It probably speaks poorly of my character that I post more about conservative tribulations than liberal triumphs. But that’s how I roll, and there’s no shortage of good news posts around here these days, so let us savor the impending downfall of a lawless scoundrel who richly deserves the dump truck-load of trouble that’s barreling his way: James O’Keefe, the proprietor of the mendaciously misnamed Project Veritas.
An unmitigated asshole, O’Keefe rose to prominence in conservative circles with a “sting” video, which, despite being ridiculous and deceptively edited, brought down ACORN, an organization that had the temerity to ensure poor people were counted in the U.S. Census and encouraged to vote. Thanks to O’Keefe’s lies (and cowardly defensive crouches assumed by some Democrats who should have known better, it must be noted), ACORN was effectively destroyed in the U.S.
O’Keefe never quite matched that “success.” Subsequent stunts aimed at a woman who worked for CNN, New Jersey teachers, Medicaid offices in several states, polling places, newspapers, etc., were redolent of flop sweat and misogyny. That odor wafting from O’Keefe reached Donald Trump’s nostrils in 2016, and Trump donated (other people’s money for sure) to Project Veritas and eagerly elevated an organization and leader almost as gross, tacky and deceitful as himself.
In 2020, O’Keefe attempted to repay the favor by helping the future twice-impeached, two-time popular vote loser Trump secure another term — with the aid of a pair of Florida scumbags who stole a diary belonging to President Biden’s daughter. The scheme backfired spectacularly, and last fall, the feds raided O’Keefe’s NYC apartment and the homes of some of his associates. [NYT]
The raid occasioned much meeping about press freedom from fascists who would shut down the independent press within five minutes of getting their fat fascist fingers on the levers of power. And if O’Keefe had just paid the Florida scumbags for the diary, that would be sleazy but possibly protected by the First Amendment.
But O’Keefe also instructed the Florida scumbags to steal more stuff and dispatched an employee across state lines to transport the stolen goods, activities that are not protected by the First Amendment and are in fact crimes that can result in serious legal consequences. O’Keefe is not now and never has been a journalist, and the Florida scumbags who stole the diary flipped and have text messages that detail the shady scheme, so it looks like O’Keefe is probably o’fuct. [TPM]
This is all extra-hilarious because O’Keefe never even published the fucking diary! Before the election, he tried to conduct yet another lame “sting” on Biden’s daughter, whose lawyers took his “interview” request as an extortion attempt. That prompted them to alert federal prosecutors, and here we are. To sum up, it appears O’Keefe’s grift empire will collapse in yet another epic flop.
The end.
And also, open thread.
Baud
We’re going to need a bigger prison.
Or as Biden would say: Jobs! Good union jobs building a bigger prison!
Bill Hicks
I’m pretty sure FPOTUS is also Ofuct, best Friday newsdump evah!
bbleh
So when and for how long will his tasty young white ass be circulating in gen pop somewhere? Asking for a friend. Several friends, actually. Okay, not really friends.
Starfish
O’Keefe has done a lot of awful things and has never really been held accountable in a meaningful way.
Remember that time he tried to phone tap Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu?
Remember that time he tried to destroy Planned Parenthood by making a video claiming that they were selling fetal body parts?
Barbara
Just FYI, one of PV’s female employees is alleging that her work environment included pervasive sexual harrassment, and that she was fired in retaliation for rejecting the sexual demands of one of PV’s most highly placed people. It wasn’t O’Keefe.
So yeah, misogyny pervades the mission of the project through and through.
Starfish
@bbleh: He is over 40 years old. He ends up with very minor sentences for the crap he does.
germy shoemangler
Didn’t Laura Loomer get her start with O’Keefe?
germy shoemangler
Jacob Wohl is another one I thought would face some consequences.
