Even the Gold-Flocked Calf’s hometown paper is dropping Trump-Epstein sleaze stories:
For nearly 15 years, Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein socialized in New York and Florida before a falling out that preceded Epstein’s first arrest. What seemed to draw them together, according to those who knew them at the time, was a common interest in hitting on — and competing for — young women.
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) July 19, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Desperate to reassert control over the media narrative, Trump keeps fondling his patented string of old grievance beads (Russia Russia Russia!) like an obnoxious rosary. That’s not working, but the Russian asset he put in charge of the U.S. intel establishment did conjure a SQUIRREL! for MAGA “influencers” to chase:
July 19 (UPI) — The Obama administration should be investigated for abuse of power to smear President Donald Trump in 2016, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard said on Friday.
Gabbard announced the release of files and a memo related to claims of Russia’s alleged attempt to disrupt the 2016 elections to help Trump win the presidency over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“There was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of government,” Gabbard said in a news release on Friday.
“Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the president from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people,” Gabbard said…
Gabbard said she is forwarding relevant materials to the Department of Justice for possible legal action.
The accusations are lame even by MAGA’s subterranean standards. Gabbard absurdly claims that Russia didn’t try to influence the 2016 election at all. She conflates a statement from her DNI predecessor James Clapper that there was no evidence of a Russian cyberattack that altered election results as an admission that the Kremlin hadn’t taken any action to influence the outcome on Trump’s behalf.
That’s a steaming load of horse shit, even according to Republicans now disgracing themselves in the Trump 2.0 administration. In 2020, a Republican-led Senate panel headed by Marco Rubio (R-FL) unanimously concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump. Their report also contained some details that might prove inconvenient for the purpose of effecting a narrative shift (NYT):
According to the report, Mr. Trump met a former Miss Moscow at a party during one trip in 1996. After the party, a Trump associate told others he had seen Mr. Trump with the woman on multiple occasions and that they “might have had a brief romantic relationship.”
The report also raised the possibility that, during that trip, Mr. Trump spent the night with two young women who joined him the next morning at a business meeting with the mayor of Moscow.
That would have been around the same time Trump was hanging out with Epstein. Whoopsie.
Open thread!
sab
Deleted. Wrong thread. Sigh.
Baud
Gabbard exonerating Russia is about as credible as Putin exonerating Russia.
Betty Cracker
@sab: I didn’t know there was a Stepmother’s Day. I have a stepmother (since I was 12 or so) whom I’m very fond of — maybe I should give her a plant! I hope your plant persists!
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Right? I think it’s telling that even our profoundly broken political media isn’t taking the bait. Breitbart and Gateway Pundit are on it. That’s about it.
p.a.
Hah! By accident I reposted a “tRump bullshit on Russia” fbook post on a fbook page on local food instead of my page, couldn’t delete it myself, contacted the admin to delete it, and now I’m blocked from the food site: admin is a MAGAt!😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
It wasn’t even hard anti-tRump, just an analysis like “what exactly are we doing?”
Baud
@p.a.:
Haha. Just tell them that post was Obama’s fault. They’ll let you back on
ETA: I don’t use Facebook. It’s wild that you can delete your own posts.
mrmoshpotato
Adorable NYT, at least 10 years too late.
When the orange, racist, rapist shitstain said Mexico was sending rapists to the US, well, I don’t think you’re too stupid to see where I’m going with this.
Betty Cracker
It’s so freaking hot already, and the sun isn’t even up yet. 97% humidity!
Later, Bill and I are meeting his mom in an oppressively hot parking lot at a nearby antiques mall to schlep a desk to her booth. She’s 86 and in excellent health and sharp as a tack.
But her age falsely gives her the impression that her son and I are young. Goddamnit, we are not!
Old people! Stop asking somewhat less old people to move heavy objects! Thank you for your attention to this matter!
mrmoshpotato
@p.a.: Well, at least, you know what you did!
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker:
Ole, ole, ole, ole
Ole, ole, ole, ole
Ole, ole, ole, ole
Ole, ole, ole, ole
Me mind on fire
Me soul on fire, feeling hot, hot, hot
Princess
I said in the dead thread below that I think Murdoch and I guess NYT too think they’ve found their issue to use to leash Trump for the money boys, whether so he’ll keep Powell, or calm down with tariffs or something else. So far there hasn’t been really any new news, just some deals about things we knew all along that they didn’t feel pressed to cover when he was running for election. But I think the doodle was a shot across the bow that they have more and worse and might use it.
My hunch about the whole Epstein thing is it’s more about blackmail than sex from beginning to end. What favors did Epstein get for hiding the sex secrets of these powerful men? Who did Prince Andrew introduce him to? Etc. I don’t think we’ll ever know.
mrmoshpotato
Sorry, Shitter video link via reddit.
Phillies debut “Coldplay Kiss Cam”
Baud
MN Dems could lose their majority with the assassinations and this.
Princess
As for the Gabbard thing, I’ve read about it in a couple of places now and I can’t follow the claims it’s making. Too convoluted to have legs I think.
BellyCat
FTFNYT test marketing a new treat for the face eating leopard market. But will the face eating leopards eat the new face eating leopard treat before they bring back the old tried and true face eating leopard treats, with gusto?
Probably best to not hold one’s breath.
p.a.
@Princess: They had their chance- twice- in drumph 1.
Betty
I don’t have time to read all of this right now, but I had to stop and say Gold-Flocked Calf is a fantastic sobriquet for our boy.
Deputinize America
Jesus – this is like one of those K-Tel “Greatest Hits” records that consists of performers doing g covers of the original Greatest Hits.
Birdie
@mrmoshpotato: Interestingly, it doesn’t even seem like the NYT reporters were saving this for the book deal. It’s just a decades-long, old-fashioned cover up, apparently so that they could spend more time on things that really matter like emails and old.
Remind me of the difference between the NYT and the National Enquirer again?
p.a.
Faux respectability.
