The incredible unveiling of Rudy Giuliani, Ace Defense Counsel™ continues apace, as Talking Points Memo documents:
After Giuliani claimed on Sunday that Trump never signed a letter of intent for the project, CNN obtained a copy of the letter, which contained Trump’s signature. [link in the original]
Chris Cuomo actually had the gall, the infinite gall, to brandish the signed letter, complete w. Donald Trump’s self-implicating scrawl, on live camera! What’s an Ace Defense Counsel™ to do?
Never fear, never flinch, and always remember the last refuge of the fidelity-challenged: “who you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes.”
In the interview with the Daily News, Giuliani refused to acknowledge that he told CNN Sunday that “no one signed the letter.”
“I don’t think I said nobody signed it,” Giuliani told the Daily News.
Ummm. Rudy. There is videotape!
Anyway, says Ace Defense Counsel™, what’s a little light conflict of interest. Seriously, folks, what do you expect a perpetually-skating-the-edge-of-bankruptcy to do? And who the f**k cares anyway?
But Giuliani argued during an interview with New York Daily News that the letter is “bullshit because it didn’t go anywhere.” [link in the original]
According to this line of analysis by our Ace Defense Counsel™, if an attempted coition fails to reach fruition, it don’t count. That is, one can remain mostly virginal, as long as you don’t fully enjoy yourself.
This is funny. It really is. It would be more so, of course, if it wasn’t so damn serious, if this weren’t the state of affairs that emerges when small time and stupid crooks wield enormous power.
Yarrow
But his picture is probably in the dictionary next to “Criminal.” Possibly also “Felon.” Maybe even “Traitor.”
Amir Khalid
@Yarrow:
Rudy G’s picture is definitely in the dictionary next to “Comical ineptitude”.
Schlemazel
cut him some slack – he is doing the best he can given the client. He chose this to be his last moment in the spotlight and, like an actor way past his prime who takes a crappy role simply to feel the rush one last time, he is getting his fix.
bemused
Rudy just opens his mouth and twaddle gushes out. Trump must think Rudy is doing a great job or he wouldn’t let Rudy give interviews helping dig Trump even further down a hole.
Rudy is a disgusting, ridiculous man. I can’t believe he managed to get three women to marry him.
Raven Onthill
Just another damn white male mediocrity, who turns out to have been coasting on popularity and privilege
germy
At this point it wouldn’t surprise me if he really didn’t remember saying it.
If a man spouts lies morning noon and night, how is he expected to remember every word?
germy
@bemused:
He’s no incel, I’ll give him that.
Mary G
Tucker Carlson is another person who is learning the hard way that not everything can be said in the era of Twitler without consequences:
His defense for saying that immigrants make America look dirtier is that they leave so much trash around the border. What a schmuck.
germy
@Mary G:
“An outrage!”
– Glenn Greenwald
Cermet
Does it ever get better then that? Really – the very next day proof that not only did the lawyer lie, but that his client had massive motivation to collude and at the time it really mattered?
Kraux Pas
@Mary G:
What’s their defense for advertising on Tucker Carlson thus far? He’s been a racist liar for as long as I’ve known who he is.
LAO
You know, when he was US Attorney, Giuliani ruthlessly pursued white collar criminal convictions (many of which were overturned on appeal). I find this new “is that even a crime” Rudy to be very disconcerting.
ETA: he was also an authoritative prick as Mayor with his “broken windows” fixation.
rikyrah
I had to LOL watching the segment with Cuomo. When he showed Dolt45’s chickenscratch signature,…..
BWA HA HA HA HA HA AH
Had to come from Cohen.
Hildebrand
Maybe Rudy is just pulling an elaborate con on Trump. Some kind of long-form revenge for some long-ago slight that has eaten at him all these years. So, he cozies up to Trump, works his way into his confidence (not hard, it only takes a simpering compliment or two), and then slowly but surely destroys Trump, one incompetent interview at a time. All the while, Trump, oblivious as always, doesn’t see it coming until Rudy drops the last veil.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Perpetually moving the goalposts.
trollhattan
@Mary G:
When you’ve lost Smile Direct Club….
zhena gogolia
@Hildebrand:
You really give Rudy too much credit.
The Dangerman
@Mary G:
More jobs for people with a rake. We’ll have to pay the rakers, so we’ll have to raise taxes on people like Carlson, of course.
dmsilev
I assume that this is laying the ground for the next line of defense, that as a person visibly suffering from incipient dementia, Trump can’t really be said to have “knowingly” done anything up to and including treason.
Hildebrand
@zhena gogolia: Oh, I know. Rudy is dumb as a post, and can’t plan far enough ahead to get dinner reservations. That said, even my fervent imaginings of yet another of the Orange One’s inner-circle turning on him (even if for self-preservation) makes me smile.
germy
Blackwater security guard convicted in 2007 Iraqi civilian massacre at third U.S. trial
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/blackwater-security-guard-convicted-in-2007-iraqi-civilian-massacre-at-third-us-trial/2018/12/19/e8b3d8ac-fd5f-11e8-ad40-cdfd0e0dd65a_story.html?utm_term=.c184a61defb7
dmsilev
@The Dangerman: As a serial adulterer, Trump could fairly be described as a rake. Perhaps we could use him to clean the border? It’d be probably the only honest work he’s ever done in his whole life.