If I did a fraction of what Wohl or O’Keefe did I’m certain I’d be sitting in prison right now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Tom VilsackETA: Wait, never mind, the Shirley Sherrod case was a separate bit of fuckery I remembered that as being O’Keefe, Wiki tells me it was Breitbart and doesn’t mention O’Keefe
@Baud: listening to a baseball game on Sirius last night, I heard an ad for hiring prison guards– they didn’t call them that– sounded like a national buy, but I wasn’t paying close attention.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
We do love to see it.
Also
I want this as a rotating tag but I realize it’s probably too long :P
Barbara
@germy shoemangler: Wohl is such a clown that it sometimes feels like he is a false flag. Remember when he tried to take down Mueller?
Meanwhile, PV tried to help out Roy Moore . . .
Gin & Tonic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good union jobs staffing the prison too.
Baud
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:
Plus, people might think it’s about me!
Mathguy
This has been a glorious month, politically.
germy shoemangler
@Mathguy:
I’m hoping November is an even better month
H.E.Wolf
I’m not going to identify the specific commenter; but rape jokes? Yuck.
BruceFromOhio
I had hoped he’d get struck by lightning after getting run over by a large truck, but this makes an acceptable substitute.
And your posts are always welcome, BC, whatever the topic.
Layer8Problem
O’Keefe’s close to the top of the list of Ten Most Punchable Faces.
Starfish
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There is a shortage of prison guards right now, and it is very bad.
Some juvenile prisons are so short on guards that they are not there to supervise the kids in trips to the bathroom so they are having to relieve themselves in bottles and cups. It is very bad.
germy shoemangler
@Starfish:
Was there a mass resignation of guards in states with covid vaccine requirements?
Barbara
@germy shoemangler: I suspect that it has more to do with people moving to more desirable jobs, as with the the restaurant business.
Jager
@germy shoemangler:
I flipped the bird at a cop when I was 14 years old, I was on Juvie probation for a year on a charge of obscene language in a public place.
Betty Cracker
Speaking of scumbag comeuppances, from WaPo:
This is a twofer because 1) it humiliates Trump, and 2) the idiots who handed an evil toddler with a box of matches a pile of money to set on fire will also lose their asses. “Damage his credibility”? LOL!
dm
@H.E.Wolf: yeah, let’s hope for nobody to be treated that way, as opposed to the people we don’t like getting that treatment, too.
la caterina
@H.E.Wolf: Seconded.
Jager
@Layer8Problem:
Doesn’t he rotate the top spot with Steven Miller?
PPCLI
Another of his failed schemes involved an attempt to decoy a female CNN reporter onto a boat filled with sex toys, which would then set sail, leaving the reporter trapped there with him. This one ended up failing because it was so obviously misogynistic and greasy, and likely illegal, that one of O’Keefe’s partners in sleaze couldn’t go along with it, and blew the whistle.
https://www.wonkette.com/james-okeefe-tries-to-get-cnn-reporter-onto-his-dildo-lube-boat
It says a lot about the Republican party that this jaw-dropping misogyny was A-OK with them. The money kept rolling in to Project (sic) Veritas. Including a donation from Trump’s now dissolved “charity”.
kalakal
HaHahahahahahaha
Jackie
@Betty Cracker: It gets better!
His (Un)Truth Social brand is having trademark issues…
https://www.axios.com/2022/08/25/trump-truth-social-trademark-denied
Layer8Problem
@Jager: And Ted Cruz. And young Kushner.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I’ve saw a reddit commenter use this when talking about Trump.
T R E 4 5 O N
May be old but I like it.
kalakal
@Baud:
,,👍
James E Powell
@Bill Hicks:
That’s good news . . . for
John McCainRon DeSantis!oatler
@Bill Hicks:
I haven’t dreaded the Friday newsdump for some weeks now. Must be off my feed.
Sasha
Conservative tribulations are liberal triumphs.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@bbleh: Not okay in any universe.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
I’m just fine with that Betty. Just fine. Probably says something about my character too.
trollhattan
While I abhor the very idea of corporate-run prisons, I think one set aside for convicted Trumpers would be appropriate–they can find out what it’s like to have the lowest possible per-day expenditure per prisoner accommodations.