Jeffg166
I stopped putting cat food out for the two cats who hang around my garden. They aren’t eating it because is it too hot to eat anything. The birds have taken to eat it instead which I find kind of creepy.
Snarki, child of Loki
About FTFNYT, I wonder if Sulzberger had “connections” with Epstein, and if Trump knew about it and let Sulzberger know that he knew.
Would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?
Betty
@Betty Cracker: That bit about old people is so true. Although I am old at 76, my 91 year old husband can’t accept that I’m too old to meet his demands. Once at the hospital when he was insisting I stay with him after midnight, the doctor told him, “Your wife isn’t a spring chicken anymore. You might think she is, but she isn’t.” Unfortunately, that didn’t do anything to convince him. And so it goes.
Baud
@p.a.:
Liberal dollars.
lowtechcyclist
@mrmoshpotato:
This. If there was anything in that NYT story that was new and worth noting, I sure missed it.
I think they’re trying to have it both ways, trying to pretend to us that they’re running with the Epstein story, while not actually saying anything problematic about Trump.
Viva BrisVegas
The only thing that was new to me was that Epstein was fingered for his crimes almost immediately after he fell out with Trump.
So who dropped a dime on Epstein? Guess who. I wonder if Maxwell has worked this out yet.
patrick II
Netflix’s “Untamed” has one of the greatest opening scenes I have ever seen.
Baud
Finally some accountability
Dorothy A. Winsor
@mrmoshpotato: Do we know what the Trump/Epstein “falling out” was about?
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: Just saw a comment: “Coldplay creates 4 new singles at one concert.”
mappy!
@Baud:
It’s fifteen minutes of accountability fame followed by a lifetime of absolution (purchased at the going rate)…
Viva BrisVegas
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Real Estate. Epstein bid up a property that Trump wanted.
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
Oof. Did you see what they did at the Phillies game?
catclub
also all the 2016 Republicans.
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: Googled, and I have now! Ha!
catclub
@Princess:
You might think that. But Qanon conspiracies are FAR more convoluted and unlikely. the rubes love em.
lowtechcyclist
Abuse of power? That isn’t even a crime! What are they going to do about it – ask Congress to impeach him? (‘Abuse of power’ was one of the articles of impeachment against Nixon in 1974. Passed the Judiciary Committee 28-10, getting seven GOP votes.)
I guess they could ensure that Obama never holds Federal office again. 😁
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
‘Seemingly’? Wonder what it would take for them to be certain of it!
The Audacity of Krope
It is their convoluted nature that makes the conspiracy wackos believe. How else will they hide these things from us. Surely, we, as a society, aren’t just ignoring obvious crime right in front of our face, no. The simple and obvious is just a trick.
Shalimar
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The story they put out is that Trump found out Epstein was recruiting underage girls from Mar-A-Lago and banned him. That can’t possibly be true since Trump had participated in these parties for over a decade and knew what Epstein was doing.
My guess is they didn’t actually fall out, Trump just stopped seeing Epstein during the brief prison and house arrest time and had lost most interest in sex by the time it ended. I could be mistakenly remembering, but my impression is that pretty much all of Trump’s criminal behavior with women was pre-2010.
charluckles
It’s national ice cream day. Act accordingly.
Shalimar
@Princess: I don’t follow the Wall Street Journal, but the New York Times has been running these investigative stories about Trump 2-5 times a year for more than a decade now. They disappear from conversation because there is never any follow-up. They never get the 40-stories-in-the-same-week treatment. I will believe they have changed and are actually going after Trump when the stories continue for another few weeks.
catclub
@Shalimar: agreed
Mai Naem mobile
I remember Richard Branson walking out of a meeting with trump during the 2016 transition and he seemed kind of shocked that Trump was just all about revenge for all the ‘slights’ he’s dealt with in his life. Trump’s actions against Columbia are supposed to be based on some real estate deal as well. Follows that he’d break up with Epstein over real estate.
Nettoyeur
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Competing on a rea estate bid.
Scout211
Oh noes! The Trump-Epstein story has broken the MAGA bot network.
So now we know that this story has legs. The AI generated MAGA bot network is in disarray!
Suzanne
@Princess:
My thought has been that even if we ever see “the list”, it’s going to just be basically an address book of famous people who like to pal around with other famous people (so a lot of people). And — God, I hope — it will be only a small percentage of those famous people who actually engaged in criminal behavior. But, as you say, there’s reputational threat there, just by being in the book.
Bupalos
@Scout211: Also could be that it dwells in muskworld and Elmo is serving his revenge luke-warm.
Baud
@Scout211:
Proof that Dems are behind this!
oldster
“….with the objective of trying to usurp the president from fulfilling the mandate….”
That’s not how “usurp “ works. You don’t usurp someone from something.
I know the illiteracy is not the worst part. But is still annoying.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Viva BrisVegas: @Shalimar: @Nettoyeur: Thanks
Baud
@charluckles:
All hail Biden.
Betty Cracker
@Scout211: The existence of a MAGA bot network that uses AI to maintain the morale of the rubes should be a scandal in its own right. I mean, aren’t the red-pilled shitposters always meeping about shadowy elites controlling the discourse? The calls are coming from inside the house, morons!
Snarki, child of Loki
A good rule of thumb for investigating GOP-related scandals: “follow the money”.
The Audacity of Krope
MAGA’s most independent and creative thought leaders….
Princess
@catclub: QAnon conspiracies are batshit but they’re easy to follow and understand . This one is confusing.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:
My first laugh out loud of the morning. Thank you for that.
Denali5
Somewhere I saw that the CF was heavily involved financially in the pedophile ring. Always follow the money.
The Audacity of Krope
Dems and Dem-affiliated law enforcement planted stories in the media to influence voters away from Trump so he couldn’t enact the mandate he hadn’t gotten yet. Aside from the causality problems, it’s pretty straightforward.