Felanius Kootea
@Hildebrand: No, there is no long con or n-dimensional chess going on here. These are spectacularly incompetent men and I shudder to think that we have a gaggle of them in DC, running the largest economy in the world into the ground for the short-term benefit of a few billionaires.
jl
A question for informed commenters or poster who happens by.
There is a lot about the Trump scandals I don’t understand, and many parts I think I understand but don’t make sense.
I understand the Trump Foundation scandal. I don’t understand how the Trump Russian hotel scandal.was supposed to work as a payoff from Russia, even as a small part of any supposed deal Trump was making with Putin.
Suppose the deal went through. Isn’t the whole thing too out in the open to be anything but a huge problem for Trump?
Was this going to be an official Trump property, with ‘Trump’ in big gold letters on the damn thing? Or was it going to be some random huge and classy hotel in Moscow, with the connection to Trump hidden, that Trump mysteriously obsessed over and insisted everyone doing business between the US and Russia stayed at?
Why would he lie at all about such a huge deal, that seems to have a vastly inflated return to him compared to his other hotel deals that he has done recently? What did he imagine would happen after the thing opened? That no one would notice it?
The only explanation I can think of is that Trump planned to lose and then no one would care. That would paint a pic of Trump trying to grift off Putin while Putin was trying to use Trump for the purpose of disrupting US policy. The whole thing seems senseless and stupid. If the inflated return for Trump was part of his payoff, and supposing he won, wouldn’t you want any part of the payoff much more hidden?
What am I not getting about this Trump Moscow hotel deal? It just seems unimaginably stupid and counterproductive to have continued it once he started his campaign. Maybe Trump thought he could step immediately into dictator of the US mode upon taking office and he could just tell everyone to get off his back about it, and that would happen?
polyorchnid octopunch
@LAO: This makes perfect sense when you consider that Rudy is of the “there is a class the law protects but doesn’t bind, and a class the law binds but does not protect” school of justice theory.
LAO
@Hildebrand: @dmsilev: There is no “offense” or strategy to the Trump Legal Team — all that they are doing is “reacting” — which is why they’re always on their heels and engaging in never ending, constantly evolving spin. It’s very bad lawyering.
SFAW
@Hildebrand:
Back in early 2016, I (foolishly, as it turned out) speculated that Shitgibbon was running so that he could get to the RNC convention, get up on stage, and say something like “You stupid, racist assholes! I was spouting that shit during the campaign, just to show how screwed up and un-American this party is. So, yeah, I’ll run on your ticket, but I sure as hell ain’t going to implement your platform.”
I ran this by my brother, a New York native/resident, and his response was “Nah, Trump’s just an asshole.” So I said 100 Ave Marias and 100 Pater nosters, and never considered that idiotic hypothesis again.
This is my long-winded way of saying: “No, Rudy is just a lying, adulterous, racist, grifting, possibly-treasonous asshole.” And he pretty much always has been.
Hungry Joe
@Schlemazel: I figure Rudy’s still compensating for Steven Van Zandt’s beating him out for the role of Silvio.
jonas
It used to be considered humiliating and, well, bad form, to go on tv regularly and beclown yourself like this. For anybody, much less a former prosecutor and politician. The ability to go around in public spraying bullshit everywhere and not be shunned from polite company the rest of your life is possibly the worst thing bequeathed to our country by Trump and his idiot cultist followers.
The Dangerman
@dmsilev:
So he’s an expert on rakes and hoes, then.
gene108
Clearly the signature is a forgery and is part of a plot to get Rudy in a perjury trap.
Cheryl Rofer
@jl: You are touching on something that I noticed while I was working through the Steele dossier again. There is an assumption around that Trump owes Putin in some way for the deals, outside of whatever sexual kompromat the Kremlin may hold on him. But everything that is reported in the dossier, with the exception of one thing, is Trump trying to cozy up to Putin. The one exception is the offer to Trump through Carter Page, of a commission (or something) on the sale of part of Rosneft.
Trump has been intrigued by Russia since at least the late 1980s. I hope to write more about that. He looks up to Putin.
Why does Trump lie? Isn’t this a senseless and stupid deal? Those are the continuing questions, and I think the Dunning-Kruger hypothesis may have some answers.
SFAW
@jl:
Considering all the unimaginably stupid things Lying Littledick has done since 11/9/16, I’m puzzled why you would think that he wouldn’t have done other unimaginably stupid things.
Gee, do dictators try to use their private police force to go after their political opponents? Because that’s one of Shitgibbon’s preferred “modalities.” Fortunately, he hasn’t been able to get that to happen as much as he’d like.
Roger Moore
@jl:
I agree that there’s something here that doesn’t add up, because a Trump property in Russia would be a big headache for Trump as president. That leaves three plausible explanations:
1) He was really dumb and didn’t think about the consequences.
2) He never expected to win the election and thought having a property in Russia wouldn’t be a problem for private citizen Trump.
3) He thought his power as president would let him shut down any investigation into his wrongdoing.
There’s at least some evidence for each of the three hypotheses.
SFAW
@gene108:
Forged by either Hitlary, or Robert Mueller, or George Soros, or James Comey, or Judge Sullivan.
raven
If you haven’t seen Michelle Obama and Fallon ambushing people on the 30 Rock Elevator do yourself a favor.
japa21
@jl:
That can be said about most things connected to Trump.