Betty Cracker
@Jackie: Hahaha! Also from the linked WaPo article, Trump’s Twitter knock-off stopped paying its web host and owes a million bucks and counting:
It’s like these people fall out of the womb brand new — every day. Of course Trump would “damage his [non-existent] credibility” and screw vendors! How can any sentient being be surprised by this?
Betty Cracker
@Sasha: Excellent point!
Baud
@trollhattan:
A private prison where they charge admission to tourists to see Trump and his cohorts rot. Think of the profits!
Kent
Oh no. Ted Cruz is always up there permanently.
Ivan X
What a magnificent writeup, Betty. You should write schadenfreudtastic unauthorized bio books and make some real coin. I’d buy!
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
@bbleh: Don’t like rape jokes. Prison rape jokes, party rape jokes, any rape jokes. Rape is not a joke, even if the person raped is despicable.
Kent
And charge the fuck out of them for everything from socks to a long expired slice of bologna.
Free markets and all you know.
Betty Cracker
@H.E.Wolf: Agreed.
jimmiraybob
It is good news when conservative tribulations mean liberal triumphs.
O’Keefe, like the former A. Breitbart, are/were the kings of rage-lying, soulless sh!thead grifters that infest and infect a decent and democratic society. Viruses all.
Just to show my humanity I’ll hope that he gets a decent cellmate.
MagdaInBlack
@KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager)): Same here. Not cool.
Layer8Problem
@trollhattan:
A corporate-run prison accomodating the gentry? It would be like Newgate in the 18th century updated; for a “reasonable fee,” full spa, white-tablecloth service, guard-valet, and daily cocktail hour with the warden.
WaterGirl
@bbleh: Rape is awful, no matter who it is done to. It’s a travesty that our prison systems are rife with it. One thing rape is not, is funny.
I would not, however, mind terribly much to learn that he had been beaten up in prison, so I am certainly not holier then now.
edit: I am now several comments in to the thread, and I see that I am not alone in my thinking.
edit: and now that I’m at comments #50, I see that I am REALLY not alone in my thinking!
CaseyL
@Ivan X:
Betty isn’t as OTT as Sarah, Proud & Tall (no one could be), but she does give us some snap-cracklin’ writing. I sometimes wonder what Betty’s RL profession is, and hope it involves writing because, well, her invective is inventive.
O’Keefe and Wohl are grifter dirtbags for whom the RWnut universe was a buffet. I despise them, but as with all other things Trumpian and GOP-ian, I despise even more the people who gave them money, attention, and credibility.
WaterGirl
@Barbara: Who is PV?
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Project Veritas.
Omnes Omnibus
FFS, we are supposed to better than prison rape jokes.
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: I had to lose some of the perfection of Betty’s phrasing, but I shortened it to this and added it as a rotating tag.
WaterGirl
@Jager: Wow.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: I think Project Veritas. Took me a while too. But I suffer from SAD. That’s Severe Acronym Dysphoria.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: I don’t mind the well-known ones, but the in-crowd ones drive me batty.
Dan B
@bbleh: O’Keefe supposedly has (had) an Only Fans account.
What could be on that, sticking his tongue out at women, mooning lie-bruls?
Ewwwwww!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
You get brought up before Judge Elihu Shmails?
Layer8Problem
@WaterGirl: You are
Number 6WaterGirl.Geminid
@WaterGirl: You may have SAD also. But at least you don’t suffer from XCDD.
That’s X Chromosome Deficiency Disorder. It’s endemic in half the population.
Omnes Omnibus
No, imprisoned is enough. I know Russians aren’t in fashion right now but Dostoevsky was right: A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Layer8Problem: six of one, half a dozen of another.
Jackie
@KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager)):
“Don’t like rape jokes. Prison rape jokes, party rape jokes, any rape jokes. Rape is not a joke, even if the person raped is despicable.”
Well said! I agree 100%!