Princess
@Suzanne: we’ve had his address book for years. I’ve seen it. It’s online and it’s just what you describe. The real meat is in the thousands of transactions Sen Wyden is trying to tracking down. Worth 1.5 billion dollars to only one bank, and there’s more. Epstein didn’t make that from supplying teenage sex to pedophiles. That’s what they’re trying to hide.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I just don’t get the uproar over this. Isn’t this just an inappropriate workplace romance that surely happens a hundred times every minute, or every second, in the US and around the world?
The Audacity of Krope
@WaterGirl: I’m with you, I don’t think it’s a job’s business what you do when you leave the office. But many workplaces do have rules about fraternization and the HR person, who would be the one enforcing such rules, was one of the cuddlers.
WaterGirl
@Denali5: What is CF again?
Sure Lurkalot
@Baud:
Seemingly?
Hmmm, maybe the story should have been she was choking and he was administering the Heimlich maneuver. Never underestimate the gullibility of the people, flooding the zone with BS has worked for our dear leader time and time again.
MazeDancer
Loving the almost “But Her Emails” treatment on Mango Pedo.
Not quite as loud, because half of MAGA media not on board. Yet.
Vance going to Montana to visit Rupert and Lachlan before WSJ dropped the letter hammer seems odd. Wonder if they had any chats about what happens next.
Don’t actually know how Peter Theil and the Murdochs get along. Perhaps, we’ll find out.
Chief Oshkosh
@Betty Cracker: Datum 11,345,631,298 supporting the hypothesis that critical thinking is a learned, perishable skill.
BellyCat
Nominated.
Betty Cracker
@Princess: The part of the story that puzzles me: why did Bill Barr’s father hire Epstein as a teacher at a fancy private school even though Epstein didn’t have a bachelor’s degree? Why were all these rich chuds letting him manage their assets even though he wasn’t particularly qualified for that work? There’s a lot that doesn’t add up.
Betty Cracker
@MazeDancer: Murdoch wants a Republican POTUS who will reliably serve the plutocrats, and Trump mostly does that, but he’s dumb and reckless in ways that threaten business.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Most don’t get caught in such a public way.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
When I win the lottery, I’m creating a Dem bot network. Our lack of one is the real scandal.
Scout211
@WaterGirl: @The Audacity of Krope:
IMHO it’s not the workplace affair but the ham handed way they tried to avoid the spotlight that produced countless memes that went viral. And there may be judgments about the affair itself but it was their reaction to the kiss cam that brought the attention to the affair.
If they hadn’t tried to hide when the camera was spotlighting them, it would have been just a couple at a concert in an embrace. No one beyond the concert-goers would have seen them. And Chris Martin wouldn’t have suggested that they were having an affair.
They made themselves into a viral meme and that’s why they are getting so much media exposure.
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: Why do you need to win the lottery? Sounds like a job for one basement dweller.
The Audacity of Krope
@Scout211: Why am I suddenly reminded of Gretchen Whitmer at the White House?
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
I don’t know how to code, so I don’t know what’s involved in making and deploying an effective bot network.
MattF
@charluckles: OK, OK, OK… since you insist. There’s a local Jeni’s, I’ll drag myself there.
Baud
@Scout211:
The real reason he deserved to be fired.
Scout211
Exactly!
Josie
@Jeffg166:
I used to put dry cat food out on the covered patio for the feral cats in the neighborhood. To my surprise the local woodpeckers and kiskadee flycatchers enjoyed it as much as the cats.
Scout211
Yes, otherwise the workplace affair would have been quietly handled by the HR director.
Oh, wait . . .
different-church-lady
So Tulsi knew what the will of the American people was months before the election? Interesting.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Oh, I bet there’s a lot of others…
MazeDancer
@Betty Cracker: Another really rich guy recommended Epstein. Can’t find the name right now.
When they found out he lied about his credentials, they just chalked it up to “get up and go” spirit.
Baud
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: Seems to me the most expensive part would be getting the computing power to operate it. The free solution would to offer internet randos fun/useful applications that would run a single bot or two in the background. The user might experience a little slowdown, but few would question it. The hardest procedural step seems like it would probably be setting up all the accounts.
I never took to coding, myself, I found it tedious. But I have a fair understanding of the toolset. I think my peak achievements were making the most functional pong and blackjack games in class.
different-church-lady
@Scout211: I bet she was handling it…
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
Pretty cool.
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: Isn’t it? I still talk about it obsessively like being 4th grade valedictorian or that time my uncle taught at MIT.
stinger
@WaterGirl:
I could oh so easily be wrong, but I understand that both participants are married. Hence the “Coldplay created four new singles” joke.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
It’s your version of scoring four touchdowns in a single game. #AlBundy
Baud
@stinger:
Yes. Thanks for pointing that out. I see now that factoid was missing from WG’s question.
p.a.
@Betty Cracker:
@MazeDancer:
Without a doubt. Old white boy network.
schrodingers_cat
Two of the worst appointees of T2.0 come from the Bernie World, Kennedy and Gabbard. Coincidence?
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: LMAO, I had forgotten about that. I was thinking of a different misogynist slob.
JWR
@WaterGirl:
Betty’s “Thank you for your attention to this matter!” was what really got me. ;)
Shalimar
@schrodingers_cat: Probably. But there are people in Bernie World far worse than those two, so we will see if any of them end up in Trump’s orbit too.
Uncle Cosmo
Also works for investigating the activities of (just off the top of my head) Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Health Care, generic bazillionaires, FIFA, NFL, MLB, and the Roman Catholic Church. IOW a rule worth remembering
The Audacity of Krope
@schrodingers_cat: I’ll give you Gabbard, but I’m not aware of any Kennedy/Sanders connection. Kennedy was a crank all on his own years before most people had heard of Sanders.
Sure Lurkalot
@schrodingers_cat:
Bernie’s plan all along to get Trump in the White House so he’d appoint his acolytes RFK Jr and Tulsi to his cabinet to bring about the glorious socialist revolution!