Actually, I don’t think Trump, or even Putin, expected Trump to win. Putin actually had to spend very little to get the results he wanted, so if Trump lost, it would have been no big loss for Putin. Plus, it still would have hobbled Clinton and created a major mess, which was his main goal.
catclub
@LAO:
I thought the trick that Chris Christie did was not have a fine, but the defendant has to pay for ‘monitoring of compliance’ and the DA picks the lawyer – his friend – to get paid for monitoring. Wasn’t Christie under Giuliani fora while?
PJ
@jl: From the reporting at the time, it was pretty clear that Trump never expected to be President (he was reportedly shocked when he found out that he was winning on election night), and it’s definitely the case that he doesn’t want to do the job of President. Running for President was just one grift in a career of fraud and con jobs, and he clearly saw it as a vehicle to raise his brand profile and to enrich himself, not just with a Moscow Trump Tower, but, as President, with using transition funds for himself and, most likely, inauguration funds as well, and all the foreign money being specifically directed at his hotel and resort properties (and small shit like charging the Secret Service exorbitant amounts to protect Melania and Baron in New York). And, of course, there was that percentage of Rosneft that he was supposed to get for lifting sanctions on Russia and letting the Exxon deal go through.
You have to understand that Trump has no shame, and no compunction when it comes to making money. If the Moscow Trump Hotel deal had gone through, he would have just said, “oh, I don’t have anything to do with that, Don Jr. is in charge of that now,” and the Republicans would go along with it without a peep. Short of a live boy or a dead girl, there is no crime he could commit that the GOP would not support.
feebog
@jl:
I think you answered your own question; Trump never expected to win. This is why the transition was so woefully inadequate, why prepare for an administration when you are not going to win?
LAO
@jl: While I fully believe that Trump never expected to win the election; I think what we are seeing with respect to the Russian deal and all of his compulsive, serial lying, is partly a product of a 72 year old man who has lived a consequence free life. He has never faced any negative consequences for his fraudulent behavior. I think he simply can’t comprehend that he should face any — it’s really remarkable.
catclub
@SFAW: If your life is a lie, then isn’t every signature of yours a forgery?
PaulWartenberg
Okay, very much off-topic, but can someone explain to me what bug is up Glenn Greenwald’s butt this morning? Something about boycotts? I don’t know where the argument started, only that it’s up to the point where GG is misquoting Martin Luther King Jr…
LAO
@catclub: As far as I know Christie was a US Attorney in New Jersey, not an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
That was a treat! Thanks!
LAO
@PaulWartenberg: As far as I can decipher, GG is equating boycotts with censorship.
SiubhanDuinne
@catclub:
Phrasing!
Mary G
I am becoming quite the fan girl of Judge Sullivan, who lacerated Michael Flynn yesterday:
Mary G
@PaulWartenberg: GG likes attention and doesn’t want to lose any of it. He is a frequent guest on Tucker Carlson’s show, which is hemorrhaging advertisers because people are upset that Tucker said immigrants make America dirtier, among other things.
Archon
@jl:
There is a Hitler quote in which basically he says, “If you win, you no longer have to explain yourself and if you lose there is nothing to explain”.
I honestly think Trump figured that if he lost nobody would bother or care about his dealings with the Russians. And if he won nobody would be able to hold him accountable for it.
Cheryl Rofer
The more detailed hot takes on Syria are now emerging, and some of them are pretty good, but I am stepping back from that until we see if Trump’s desires/ fantasies override other considerations. Maybe 24 hours.
Wapiti
@jl:
This would be my guess. If Turnip expected to lose, he still could have made impressions on Putin by making changes to the Republican platform wrt no support for Ukraine, etc. He was supporting Russia to make a gain in a personal business venture
laura
@Cheryl Rofer: The one exception is the offer to Trump through Carter Page, of a commission (or something) on the sale of part of Rosneft.
I’ve heard that the selection of Rex Tillerson was in anticipation of the sale and the opening up of drilling in the Arctic.
WaterGirl
@raven: That was fun!
Matt McIrvin
@jl: I think Trump very strongly expected to lose, though he wasn’t playing to lose. He probably figured that in the unlikely event that he won, he’d be King and could do as he liked– past Presidents just didn’t act like that because they were big wusses.
So, a combination of a couple of your hypotheses. Yes, he expected to lose and yes, he’s also very stupid.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl:
Is there any other kind?
SFAW
@catclub:
And THAT is why I got my degree in engineering, not philosophy.
Is that one like “If Lying Littledick says he’s smart and in the best shape of any athlete EVAH, and none of his minions dispute that, then do we believe him, or our lying eyes?”
PJ
@Cheryl Rofer: Trump lies because he has always lied, and it is a deeply ingrained habit, but he made it a habit because the truth is painful to him, and living with it would mean acknowledging that he is dishonest, unreliable, stupid, incompetent, petty, mean, disgusting, vile, unlikeable, completely self-serving, and that he has no friends, and the only people that respect him are even worse creatures than he is.