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: You are correct, sir.
sukabi
Betty,
We must take pleasure where we can find it. Being with friends, boating in your own personal swampy backyard, and reveling in the downfall of an odious wannabe ratf^cker are all excellent sources of pleasure….don’t feel even a tiny bit bad or guilty for enjoying yourself. 😃
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
I judge society by how it treats me.
moops
@Betty Cracker:
Every grifter thinks they will be different. They are better than all those unpaid losers. It turns out the easiest people to grift are other grifters and grifter-wannabes.
eversor
@germy shoemangler:
Whol used to throw his bullshit from an inn and his lawyers house both are in Rosslyn VA. I worked down there at the time and figured I should go there and check out the fiasco. The inn was like three blocks and lawyers house was in one of those million dollar town houses close by. So off me and some coworkers went to be assholes to the asshole.
His events were always bombs with people mostly there to give him crap and mock him. There’d be maybe a dozen, tops, true believers there, some press, and then a rack of people in the back just watching the train wreck and laughing. Kid is thin skinned as all hell though. And for someone who takes all these pictures of his “build” and brags about it he sure gets intimidated fast. Like, I dunno if you don’t want attention don’t call it down on yourself? If you don’t want to be harassed don’t start a harassment business? If you’re scared of physical confrontation don’t shit post pictures of your build and masculinity?
Remember when he tried to slander Liz Warren as a cougar who injured a Marine body builder in bed? It’s like the stupid stuff now with Joe Biden and a mini gun spewing money. These guys always manage to make their targets seem way cooler and more awesome than they actually are and then you see them in person and they’re some scared ass pipsqueak, or you see them online (Ben Shrill Shapiro) and they should be stuffed in a locker. Or that O’Keefe party with the dancing and the lights, and it’s all “have you ever been to a night club, cause uh, this ain’t that”.
Each time you actually see these fuckers it’s like the old comic “where the fuck is your chin” line over and over and over again.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Oh dear.
moops
@Dan B: That gargoyle O’Keefe thinks he is sexy. Self-delusion is Republican super power.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Love it so much that it’s now a rotating tag.
WaterGirl
@Baud: They could sell mini-big-Macs that you could throw to the prisoners!
WaterGirl
@Ivan X: How was the meetup? I see that you and Caroline were there – that would have been fun.
Jinchi
Like Pravda and Truth Social, Project Veritas is named ironically.
It’s a pretty good tell that someone is lying to you when they brand themselves as “Truth”.
HumboldtBlue
Our country is O’Fucked.
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: What is OTT?
edit: over the top?
edit 2: use of letter abbreviations that are not well-known is over the top! :-)
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: Joining a cult of personality is one thing. Building a business model on a cult of personalty is something else entirely.
Layer8Problem
@WaterGirl: That would be . . . Oh come now, you’re not making me do that again!
Layer8Problem
@different-church-lady: Worked for Mickey Mouse.
eversor
@trollhattan:
The people at the top will never go though, that’s the issue. And if they do go it’s a joke like Manafort. Some of these assholes need hanging. You only get the firing squad if you served so other than Flynn and Bannon they don’t get that dignity. (sarcastic, half sarcastic, maybe not at all)
I think the best we can hope for with Trump himself is that he flees the country for one of the nations that’s had a massive amount of our assets killed since March (odd how that happened no?) and ends up half drowning in a bathtub, falling out of a high rize, and then a piano falls on him.
You have to wonder when does he turn from an asset to a liability. Cause he’ll obviously sell everything and everyone to anything and anyone for his own skin, and his value is going negative each day.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: So now you are OTF?
different-church-lady
@trollhattan: let’s think like a conservative take-haver for a second:
”Sending Trump to prison would be unfair because the prison system is understaffed.”
There, kind of like a unified field theory of MAGA privilege.
Ken
“Ooh, the beta male grabbed most of them today! The alpha is pissed! I think they’re going to fight!”
RepubAnon
@BruceFromOhio: I want to see O’Thief wearing an orange jumpsuit and picking up trash on the side of the road…
Ken
“Natural causes.” Or maybe “Suicide”, if the coroner’s trying to be funny.