The Audacity of Krope
@Sure Lurkalot: Well, it may yet succeed in burning down the financial sector. We should salt the earth instead of rebuilding them this time.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I think it all adds up to blackmail. And the rot runs deep in the Republican party, though I’m sure there must be some Democrats in the mix, too.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Okay, there’s that.
First rule: don’t make your boss look bad.
Corollary: don’t make your company look bad.
sab
@Betty Cracker: I love Stepmother’s Day because the usual venues for breakfast, lunch or dinner are not so crowded that day. Mother’s Day is a zoo.
My stepdaughter’s actual mother died when she was 12, soon after my husband adopted her. She wants to celebrate real Mother’s Day every year, but fortunately her work usually prevents that so we keep on with Stepmother’s Day. She is a mother herself, so I think she should do Mother’s Day as a mom, and do Stepmother’s Day with her brothers as another stepchild with me and her dad
Stepmothers’ Day is the Sunday after Mother’s Day.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, yet more evidence we continue to be in the stupidest timeline:
Vibe coding tool goes rogue during a code freeze and shutdown and deletes developers entire database. 😱 🤣
https://x.com/jasonlk/status/194606956
[ groucho-roll-eyes.gif ]
Best wishes,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: I haven’t actually seen the video – I didn’t know all of that.
WaterGirl
@The Audacity of Krope: ??
WaterGirl
@MattF: OMG, a local Jeni’s retail store?
Betty
@Viva BrisVegas: Long-standing theory that Trump was protected by the FBI in New York because he was a snitch. Not just Putin’s puppet?
Gretchen
@Betty Cracker: Barr’s father wrote a science fiction book about oligarchs who were child sex traffickers. Maybe Epstein was supplying even then.
WaterGirl
@stinger: Yeah, I thought that joke was pretty funny.
I didn’t explicitly say it, but suspect a large portion of the inappropriate workplace relationships involve otherwise-married participants.
WaterGirl
@JWR: Yeah, I was already snickering, but when I got to that part, it turned into laugh out loud.
sab
That gilded table in the oval office with the big gold eagle. Has that always been in the oval office and we didn’t notice in otherwise tasteful surroundings? Or did they drag it up from a basement somewhere? Or did he have them spraypaint an otherwise nice antique table? Inquring minds dread to know.
The Audacity of Krope
@WaterGirl: Gretchen Whitmer was recently at the White House working with Trump on…I don’t know, something. At some point the cameras went on and she hid herself behind some manila folders she was holding, as though she didn’t want to be seen there for some reason.
sab
@Betty Cracker: So true. My dad died last year at 99. Years of no exercise due to elder care helped me to get very plump. Just before he died my dad asked me if I was pregnant (at age 70.)
p.a.
@Betty: That seems on brand: 1) it would protect him 2) it would make him feel big, important.
MattF
@WaterGirl: Yup. About a block from my front door. Doesn’t open until 12, though.
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: Fake Dick Nixon mentioned Whitlam.
Made me look… PaleyCenter.org:
Sen. Wyden is right to follow the money. There’s seemingly something big to cause Rupert to jump in like this now. Maybe something related to the continuing family and legal and potential regulatory battles about Rupert’s “irrevocable” trust??.
[ MJ-eating-popcorn.gif ]
Best wishes,
Scott.
Gvg
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think Kennedy comes from Bernie.
I am sure Bernie’s campaign was seeded with Russian assets, as probably every non mainstream candidates is since the cold war just in case they can make something of it. Gabbard was clearly raised in a Russian biased world. I don’t know that it’s Bernie’s fault. I don’t recall him putting her into any position of trust or responsibility himself. He didn’t disavow her support true. His judgment is part of why he wasn’t a good choice for us and guess what, democrats agreed.
Instead of comments about Bernie, I think it would be better to keep repeating info to the left about her connections to Russia and other past attempts and ongoing attempts to influence us plus why Russia still is bad even while our government is stinking. Also it wasn’t bad under Biden, not voting is a bad choice etc.
lowtechcyclist
Sure, let’s deport abused and abandoned children. Why not? 😡😡😡
miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article309334350.html#storylink=cpy
Denali5
@WaterGirl: Convicted felon
Baud
Oh AI, never change.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Phys.org:
The more we learn, the more there is to learn.
Best wishes,
Scott.
karen gail
People want to ignore that the US is and has always been a country with a rape culture; the “founding fathers” were slave owners and managed to “create” offspring with slaves. Those women had no choice, that means rape.
It is also a sidenote or under reported part of colonization; those children of mixed blood often had special class and name so that there was no doubt that they were children of conquerors and conquered.
Rape is about dominance and humiliation; we say that an army “rapes, pillages and burns” the lands and people they conquer, rape the people, rape the land.
Denali5
@
@WaterGirl: I sort of like MP Mango Pedo better.
wenchacha
JWR
@Denali5: Yep, “Mango Pedo” really says it all.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@lowtechcyclist: a change in the libel laws. The guy is a private individual, they could be sued for libel if they print something defamatory and there hasn’t been some kind of legal determination that it’s a true fact.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
National Enquirer is better as sourcing their stories.
WTFGhost
@sab: You should have just changed it to “FIRST!!!” :-).
(I’m kidding, but, it’s been forever since I’ve seen that, so it seemed funny.)
@Betty Cracker: Okay, but, when the plant starts demanding to eat people, DON’T FEED THE PLANT! You’ve seen the musical version, right? Apparently some “religious” people said that “people eating plants” were “placed here by GOD” and they got my kindergarten to change all the rules about teaching about them.
They even taught the lesson about Mr. Hand Grenade in the first grade, and OMG, were there some unsightly accidents, that went undiscovered during fingerpainting time, and so now, they have the warning: “Once you pull the pin, on Mr. Hand Grenade, He is no longer your friend!”
See? You really can learn all you need to life in kindergarten.
@Betty Cracker: Funny fact: before I knew I had CFS, I used to help people move frequently, so, talk about moving heavy objects! I never realized you’re not supposed to feel terrible for two days after exercise. I just figured other people had gotten more overall fitness than I’d achieved.