Re Russia, if you read about Churkin and the other operatives cultivating Trump in the 80’s, Trump talks about how much they admire him and how much they want him to build a hotel in Moscow. This was under Gorbachev, but it’s still the Soviet Union, the most powerful Communist country in the world – they were never going to make a deal with Trump to build anything in Moscow. Trump was not a hard person to read, and they saw that the way to manipulate him was by appealing to his vanity and his greed. I assume they also now have kompromat on him, but they probably didn’t need that in the beginning to get him to put full page ads in major US newspapers advocating that the US abandon Japan and its other allies. They just said, “Hey, I don’t get it, isn’t the US being ripped off by these free-loading allies? Why do you guys put up with that? Doesn’t seem like a smart deal to me. They should be paying you!” Which is what Trump always thinks: they should be paying me!
The other thing, of course, is that Trump has no loyalty to anyone or anything but himself, so as long as, in Adam’s terms, he is “treated fairly”, he has no scruples about betraying the US, or anyone.
ruemara
@PaulWartenberg: Boycotting racists is anti-free speech, according to a guy who won’t acknowledge that the people he’s championing would toss him in jail at the first opportunity. Just Glenn being Glenn.
Based on the courting that Russia has done to Trump & vice versa, plus his explorations of running going back decades, I dismiss the idea that he didn’t plan to win. You don’t cheat & make deals to cheat when you don’t plan to win. Him being surprised it worked is more likely. He definitely felt that being president would allow him to prevent any investigations, use the force of the DOJ against his enemies and generally get him adored by all once his magnificence was revealed.
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
I can understand why GG would dislike the implication that anyone associated with Tucker Carlson is endorsing white supremacy. And in typical GG fashion, he’s focusing on attacking everyone else rather than engaging in any kind of introspection on the matter.
Elizabelle
His Picture is NOT in the Dictionary Next to “Good Speaker of the House.” Paul “Wonk” Ryan delivers his farewell address in a few, per the WaPost website, which has a link.
The WaPost has been trying, I guess, to flog the notion he was a good Speaker. Or a principled one. Or … something. I dunno. I did not actually read this Robert Costa (“Republican whisperer”) and Mike DeBonis article.
‘He was the future of the party’: Ryan’s farewell triggers debate about his legacy
Because they are the same damn thing, brainiacs.
Paul Krugman had Ryan’s number as a flim flammer from the outset. So, didn’t read the article but I sure enjoyed cruising the top rated reader comments. They weren’t having any of it.
A Ghost To Most
The word is “fuck”, not “f**k”, not “phuck”. If you’re going to use it, have the courage to spell it correctly. The same goes for “shit”, and “god”.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@ruemara:
Of course he planned to win, but maybe that didn’t include the Presidency. If he lost there was more opportunity for money in having Trump TV.
James E Powell
@SFAW:
But he just happened to be the mayor of NYC on 9/11 so the press/media created “America’s Mayor” and gave him attributes that he never had, honors that he never earned, and a license to lie on TV that has no expiration date. He’s been living off that ever since.
SiubhanDuinne
Wow, yesterday’s announcement about the Trump Foundation has the Twitterer-in-Chief more ranty and agitated even than usual! He has three raving tweets up (or one long tweet in three section). They must be getting very, very, VERY close.
Tick tock.
Ruckus
@jl:
Individual 1 was not running for the office you think he was.
He was running for King of the World. I believe it has dawned on him that that’s not the election that was stolen for him.
Van Buren
@The Dangerman: Plus, that way they won’t have forest fires.
trollhattan
@A Ghost To Most:
“That’s ‘God’ to you, mortal.”
–You know who
D.W. Gregory
@Kraux Pas: He has an audience of fellow racists who buy crap. That’s why he gets advertisers.
Ruckus
@LAO:
Its very bad humaning as well.
Tom Levenson
@A Ghost To Most: I’m sixty years old, raised by an English woman who had strong views about how to cloak one’s epithets (she used them, but stiletto-like, not bludgeoning).
So fuck you and the horse you rode in on if you don’t like the way I talk or write.
We good now?
Wapiti
@catclub:
This was the subject of my retirement speech when I left the Army. Because of a paperwork fuck-up, I was told to sign my commissioning oath and date it for the following week. So the very first official act of my career was a fraud. The next 20 years was based on a lie.
jl
@A Ghost To Most: G*d dammitall to sht and fvckitall, don’t tell us how to k*&#!@@&!@**!ss.
Roger Moore
@jl:
Another possibility worth considering is that Trump was thinking in terms of contingency planning, where one thing would happen if he won the election and a different one if he lost. It’s not as if he had completed the negotiations for the Moscow property by the time the election rolled around. If he lost, he’d be free to continue the project, maybe presenting a fig leaf that he had given up on the negotiations during the election and gone back to them after the loss. If he won, he might have to abandon the project, but there would be so many other possibilities for making money from his office that losing out on one project, even one that big, wouldn’t be a big deal.
jimmiraybob
Once the Trump Cartel gets it all boiled down to “crime is not really crime and thusly, ergo, also too, et voila, criminals aren’t criminal” I’m going into crime to augment the SS. Are there any good “How to get Started” books out there?
bemused
@raven:
Oh man, I just get happy, smiley when I see anything with Michelle or Barack especially when they are doing something fun. It’s a rush of normalcy!
jonas
@japa21:
I think this is exactly right. Trump wanted to expand his business into Russia, so was running his campaign basically as a way of networking with a bunch of Russian oligarchs with cozy relationships with the Kremlin, and Putin saw him as a useful idiot for crippling a potential Clinton presidency. I think both were a bit shocked when he won. Thanks, Comey.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
Ooh, so great!
