Esper said he didn't know they were strolling through the emptied park for a quick pic at the church, which has pissed off the simpleton president because one of his loyal ball washers missed a hair.
- Oh, and the world is actually laughing at Trump and at us now when it's not recoiling in horror.
- Oh, and this was after he had berated American governors for being too "weak" on protesters.
- Oh, and all of this was after he had called Vladimir Putin. No, really. Make of that what you will.

None of this has done a goddamn thing to quell the protests. In fact, in DC, they have grown larger in response to Trump's thuggishness. We have possibly reached a genuine inflection point, when it might be possible to enact real change when it comes to institutional, endemic racism, when it comes to the militarization of the police, when it comes to the power that has been taken from the people by leaders who don't give a single rat shit about the people.

We might not be able to wait six months. Or, really, over eight months, even if Trump loses, for change. We need an active and an activist Democratic Party, which needs to be making headlines, not making press releases. We need action from those leaders or they need to be replaced. And I'm not even talking about Joe Biden, who isn't in office right now and thus has no power beyond giving speeches and making appearances (which he is doing, even if they're not getting coverage).

It's time for Democrats to behave like black Americans are the ones who put Democrats over the line in election after election. This country already has enough of a debt to people of color. Let's pay back part of what they're owed by embracing this moment of resistance - genuine, not hashtag, resistance, with bodies on the line - and striving for something more than what we have been willing to settle for time and again. Meet the fucking moment, or walk in shame, too.