@Birdie: The Enquirer doesn’t have a *separate* gossip page, I believe. (NB: the Enquirer doesn’t deal with batboy and space aliens – they tend to feature real people. Look for next weeks issue to be either a disgusting sleaze-line on Trump, or to have some article fellating him, whichever they think will sell more copies.)
@Jeffg166: Oh, don’t be silly, watch a movie or something! There’s a classic Hitchcock movie coming on….
chemiclord
@Suzanne:
That’s my big suspicion too. The “list” is more his network of connections rather than his “clients” specifically. There’s been quite a bit of it that’s already been leaked. If there was anything particularly salacious, it’d already be out in the ether by now.
I honestly believe Trump is more terrified of what he thinks is in that list rather than what is actually there.
narya
@Betty Cracker: I’ve guessed that Epstein had something on some of them–and it wouldn’t take many. And what Epstein got in return wasn’t this position or that job, it was access to other people he might be able to exploit. It’s sort of leverage–for someone who wasn’t paying close attention, oh, That Guy, who I don’t know well but think is smart, thinks Epstein is okay, so I’ll go along (to a dinner, on a plane, whatever). That would give Epstein an opportunity to then leverage the new person, either by trafficking young women to that person or maybe just by getting access to a whole other network of people. My guess is that Epstein benefited either way and that not nearly everyone was interested in the trafficked women. Didn’t matter. The trafficking was for his own sick benefit; if it also worked to nab others, great.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud: Yes, pretty lame faking an affair with the HR Director, just to get out of being labeled a Coldplay fan.
Another Scott
I’m not a New Yorker, and I’m a Democrat who’s already on-side, but man, this Mamdani guy knows how to make campaign videos, it seems to me.
Dick Nixon points us to Mamdani’s video from Uganda visiting family.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@lowtechcyclist:
Obama was president, so even if true, by their own logic it wasn’t illegal.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Princess: Sounds like drugs. It would fit that if he was pimping teenage girls he would be selling his clients drugs.
My father has a story that when he worked at United Airlines one of the members of the Board of Directors was rumored to use the airline to smuggle drugs.
Sure Lurkalot
May the real Tulsi please stand up.
Kathleen
@MazeDancer: Expect a spate of articles about JD Vance being a “very serious person”. To me the juxtaposition of the sudden “medical report”, right wing owned WSJ hit piece followed by “liberal fake news” NYT article signals an “Unlike Joe Biden, President Trump knows when it’s time to step down for the good of the country” announcement.
Kathleen
@MattF: We have one in Cincy also!
Another Scott
@Princess: Made me look.
ICIJ.org – Jeffrey Epstein’s offshore fortune traced to Paradise Papers
It’s funny (not funny) that the Panama Papers were a story for a day or few and then were just lost to the aether.
Hmm…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Uncle Cosmo:
Follow the money is I’d guess about a 97% part of many/most criminal or political – hell any irrational human interaction. As the old saying goes, money makes the world go round. Long ago one could use objects other than currency, gold for example, but with currency replacing solid, sensible objects as the payment basis for the vast majority of transactions legal or illegal quite a few decades ago, currency is it. It is easier to store/hide, it is usable in most any transaction, and it is universally accepted.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: Nope.
Anyway
@Gvg: good comment. Tulsi was a Democrat due to not being able to get elected from HI as a RThug. It was her way of getting into the political spotlight, she was never a Dem.
WTFGhost
@charluckles: Just so long as I don’t have to make any. I did that this week already. (No wonder I’m so tired!)
@Suzanne: Insofar as there is a “book” it’s pretty innocuous. There’s so much chaff – assistants and so forth – that there’s no way to point a smoking gun at anyone. So, sure, Trump is in the book, but, so are some M-A-L people (what FUN initials), golf club people, etc.. If Epstein had a “blackmail folder” it was either in his head, or kept encrypted. There *is* a lawsuit contending Trump raped a 13 year old sex slave controlled by Epstein, but it was settled.
@Betty Cracker: Agreed, but I’m sure they will convince themselves the botnets were just to remind themselves of the truth.
@Princess: All they need to know is, their hero Gabbard is saying Trump was cheated by the evil dems. But you’re right – it might not have legs. I think it will just rewarm the hearts of evildoers everywhere, like adding another couple of pieces of dung to the firepit.
@The Audacity of Krope: I think Baud might be an attorney and they have fears of getting their hands dirty doing IT work. They might need to come before equity, or something, which sounds like something that would dirty your hands *anyway*, doesn’t it?
@The Audacity of Krope: Um… botnets don’t require a lot of computing power to run, they are networks of bot machines that have had their processing power absconded with by viruses/trojans/etc.. You need botnets, because most other methods of having lots of IP addresses will quickly be discovered by anti-DDS software. If you manage to infect 10,000, now you have a functioning botnet.
You do need to hire some cheap labor to make a bunch of accounts, but if you can get onto the dark web, it supposed to be relatively easy to talk to a criminal (or a cop trying to entrap you, but, hey, “dark net”).
JWR
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Thank you for saying that so’s I didn’t have to. ;) There’s just something very weird about that band, the suggestive of something “vibe”, perhaps? Or maybe they’re an AI creation, reaching down for that elusive lowest common denominator involved in songwriting for the masses, and where’s the creativity in that?
Mr. Bemused Senior
To me the international industry devoted to hiding assets is at the root of most of the world’s problems. This money funds terrorism, supports dictators and crime syndicates, robs societies of taxes and justifies cynicism about the rule of law. It is evil.
Baud
Damn. Everyone is in on the meme now.
Anyway
@Kathleen: Miller and the P25 people are worse imo. Not giving Kennedy a pass – he didn’t come from Bernie’s orbit. He had a following of his own.
Anyway
When did HR turn into Chief People Officer – new one to me
Elizabelle
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Not to mention that the ultrawealthy buy themselves the government, and then enjoy legislation crafted in their favor, meant to keep them at the top of the pile, hoovering up everything they can.