Tom_23
Would this be step 3 or 4 of the Four Dog Defense? (I leaning towards 3)
1. First of all, I don’t have a dog.
2. And if I had a dog, it doesn’t bite.
3. And if I had a dog and it did bite, then it didn’t bite you.
4. And if I had a dog and it did bite, and it bit you, then you provoked the dog.”
I recently was made aware of this tactic and now I see it in much of the disinformation that exists in the MSM.
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin:
And if Franken hadn’t lured Sessions into the trap so that he had to recuse himself, it just might have worked. (May still work, actually.)
trollhattan
@Tom_23:
Good one.
Am fond of the famous case Clouseau v Innkeeper:
“Does your dog behht [bite]?”
“No, mah dog does not behht.”
“Rawwhr!!” [dog, upon being petted]
“I thought you said your dog does not behht?”
“Is not my dog.”
It’s never their dog.
Martin
Meanwhile, Fox News is whistling past the graveyard arguing over the gender of cookies.
We were going to make cookies tonight, so I’m going to put a giant dick on every one of them, just to make sure everyone is clear on the gender. Because that’s apparently really important. Conversation I’m almost positive will happen with my daughter:
Daughter: Dad, why do the gingerbread cookies have 3 legs?
Me: They don’t have three legs. They have one leg and a two-headed dick. Why are you criticizing my art?
Cheryl Rofer
@laura: There are a lot of maybes and what-ifs. We still don’t even know the details of Flynn’s negotiations with Kislyak, although it seems to have been that if the Russians would hold back on retaliating for the US seizures of their embassies (shutting down much of their signals monitoring), the sanctions would be lifted once Trump was in office. New sanctions levied today for the Skripal poisoning. It’s hard to evaluate the maybes and what-ifs when we don’t know the overall plan.
And yes, I know Trump’s only overall plan is to glorify himself and get more money. But there seems to have been something else going on, perhaps a way to his perceived condominium with Putin in which the two of them rule the world.
SiubhanDuinne
@Roger Moore:
Oh, Roger, you just crack me up.
raven
@trollhattan: zat iz not my dog
Uncle Cosmo
@Schlemazel: Trapped in a neverending take from Sundowning Boulevard…aieee!
JPL
Putin is calling in his favors. First it was Syria and now this:
https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1075455024921223168
J R in WV
@Mary G:
Regarding Fucker Carlson:
Driving on I-10 from Tucson to Phoenix AZ is quite an experience. Mostly empty space with a tiny state park at a solitary mountain in the middle, with nary but a Dairy Queen for lunch. More trash in the median than any highway I’ve ever traveled, ever, anywhere.
I also don’t think immigrants deposited that trash, as they typically don’t drive on the Interstates, because they don’t sneak across the border fence with a Chevy, after all.
Barbara
@jl: He wanted to keep his options open. Doing it out in the open during the course of the campaign would have sabotaged his campaign from the get go. He thought that he could do it in secret or that if he funneled it through Cohen he could maintain the shield of attorney client privilege or that he could create 100 shell corporations that somehow ended up in the name of one of his kids.
Why he felt compelled to treat Cohen so badly is the real mystery, one that I believe can only be explained by his pathologic need to dominate.
Martin
@A Ghost To Most:
And nigger. If you’re going to say it, say it and own it. Don’t half say it, knowing damn well the other person will hear it, so that you can backtrack and claim you never said it. The word is offensive. The least you can do is own the offense.
NotMax
Meanwhile, in da heartland –
Uncle Cosmo
@bemused: Ghouliani (America’s Goombah) opening his cannoli-hole reminds me of that scene in “The Tin Drum” (trigger alert: the horse’s head is dragged out of the Baltic & multiple eels slither out & nausea ensues) … only this time it’s the other end of the horse & much more decrepit/less nourishing/less tasty wigglies …
Aleta
I can see Giuliani going with ‘Trump lied to me too’ as his defense or announcing that he had moments of memory fail. Or the ‘I love beer: ambi en made me do it’ defense.
It’s hard to make sense when the sky actually is falling on your chicken existence.
raven
@Martin: Try this
And fuck Frank Sinatra
SRW1
The Trumpster and Rudy totally deserve each other.
Lalophobia
@raven: Well fuck you too and fuck Michael Jackson.
artem1s
@jl:
yes. it is. most cons are. the trick is keeping the mark in the dark long enough to get away with the money. Donnie has been kind of successful in working the construction type con for a long time and sticking someone else with the bill after he declares bankruptcy. he’s been floating on that Ponzi type development financing scam for so long, he doesn’t believe it will ever end. I think the most unimaginably stupid part of this is that he believed he could pull this kind of con on Putin. If he hadn’t won the election, he and Jr. might very well be in much worse trouble than they are now.
NotMax
Both Emmet Flood and Pat Cipollone would have their pictures in the dictionary next to ‘under the radar’ if they came out of their cubbyholes long enough for someone to snap them.
raven
@Lalophobia: You ain’t gonna do shit but sit your monkey ass on this bench. . . I love some Sweet Dick Willie.
bemused
@Uncle Cosmo:
Oh lordie, somehow I’ve missed that movie scene…blech.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I think you need to be careful about the use/mention distinction here. If you’re going to use it, you should use it. If you’re going to discuss other people having used it, it’s OK to say “the N-word” or “n****r” or the like to indicate where somebody else said it without saying it yourself.