MattF
Note the banner headline. Jackals may scoff, but a NYT banner headline is, in fact, a journalistic BFD. And the NYT article under it is quite merciless.
ETA: I may need to change my mind about the likelihood of an indictment.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I do not know.
Jinchi
I never understood what that was supposed to accomplish. Did he think he’d victim-shame her into some sort of confession?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Layer8Problem: and Jimmy Buffett
(not picking on him, one of his songs just shuffled up on me and it got me thinking that he’s a freaking billionaire– a friend of an acquaintance is paying something like 80 grand to go to a Buffett show on Antarctica. It’s a fund-raiser, apparently.
I support the Ocean Conservancy, and I went to a few Buffett shows before I became an agoraphobic hermit, but 80K…. nah.
Ken
@different-church-lady: I am half-expecting twitter legal scholars* to make the argument that stealing from the families of political figures is protected by the First Amendment.
* A B- in 8th-grade civics class and 1,200 episodes of the Law and Order franchises is a kind of scholarship.
zhena gogolia
@MattF: I noted that.
phdesmond
@WaterGirl:
brava. it’s a one-word visual poem.
Kelly
Good Twilight Zone meme
https://twitter.com/HuronBlueChief/status/1563336252375478273
eversor
@HumboldtBlue:
Indeed. It’s not just the loss of life, which is tragic enough but at the nation state level that’s not the bigger issue. The larger issue is that nobody will trust us or want to work with us after this, and all our current networks and methods are burned.
Unfucking this is going to be Herculean. And it cannot be unfucked if he walks on this.
Mike in NC
I have no trouble picturing O’Keefe being a frequent guest at Steve Bannon’s Capitol Hill flophouse, snorting coke off his desk at 3 AM.
Ken
@Jinchi: He’s probably lucky his co-conspirators chickened out. I can easily imagine that boat sailing back into port, the reporter at the helm, and when O’Keefe’s team asks where he is, she says “No idea what you’re talking about. I was out there alone.”
Sandia Blanca
@KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager)): Same here. It’s precisely because of that aspect of your character, Betty Cracker, that we all love your writing so much!
eversor
@Jinchi:
He’s stupid enough he might have thought he could pull off a honey pot opperation forgetting the fact that he’s fucking ugly.
He looks like a ferret fucked a rat and yet some how managed to come out doughy and face pudgy.
brantl
This couldn’t have happened to a slimier near protozoan, than O’Keefe. What a shitweasel.
Ken
For those who are wondering how TFG’s legal team addressed the judge’s order regarding their Tuesday… paper thing requesting a “special master”, Mike Dunford has a twitter summary.
You will probably be unsurprised to hear the answer is “not very well”. And that’s the kind answer that avoids words like “incompetent” and “pathetic”.
HinTN
@CaseyL: I think of Sarah, Proud & Tall every now and then. Fine writing, indeed. Not to diminish Ms Cracker’s cracking prose, of course.
lollipopguild
@Ken: “he shot himself in the head seven times. Worst case of suicide I’ve ever seen.”
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@WaterGirl: Excellent.
Rand Careaga
@HinTN: Does anyone know what became of Sarah the tall and proud?
HinTN
@Rand Careaga: I cannot remember. Went to spend more time with the family…?
HinTN
@Rand Careaga: I cannot remember. Went to spend more time with the family…?
Low Key Swagger
I was about to say he has the most punchable face I’ve ever seen, but then I started thinking about Rand Paul and that guy who followed AOC around and now I can’t decide.
HinTN
Ok, twice I’ve hit post to reply to a content and been transported to the top of the thread with the comment/reply not posting…?
Ivan X
@CaseyL: “her invective is inventive.” I hope you’re an irl writer yourself!
Warren Lorente
@Ken: Shot himself in the back of the head. Twice.
lowtechcyclist
This was really a huge loss. And quite frankly, that defensive crouch – not just on this matter but pretty much across the board – has been my main source of frustration with the Democratic Party across the decades. I used to frequently refer to it as the Scared Rabbit Party, and I had no shortage of reasons to do so.