It was very interesting that we did not hear much more about the Panama Papers. Or Cambridge Analytica.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, BlueVirginia.US – Beto visits Glen Allen, VA.
Video and transcript.
Worth a click.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Anyway
yep. They hate transparency and accountability of every kind and go to great lengths to prevent elected governments (that they didn’t install) from being successful.
Edited for clarity
The Audacity of Krope
@WTFGhost: Ah, that seems to make sense. I knew the tendency was to distribute the bots hidden in malware, I hadn’t considered that it was a matter of the location of these accounts.
Question: If someone were to try to do that on a single local computer, would several VPN connections achieve that? I ask with no particular intent to do anything, just for edification purposes.
chemiclord
@Baud: Much like a Dem propaganda network, a Dem bot network wouldn’t work, and probably wouldn’t even be worth the attempt. We simply don’t react to those tools the way Republican voters do.
karen gail
@sab: I’ve noticed that each time we see a interview with foreign dignitary in front of fireplace in Oval Office there seems to be more and more gold in the shot. Cheap shinny gold, not sure about the eagle but doesn’t the podium from Mar-lego have an eagle on it? I know orange one has made a big deal about eagles and flags (remember him with live eagle?); not sure why he makes big deal out of eagles unless it is something he saw about eagle as a symbol from Roman Empire or Germany.
The Oval office was once a seat of dignity and honor now has become a tacky dictators wet dream.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@The Audacity of Krope: I’m just speculating, but a legit VPN supplier probably monitors for abuse and shuts down accounts used to launch attacks. It’s an obvious hazard.
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat:
LOL. Of course not.
The Audacity of Krope
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Stands to reason.
Fair Economist
@chemiclord:
I wish that were true, but it’s not. I know quite a few Dems and Dem-leaners who fell for the anti-Hillary propaganda, and while I didn’t meet any in person, I argued online with quite a few pushing anti-Harris propaganda. Maybe *they* were all bots, but I don’t think so.
FelonyGovt
@different-church-lady: I was at the California Democratic Convention in 2019, and Tulsi was one of the prospective Democratic Presidential nominee speakers. Interesting that she’s now alleging nefarious actions by the Democrats back in 2016. What a snake.
Sure Lurkalot
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
The money also funds human trafficking.
It is the true deep state and has successfully convinced rubes across the world that it is their governments they have to fear.
WaterGirl
@The Audacity of Krope: I had forgotten about that!
karen gail
For all those who have noticed that the Oval Office get more “gold” between each broadcast meeting.
Trump’s gilded Oval Office: six months of gold in the White House
WaterGirl
@MattF: Have some Darkest Chocolate for me!
The Audacity of Krope
@Fair Economist: Not to dispute your claim in particular, but I have run into issues where people can’t distinguish propaganda from legitimate criticism made in good faith.
WaterGirl
@Denali5: Ah, thank you.
WTFGhost
@The Audacity of Krope: Possibly, but, one problem would be that the VPNs own IP addresses would be at risk in that situation. “No offense, VPN provider, but IP X.X.X.X is throwing a lot of bot-like stuff.” You might be able to “spiderweb” it with a small network of computers, each opening several different VPN connections, but, you’d still end up broadcasting from a limited set of IPs. I’m not sure if they’d catch you quickly, but, I think they’d catch you.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@karen gail: before the 2016 election I recall hearing someone’s comment about Trump,” everything is gold plated, nothing is solid gold.”
The Audacity of Krope
@WTFGhost: Noted. Now back to cultivating ideas of how to actually inform the public better instead of leading them astray.
The Audacity of Krope
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Image is everything.
WTFGhost
So, now we know the official excuse for him being a spotlight hog during the trophy lift. He felt since he was presenting “his” trophy, he should share the spotlight.
What an effing infant.
Fair Economist
@The Audacity of Krope: And that’s precisely the problem (or opportunity). Some Dems swimming in a sea of propaganda will fall for it, even if it’s blatantly ridiculous like the anti-Hillary stuff. So a pro-Dem bot/propaganda network would also successfully influence people, likely more as it would be pushing basically true claims.
The Audacity of Krope
@Fair Economist: You’re right, but I’m sort of talking of the opposite problem, where people will dismiss legitimate criticism due to the mere existence of propaganda elsewhere.
It doesn’t help that the mainstream media almost exclusively picks up the nonsense propaganda. In Hillary’s case, most of the legitimate criticisms were things that were true, yes, but were true of the entire political class. There’s a status quo to prop up, after all. MSM funding sources depend on it.
catclub
paying someone who does. unless money is also a problem.
WTFGhost
@Fair Economist: well, you bring up a point that I agree with. Sometimes, Democrats refuse to dignify attacks with a response. But sometimes, they should. “No, wait – you’re telling me that Republicans think there’s a cabal of world leaders that drink infant’s blood and rape children? What the eff kind of sick drugs are they taking over there? No, seriously – you don’t get that effed up over pot, or coke, or meth; I’m not sure *bath salts* mess you up this much!”
The Audacity of Krope
Whatever it is, it’s undoubtedly their own supply.
MattF
@WaterGirl: I have about a half-pint left of that. And now I have new pints of Gooey Butter Cake (the customer favorite, according to sales person) and Honey Vanilla. Happy icecream day!
Mr. Bemused Senior
At last! A useful application for LLMs.
trollhattan
NY Times Pitchbot
@nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 14h
Donald Trump, who I do not support, had no more of a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, who I do not support, than he does with Vladimir Putin, who I also do not support.
by Glenn Greenwald
Kathleen
@MattF: She’s got a new Chocolate Cake (I think it’s cake) that is awesome. Also she has the best Black Forest ice cream I’ve ever had but I haven’t seen it in stores.
Citizen Alan
@JWR: If somebody started a rumor that Coldplay never actually existed but was actually an AI-generated hoax, how many people would believe it after a year? Arguably, that story is more plausible than the actual existence of Coldplay.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
People believe what they want to believe.