Aleta
@A Ghost To Most: Writer’s choice.
hw3
Darn it. Now I am going down the “fugazi” rabbit hole.
Apparently, from Tom’s usage it’s the Italian slang for fake, but it also has the same connotations in mil-speak as fubar — “Fucked Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In [a body bag].
Not sure which I prefer “a Flatbush fugazi” to mean here, honestly.
trollhattan
@NotMax:
Just great, “Democrats” who lurve tax cuts and cutting taxes. Just what Kansas needs.
“John Brown’s body lies a-spinnin’ in his grave.”
Bill Arnold
@Roger Moore:
Pretty sure it was 2 with some very poorly formed thoughts about 3 as a contingency plan.
And DJT was not the only entity working the narratives/memes/electoratemanipulations; I believe that most of the smart players among them though thought DJT would lose, and it was sort of a rogue wave caused by a political analogue of “randomly occurring wave reinforcement” because the players didn’t have valid models about each other. Bannon seemed pretty confident of a DJ Trump win, and perhaps others were as well for reasons that were valid (like having a valid model of the election including wave reinforcement). (And it would be crazy to think that there was/might have been a long game involved. :-)
I also believe (and it has been widely reported) that most players were seeking a weak Clinton presidency.
Downpuppy
With Dershowitz running away from Epstein accusations, Guiliani is all they have to trot out.
Baud
Saw the title and thought this was going to be a Baud! 2020! hit piece. Whew!
Mary G
@J R in WV: Not to mention that when CBP takes people into custody, everything they are carrying is thrown on the ground and left there as part of the campaign to “deter” people from asking for asylum, so it isn’t even the immigrants’ trash, it’s their most precious possessions.
Di
@raven: She is having the time of her life. Did you see how thrilled people are to see her? That’s kind of an antidote to these . . . interesting times.
rikyrah
????
ABC News (@ABC) Tweeted:
NEW: Rep. Elijah Cummings, in line to become chair of House Oversight Committee, sends more than 50 oversight letters to White House, Trump Organization, other agencies asking for documents and records.
https://t.co/UH2MFX7XPW https://t.co/THykMerylL https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1075431623645118465?s=17
Jay
@jl:
There’s Trump Towers all over the World. They were all built, financed, condo’s sold, managing and lisenceing contracts, the same way, with more or less criminality involved, dependent on region.
Hair Shitler believes that Trump Towers Moscow, something he’s chased since the Cold War, would be no different, and no big deal.
He’s stupid like that.
Aleta
@Mary G: Thanks for pointing that out. I never thought about what happens to their most precious possessions.
gvg
When he was first elected, and all at once people started examining him closely, it seemed to me that Trump really had not understood how closely everyone in the world watches the US president, and that much of that attention is not friendly. I thought he was an idiot for that, too. He thought he would enjoy all the attention I think. He also seemed to think winning meant most people would admire and like him from then on. I can’t remember any President that didn’t get amazing amounts of negative attention including for things they didn’t really control. But Trump doesn’t really think about things evidently.
I suspect he also doesn’t recognize how crooked he has always been, so he didn’t know he shouldn’t go anywhere near running for office.
artem1s
@NotMax:
srsly, the Dems in KS need to tell them to shove it when they demand that they get to continue to behave like rePukes, We don’t want the Dixiecrats back just because their Grand Racists Party is falling apart.
Hoodie
@Roger Moore: all three in combination with 4) he thinks he can bullshit and bully his way out of anything. It’s worked in the past and continues to work to some degree. He would just emanate a fart cloud of disjointed reasons, such as the property isn’t really owned by him, he’s actually losing money in the hope of improving US/Russia relations, the success of the property is bringing money to the US, etc. The essence of Trump is naked will to ignore anything that stands in the way of him making money and stroking his ego.
rp
Glenn also retweeted something from the Daily Caller attacking the Steele dossier. He might as well come out as a Trump supporter at this point. The charade is boring.
Ryan
So as long as I don’t take any money, I can break into a bank at night when no one is around?
trollhattan
@Ryan:
Take all the deposit slips you’d like but leave the pens.
Kay
@Downpuppy:
More and more I think Trump has dirt on all these people and they know he’ll reveal it if they don’t obey orders.
It sort of feels like blackmail. How they’ll say anything, literally anything, to defend him. The other option is the giant grift- they’re all making out like bandits with the unchecked corruption, but more and more I’m leaning “fear based”, not “reward based”
50 years of collecting dirt on Trump’s part. He knows a lot about them.
jl
@Ryan: ” So as long as I don’t take any money, I can break into a bank at night when no one is around? ”
Sounds like one of those rink-dink process crimes they are using to frame the poor Trumpsters, who are just trying to make a living like the average Joe and Josephine..
It’s a damn dirty shame what the dirty rat fed did to poor Al Capone.
Edit: you go after a guy for premeditated murders, and all you come up with assaults and mayhem on deadbeats, it’s a bum rap. Let ’em go!
note: snark above
FlipYrWhig
@rp:
Gee, why would Glenn Greenwald throw a fit about how people are being SO MEAN to Tucker Carlson over immigration?