The Democrats – finally, some way, somehow – seem to have very recently put this behind them. I can’t tell you how much hope that gives me.
Ken
@lowtechcyclist: The Democrats do seem to be taking on some of the characteristics of the “daddy party”, while still holding on to the “mommy party”.
It helps that the Republicans are becoming the “crazy ranting uncle party”.
HinTN
@Rand Careaga: I cannot remember.
206inKY
This post is a tour de force of spiteful writing. That second paragraph should be copy-and-pasted directly into his future obituary so that 4-5 decades from now, the young ones who read it will understand his true historical significance as an asshole.
jeffreyw
Has anyone seen her in the same room as Tony Jay?
Another Scott
@Rand Careaga: Made me look…
OMG!
Wayback Machine (from April 2011):
That explains so much!!
(It looks like the WaybackMachine captures of her blog end in June 2013. I know she was posting here until 2017.)
I hope that S,P&T is having the best life in whatever plane of existence she’s in and appreciate the gems she shared with us here at B-J.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chris Johnson
@eversor: Trump remains an asset as long as he can further motivate a crowd of domestic terrorists to attack the USA, as he’s been doing this whole time.
When he becomes more able to do this as a martyr, Putin will kill him… if Putin can. I don’t believe the government was protecting Epstein that hard, and I think Epstein had been working for Putin alongside Trump and got killed when he turned from an asset to a liability. Trump absolutely could turn from an asset to a liability, but if the USA handles it right he might not be as easy for Putin to kill.
But another reason he’s still running around and not dead is, he is still able to motivate domestic terrorists. When him alive becomes less able to do that, than him dead as a martyr, that’s when the crosshairs will go on him.
Layer8Problem
@Another Scott: I need a cigarette after that one.
HinTN
@Another Scott: Mercy, the story of hiding behind the potted plants in JFK had me in stitches. Thanks for the brief refresher on her stylings.
eversor
@Chris Johnson:
For the “if” there. Your security depends on both your own judgement and listening to the professionals around you. Trump has shown no ability or even desire to do either. Nobody can protect you from yourself.
Dan B
@Ken: A client who made his millions branding repeated, “Democrats are wimps.” He is a liberal but disappointed in the Dems image. Now it appears that a young woman who did comms and web for the governor of New Jersey has energized and redirected the social media presence of the White House comms department. Fetterman, Beto, and several others are openly contrasting the GQP’s meanness with their programs to help the average person. They’re rebranding Dems as the party fighting for the country’s citizens and the GQP as despising and robbing regular communities and average citizens.
eversor
@Dan B:
She’s amazing, the best was her “Your mom” response.
Bighorn Ordovician Dolomite
I rarely comment (it usually seems others have already said what was going to say) but I just really want to go on record about just how happy this news makes me.
WaterGirl
@phdesmond: You would be the one to know! :-)
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: It really is still a bit too long, but I sneaked it in anyway. :-)
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: You know that Sarah P&T was neither old nor female, right?
Another Scott
@WaterGirl:
But, but, she posted a picture telling us she was a fictional “old lady with impulse control issues and a pottymouth”!
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: You left out the word “fictional”! :-)
edit: Now that makes me wonder which of the people was really her. Maybe the bartender?
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Highlight the full linky.
White on white is tricky. ;-)
(I figured s/he was the person second from the right at the bar, but it was just a guess.)
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I didn’t think the space was long enough for the word “fictional” and I was apparently too lazy to highlight and find out. :-)
I thought Sarah P&T was a guy, but I guess we’ll never know.
Whatever happened to [somebody] in my bones. ??
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: dance around in your bones
Yes, many absent friends…
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Yes! Dance around in your bones!
I do miss her, she is/was a really special person.
Paul in KY
@Baud: I would buy a ticket!
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Not the guards or staff or any kind of official beatdown. Just hoping he snots off to the wrong person & gets stomped once or twice. Then the stomper should be disciplined for that. All quite legal…