WTFGhost
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Man, I bet the SCOTUS will be all “SHIT, we didn’t mean to immunize the (expletive deleted) too!”
(I think the scarlet-dripping six will all shout the same nasty word, except for Thomas. I’ll leave it to the imagination whether the group or the singleton used the n-word, or if they just all had one specific expletive for *him*.)
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud: I’ll see it when I believe it.
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: Eh, I’d like to believe we lived in a utopian post-scarcity world. But I don’t. Facts seem to keep getting in the way.
So I watch Star Trek.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
Better than listening to ColdPlay.
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: So is listening to nails on a chalkboard, but I don’t even think that is a fair comparison.
Baud
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
I like that.
WTFGhost
@The Audacity of Krope: Maybe there’s an old submarine crew member who can tell us if huffing massive numbers of farts and stale sweat is *that* dangerous. (Also: do you know recruiting materials for the navy once (and maybe still do!) claim that sub air is “the perfect scientific blend of elements” or somesuch?)
The Audacity of Krope
I didnt know that. That sounds like a very Trumpian superlative, though.
ETA: I know it isn’t literally a superlative. Just in keeping with his assertions anything involving him is “the greatest, perfect, most successful, record breaking, etc.”
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: OMG, Pitchbot having a field day! LOL
different-church-lady
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Ah, I think I see the problem…
different-church-lady
@Citizen Alan: If they were, I think I’d feel better about the whole thing…
WTFGhost
@The Audacity of Krope: I hear you.
different-church-lady
@WTFGhost:
MAGA: “Democrats drink infant’s blood!”
SANE PEOPLE: “I don’t think they do that.”
MAGA: “I know they don’t. I just want to make them deny it!”
DEMOCRATS: “Actually, that’s pretty easy…”
.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JWR: Well Coldplay seems like band whose audience is under 30, and not something two people over 50 would consider a romantic date. I would think investors and the BOD would be thinking “Coldplay, WTF?”
WTFGhost
So: chopped apple, or apple sauce, for apple-walnut oat bran? I’ll have to decide.
Also: Oh, thank god, I found the “full screen” button, so I know what just happened. (It’s the little picture on the end, of poor Gumby, about to be killed on the rack – top-down view. Hit it, and the comment screen goes big and scary. )
different-church-lady
@FelonyGovt: Basically she just realized there were more and easier marks on the other side of the coin. And, of course, the resentment from being rejected by the non-marks.
Jackie
@karen gail:
I saw a clip yesterday or maybe Fri and I thought the exact thing. You can hardly see any of the actual fireplace surround. He has such tacky decorating style – if style even applies.
The Audacity of Krope
@different-church-lady: Then as soon as the denials come, that’s when belief and accusations of coverup follow.
We are a silly people.
The Audacity of Krope
Odd, considering the band, itself, has been around nearly 30 years.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@WTFGhost: Actually I would believe Alito meant that too. He seems like the type who is a true believer in the President is a little god. It’s the rest of the Right who isn’t thinking it through.
For example; if their so called revolution succeeds, MAGA is going to go up against the wall because there is no way a hypothetical conservative dictator could tolerate a collection of crackpots at eternal war with the rest of society.
Martin
Les Wexner turned over his fortune to Epstein to manage and then made him Power of Attorney. If you want to blackmail someone, having them turn their entire fortune over to you as a financial manager is a perfect way to do that and hide the crime. So what Epstein got was the infinite money glitch.
The Audacity of Krope
Leopards…faces.
Suzanne
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Um, their first big hit was prolly 25-ish years ago. They are definitely middle-age music.
ETA: Chris Martin is 48.
trollhattan
@different-church-lady:
Ha-ha, crazy talk! Everybody knows the Democrats abort all the infants.
Suzanne
Yeah. “Yellow” was released in 2000. They are definitely of the latter half of Gen X.
“Yellow” has always annoyed me. Anyone else?
karen gail
@Jackie:
It’s not just the lack of taste but the sheer amount of gold and simulated gold; he is convinced that the display of gold is a display in how “great” he is. The Oval Office now looks like a hoarder’s wet dream in gold.
The other day leader from China said that Trump is not the emperor of the world. Trump seems to believe he is and his toadies all seem to be feeding that ego, I noticed just how often VP and cabinet members are sitting in Oval Office to act as “Trump cheerleaders” during interviews.
The Audacity of Krope
@Suzanne: So, I’d consider the best Coldplay songs to be “listenable.”
I put Yellow in the second tier.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
I’ve always considered Coldplay to be like lesser 2000s-era U2.
Which to be fair, also applies to every U2 album released after “All You Can’t Leave Behind” (2000).
Martin
@Birdie: The National Enquirer serves the early adopter cohort of the conspiracy set – the ones willing to believe anything, the NYT needs to wait until the broader community is ready for the story. This is not a new phenomenon. Why did #metoo bring so many women out of the woodwork after so long? Because events had been primed for the public to be receptive to their claims, which we weren’t before. NYT could have reported on that all day long and had it fall on deaf ears. It’s not clear to me what causes the public to become receptive – my guess is the credibility of a single victim. Weinstein’s casting couch was a punchline at award ceremonies before Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd came forward, and that seems to have been the breaking point – the public trusted them specifically, not necessarily the NYT who broke that story.
But Trump himself was a sympathetic individual. He was the most famous person in the story that the pubic knew and could claim victim for any ties to Epstein. The Access Hollywood tape was largely waved off by much of the public for this reason. None of this stuff was going to stick when the public had a built in assumption that Clinton was untrustworthy and politically powerful and Trump was the outsider. The conditions weren’t right for Trump to be the bad guy here – Clinton was assumed to play that role – after all, the right had put her in that role for 20 years.