Kraux Pas
@Kay:
That “grift” is the vast right wing conspiracy, which is the major enforcement mechanism of the white supremacist power structure. It has migrated from reward to fear based as they’ve started losing their grip on power and the elite among them fear jail time for the crimes they’ve committed on its behalf.
geg6
@ruemara:
This. I agree with this comment completely.
catclub
@jimmiraybob:
re: crime is not crime any more
1. Are you white? offer void if not white.
2. Are you already rich? offer void if not already rich
raven
OK football haters
Hanahan Hawks’ Dawson Cooper chooses Syracuse
rikyrah
@Kay:
You have been saying this for awhile, Kay…and, you are very probably right.
Doug R
@Hildebrand:
So a variation on Clint Eastwood’s “chair speech”?
Avalune
@dmsilev: I thought the rakes were for the Forrest floors?
piratedan
speaking to the speculation that commenter jl raised… I wonder if what happened was this….
Putin recruits/grooms Trump for a presidential run… tells Trump that he wants chaos and to wound Clinton and in return Putin will financially back Trump and that will pay off some of the vig and principal that is outstanding on all of the financial debts that Trump has outstanding, meanwhile Trump runs his own grift on the GOP and the rubes to milk them for whatever he can because that is who Trump is and what Trump does….
Meanwhile, Putin plans to actually hack the election and win it so he can maximize his financial backing and weaken the US dramatically… Trump doesn’t have to know he’s going to win, he just has to run and be Trump. Putin also cuts a deal with the GOP to help them gain control of the Senate and the House so that even if Clinton does win, she won’t be able to do a damn thing because McConnell will continue to abide by the Obama playbook for any real changes that she may want to make, so he still “wins” but with a GOP win and a Trump win, he can set progress back in the US for easily twenty years, fuck up Western Hegemony and reset the game board.
That’s what I think went down, the GOP sold us out to allow them to get their hate on, Trump went along with the game because he’s up to his asshole in debt with Putin and his oligarchs and is completely their creature and the rest of us get screwed in the process.
Schlemazel
@Kay:
IF he has dirt is was given him by Putin.
I think you are right on Rudy & Desh, neither should have to debase themselves like they are. The others I can think of are just in it for the grift, nobody with any serious credibility is on his team
catclub
Can I suggest bonds to ‘pay’ for other things the Legislature has refused to fund?
How about Mueller investigation bonds? Now that I would be interested in!
Yarrow
@Kay:
Trump acts like a mob boss and that’s how they work and keep people in line. Of course he’s got dirt on people. And Putin has dirt on Trump and probably a lot of others.
Good news is, Mueller knows all about the dirt that Trump thought ho one knew. That’s why Trump is panicking. He’s got nowhere to hide. He’s always gotten away with things by walking away and leaving others holding the bag. That technique is not going to work this time.
tobie
@piratedan: This strikes me as spot-on. Pumping Trump’s campaign was a win-win situation for Putin. He must have thought either he’ll weaken and hobble a Clinton administration or he’ll get Donnie, who will lift the sanctions. Of all the possible conspiracies, this strikes me as the simplest and most likely one.
mapaghimagsik
@trollhattan: Remember when Rush lost Ashley Madison?
catclub
@Yarrow: This is where Trump plays the game better than others. Trump only lies, so if Trump is threatening to reveal some secret about me, I should just assume that everyone will know he is lying – again.
But instead, people give him credit for telling the truth about some dark secret. Suckers.
rikyrah
@FlipYrWhig:
And that, Ladies and Gentlemen….is called a RECEIPT.
BroD
I take exception to “Flatbush fugazi”. Rudy is Manhattan all the way.
.
Uncle Cosmo
@Subaru Diane ;^D: “Pardon me, Mr. President, but there’s someone for you named Rico on Line 1″…
JPL
@piratedan: Same. Now putin’s cronies are shocked by trump’s actions today.
Uncle Cosmo
@Ruckus: Did someone say “King of the World”?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
On Rudi and Dersh, I doubt trump needs blackmail. Dershowitz is 1) an attention whore, 2) an Obama-hater and 3) a Likudnik. I don’t know how close trump and Epstein are/were, but with all that’s coming out about Dersh and Epstein, trump didn’t need to get involved. I think Rudi’s as dirty as fuck with Russian dirt, but it probably has more to do with his post-mayoral money-grubbing than specifically with trump or 2016. Also Rudi appears to be in some kind of decline, people talk about his drinking, his marriage is falling apart spectacularly (kind of surprised that’s not getting attention) and he’s dumb enough to still think trump can give him the balcony the little man has spent his life in pursuit of
Mandalay
A RWNJ has created a gofundme begging bowl to fund Trump’s wall, and it is going gangbusters: $865,522 raised in 2 days, with an average contribution of about $61. The target is gofundme’s limit of one billion dollars.
Here’s the scam: “If we don’t reach our goal or come significantly close we will refund every single penny….”. The “or come significantly close” qualifier has been added; it wasn’t here yesterday.
Since a million dollars represents a thousandth of their goal, the probability of actually raising a billion dollars is close to zero. OTOH, the probability of the scam artists issuing any refunds is zero, regardless of the amount raised.
Uncle Cosmo
@Martin: So you’re saying the sheriff is near? /ducks
rikyrah
@JPL:
UH HUH
UH HUH
Tom Levenson
@BroD: born in East Flatbush.
gvg
the one mistake Putin may have made is thinking Trump or any President really could just lift the sanctions. Of course, maybe he knew better, so he knew he wouldn’t have to pay Trump whatever he promised…This also indicates that most GOP aren’t actually compromised directly by Russia. Even the republican congress just wouldn’t go along with that.
It’s probably pretty easy for Russia to see our weaknesses. I wonder if they missed some of our strengths? It takes a lot of real consensus to actually pass laws in our system, and a lot of things can’t be done secretly. We do a lot of politics right out in public where the voters see it and expect our legislators to respond when enough of us yell.
tobie
@Tom Levenson: East Flatbush native here, too.
Frankensteinbeck
@gvg:
It’s complicated, or rather it’s a murky haze of emotions that haven’t been clearly thought through. First, he assumes everyone is as corrupt as he is. They may be suckers, IE not good at it, but it’s the only state of being he understands. Second, he barely think about questions like this, because no one else is entirely real to him, and because Third, if he does it, it’s morally correct and good, and if someone else does it when he doesn’t want them to, it is morally wrong and is self-evidently a crime.
This is all based on how narcissists think, and Trump is a textbook narcissist.
Frankensteinbeck
@gvg:
It didn’t matter. Supporting Trump was totally win/win for him. Even if Trump lost badly, just having Trump in the Republican primaries gave him fodder for his ‘America is as bad as we are and democracy is useless’ propaganda campaign back home. That campaign is hugely important to him politically. Everything past that has been gravy. He’ll wring everything he can get out of Trump, sure, but this is and has been in ‘Let’s see how high I can run the score’ territory for a long time.
H.E.Wolf
@A Ghost To Most:
For some Jews, to spell out (and, in some cases, to pronounce) the name of the deity is considered inappropriate. There may be some Protestant sects which have a similar belief.
I’m not a practitioner in either of those [specifically enumerated] traditions myself, so my apologies if this is a poor description.
It seems to me that freedom of religion applies to religiously-motivated spelling, nu?
rikyrah
@gvg:
No, never doubt that.he wanted those sanctions GONE.
I don’t believe for one minute that he didn’t do all of this with the goal of getting those sanctions lifted.
That was the reason for the Secretary of Exxon to be chosen.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@J R in WV:
I’ve driven that I-10 route back and forth between Phoenix and Tucson (mostly for business) nearly 1,000 times in the past 38 years I’ve lived in the Phoenix area, and I have no idea what you’re talking about. Lots of negative things can be said about my (mostly) benighted adopted home state (would fill a book) but “most littered highway in America” isn’t one of them. I’ve logged over a million miles driving all over the country in my so-far 47 year driving career, and the I-10 Phoenix/Tucson corridor doesn’t rank as especially “dirtier” than anywhere else in America I’ve been (I have, in fact, seen worse elsewhere).
Maybe you came by right after one of our haboobs blew shit all over, I don’t know. It is, of course, much easier to spot any bit of trash in the open desert compared to places with trees and bushes and grass all around.
Still, sticking with the subject that provoked your bit of highway calumny, fuck racist-ass Tucker Carlson and his “immigrants are dirty” bullshit. On that (and, truth be told, many other comments of yours I’ve read here) we’re in total agreement.
SiubhanDuinne
@Uncle Cosmo:
????????????
Wild Cat
@SiubhanDuinne: No. Christie, in his Tom Landry costume, was the top.
J R in WV
@LAO:
So we’re all censoring Fox aka Faux News by never watching it, ever?
Glen is dumber than I thought!!!
J R in WV
@tobie:
Unfortunately for Putin, he didn’t understand that here it isn’t like Russia. Presidents, even white ones, don’t always get what they want. Our legislature based system tends to keep absolute leadership from actually being absolute at all. Fortunately in this case.
Villago Delenda Est
@J R in WV: GG is either an FSB stooge, or a paid FSB agent. Either way, he should be visited by SEAL Team Six.
J R in WV
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot:
We have a small winter camp in AZ, and I like the place mostly. Especially now that Democratic people appear to be winning elections again!
But the one time we flew into Phoenix instead of Tucson, because Tucson was really booked up on account of the Gem show crush of February, that road was a F’in mess from Phoenix to Tucson and back… really. Some stuff lying on the ground, some stuff in the foliage, but everywhere.
Obviously, out there a sudden wind storm could move a lot of loose crap around, but it really impressed us, and we’ve seen a lot of litter in spots over the past 50 odd years of touring around the countryside.
No offense, not picking on AZ, but to say the immigrants are dirty is so racist compared to the truth that litter and dirty is as American as apple pie. There are very few immigrants here in the center of the United States, and we have our share of litter!
But I-10 seemed like the perfect example of an area with lots of litter (“dirty”) with no chance it was the fault of the immigrants common in the area… no offense, it just struck me as the perfect counter to Fucker Carlson’s racist fascist banter…
Glad we agree more than not!!! Happy Holidays, also too, everyone!!
J R in WV
@dmsilev:
Won’t work, he passed his military exam with flying colors just a few months ago. Just ask that admiral!1!
Uncle Cosmo
@Villago Delenda Est: I look forward to the day when the question Where’s Greenwaldo? is correctly answered “Dangling from a lamppost by his neck.” Scumbag.