I remember when I started my career I was told that a faculty in another part of campus was a creep. I poked around and inquired why nobody was doing anything about it – and the usual ‘he’s really prominent and valuable to the university’ bullshit. Everyone knew he was a creep, the local media knew he was a creep, we all knew they’d settled lawsuits around his behavior, but they still put his name on a building because he brought in money and reputation. At the end of his career, when those things stopped, and #metoo was forefront the local media did a story on how he was a creep, and pressure fell on the university to remove his name and distance from him, which they did.
No new information came out to cause the university to act. No new information came out to make this untenable to overlook. Everyone had known it for decades. It wasn’t a matter of it being reported or not, it was a matter of whether the audience was ready to hear it or not, and whether or not they would demand action. That’s the part that changed – not the facts or knowledge of the facts. See also Joe Paterno and PSUs leadership around Jerry Sandusky. That had to have been widely known at PSU.
NYT and WaPo and WSJ all understand that dynamic a lot better than I do. I think that’s also why some stories get saved for the book. In long form you can step in front of the counterarguments and knock them down and get the reader to accept the story, more than you can do in a handful of column inches – newspapers aren’t always a great medium for that sort of thing – even Watergate took zillions of stories before the public started to accept it. This doesn’t ignore that a lot of these guys make way more off the book than the column and that alone is sufficient motivation to hold the story – both can be true, and we know at least some of these ‘saved for the book’ pieces were offered to the paper and the paper declined.
Ruckus
@WTFGhost:
What an effing infant.
That’s not at all a nice thing to say – about infants.
cain
@Anyway:
The Intel layoffs are called CPM for ‘Corporate People Movement’
The Audacity of Krope
@cain: Like movement out the door or more like a bowel movement?
schrodingers_cat
@Gvg: RFKJr endorsed BS of Vt in 2016.
WTFGhost
@Ruckus: Yes, but my brain couldn’t let go of the idea that, having read the original Peter Pan story (as best as I could track it down), Peter is supposed to be the bright, energetic, sunshine-y kid who thinks the world is a giant playground, made just for him, and brags about the evildoers he can vanquish effortlessly, even though he can’t outwrestle one of dad’s arms, yet. And, Donald Trump is like that, only twisted, and foul and evil, and corrupt, like, he went to that Pinocchio Bad Place where kids turned themselves into jackasses, only this version turned them into elephants – Republicans, I mean.
Once you’re needing to corrupt and horrify the lovers of *two* children’s stories , it’s time to stop trying to explain one’s self, and choose an unfair-to-infants comparison. Sorry.
The Audacity of Krope
@schrodingers_cat: But did BS endorse RFK Jr? That seems to be the salient question
Not just for elective office, his ideas. Anything about him.
p.a.
Here’s my conspiracy theory:
tRump has no idea of the hornets’ nest he sticks his dick in when he goes after Harvard. Institutional Harvard will react within guardrails of their own making. But Johnnies are everywhere at the top of national and international institutions- not as many as post WW2 “American Half-Century”, but still there. And if some bleed crimson they won’t need any prompts from institutional Harvard to get whatever info they may have into hands that know how to use it against the Queens guttersnipe.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@p.a.: if you want a new conspiracy theory, how about Epstein the intelligence recruiter? Other than the high profile it fits: money from mysterious sources, sexual blackmail, suspicious death.
chemiclord
@The Audacity of Krope:
She was working on tariffs pertaining to foreign steel and manufacturing… because (and this may surprise you) the UAW and its associated unions kinda like the idea and want her to work with Trump on it, because they think it would be good for their respective industries.
Shawn Fein (the Head of UAW) made the same sort of mouth noises and overtures, because again… that’s what his base wants to see. It’s the same sort of performative politics that the “class conscious” left claims it wants. Kinda funny how no one has been dragging him as some sort of backstabbing centrist through all of this.
The Audacity of Krope
@chemiclord: That makes perfect sense. And I don’t begrudge her being there doing that work. I don’t even have a problem with tariffs per se. I have problems with them being levied unilaterally for arbitrary reasons and being used to conduct “negotiations” under duress.
That said, I don’t have a problem with her being there working with the President for the legitimate business of Michigan and it’s industries. The hiding is a bad look.
Also, too, I’d like to decouple the notion of Centrism from properly negotiated compromise. Compromise is good. Centrists seemingly don’t want to actually think about what the sides on any given issue actually want. That’s why you get split the difference approaches that solve nothing, appeals to cave to the right because they portray themselves falsely as defending the status quo, and claims that there are common sense solutions for problems with broad support that the political class won’t consider that the political class is and has been considering but are blocked by a powerful minority. Centrism is counter-intuitively a rather extreme position that simply declares “everyone who actually cares about this is wrong.”
WTFGhost
@The Audacity of Krope: Technically, a centrist is supposed to be someone who realizes that Trump is an obvious criminal, that the Republican Party has gone full Nazi, and that the rule of law is a literal joke at the federal level. Such a person would be forced to become a Democrat, or caucus with the Democrats, if they chose some “leftier” title.
Instead, you’re right: a centrist is someone who thinks we shouldn’t completely ignore Billy effing Buckley, just because he’s an unimaginative bigot who tried to be freedom’s own anal abscess, until, like the abscess, he ended up popped and drained (metaphorically speaking), and stopped causing massive pains in the ass.
(Actually, I think it’s the pilonidal abscess that’s the uber-pain in the ass, but, why force people to go to the dictionary in a Buckley mention, amiright?)
Birdie
@Martin: This is an interesting take. I think what’s interesting about it is that it is plausible but if true, entirely undermines the premise of the NYT’s existence. The paper positions itself as the agent setting the national news agenda. If the NYT has no agency to drive the narrative, why should we care about it?
And if not them, who does have agency? Or is the argument that narrative is chaotic / random? I think the Murdoch empire is a proof point against randomness.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Epstein was probably laundering illegal GQP donations.
Paul in KY
@Scout211: True. They must have thought or known there were people who knew them at that concert.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: He certainly has a wicked sense of humour!
Paul in KY
@JWR: I think they are very talented. Hope to see them live someday.
Paul in KY
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Coldplay has been around for awhile. At least early 2000s.