The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and pretends to believe it himself.
âHe allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they havenât been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that. Itâs a shocking thing to realise people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives. The hatred â what is that about? Itâs a fear of your own weakness.â
â Fran Lebowitz
Photography by Ron Terner :: Coming home from dropping my daughter Ruby off in Brooklyn no problem, coming home big problem on the FDR North
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âYou think that just because it's already happened, the past is finished and unchangeable? Oh no, the past is cloaked in multicolored taffeta and every time we look at it we see a different hue.â
He didnât even treat it like it was a big deal national address from the White House, the kind when presidents traditionally sit behind the
He didnât even treat it like it was a big deal national address from the White House, the kind when presidents traditionally sit behind the desk in the Oval Office and look into the camera with deep concern, faked or not. He just stood in front of some gold curtains with the American flag on one side and the presidential flag on the other, and he rushed through it like he wanted to get it over with, as if he had someplace he wanted to go. His tone was affectless, except when he made a big pronouncement like nobody has ever seen before. Heâs worn that one out. It doesnât work anymore. Everybody has seen it all before. Theyâre heard it all before.
It was just rehashed conspiracy nonsense that has been around for years. He should have brought Sidney âKrakenâ Powell in to give the speech, or the My Pillow guy, or the Cyber Ninja guy. Any of them could have done a better job, because they would have had the advantage of believing the bullshit he spewed. Trump didnât believe a word of it. He even slipped up and attributed one of the lies he told to âstatements made by great patriots of our country.â You remember âstatements,â donât you? In the 61 lawsuits Trump filed in 2020 to overturn the votes in states and counties he lost, affidavits were filed to support the allegations in the lawsuits. There is another word for affidavit: statement. Itâs not evidence. Itâs not a citation from the law. Itâs not even analysis from previous cases that might help the court in its decision. Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and the rest of the half-baked half-wits who filed lawsuits challenging the election results in 2020, all they had were statements. Somebody saw an election worker in Georgia hand a flash drive to another worker. That was a statement. It turned out that one worker handed another a breath mint, but man, it was fucking alive when it was a statement about a conspiracy to steal the Georgia election from Donald Trump!
Trump spent most of his remarks attempting to explain all the long-hidden secrets about the 2020 election he has ordered to be declassified. There was stuff that happened in 2018 that was secret for too long, but now heâs going to let it out! Stuff happened in 2019, and thatâs coming out in the declassified files or documents or whatever they are! And God only knows he is declassifying everything that has been kept secret from the American public about 2020!
Trump said the CIA kept secrets! The FBI kept secrets! The Department of Homeland Security kept secrets about hacking! They even kept secrets from him, from the president! There was a conspiracy to âwashâ his daily brief, which he claimed to have received every once in a while, so he would not learn the truth of what China and North Korea and Iran were doing to ensure he was not reelected.
Trump did not explain to the Fox News viewers who had tuned in that all those agencies in 2018 and 2019 and 2020 worked for him. The people who lead them had been appointed by him. A lot of the secrets that his own people kept from him were about China, which was trying to undermine him. âThey focused on undermining confidence in the U.S. president. They wanted to just want you sound like your president wasnât so hot, when actually your president has done a great job.â[sic]
It was a massive conspiracy to keep Trump from being elected, and the secrets about how it was carried out, and who was responsible, and how it was destroying our election security in the process were kept from him.
Trump has been telling us again and again that he would give us the evidence of how the election of 2020 was stolen from him. And now we know. It was the voting machines! It was the mail-in ballots! It was the Chinese! China paid journalists âlarge sums of moneyâ to write bad stuff about Trump! China âmanufactured illegal ballots for Joe Biden!â Americans were blatantly lied to about voting machines and ballot counts! âEven when fraud was detected, it was covered up.â
Iâve been doing this for a while. Letâs see if I can figure out who covered up the fraud that occurred in 2020. HmmmmâŚlet me see. The Trump administration had something called The Election Assistance Commission that helped states and local officials prevent election fraud. There was a division of Homeland Security devoted to cyber-attacks on government departments, civilian corporations, and elections. It was called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. There was the FBI. They had a division that did nothing but investigate fraud of all kinds, including election fraud. The CIA investigated foreign countries that engaged in election interference and fraud against the United States.
Iâve got it now! Trump told us what happened! His own governmental agencies conspired against him! Theyâre the ones who watered down his daily brief! Theyâre the ones who lied to him!
Or maybe there werenât any lies at all. Trumpâs own Department of Homeland Security announced after the election of 2020 that it was âthe most secure election in U.S. history.â Every state that Trump filed lawsuits against produced evidence in court that their election security had not been penetrated or altered in any way by any entity, domestic or foreign. Georgia carried out three recounts. Arizona conducted three recounts and then the Republican-controlled Senate hired a âsecurityâ firm that had never worked on a single election in its history to examine every ballot cast in Maricopa County, which Trump lost. They spent months in an unused college gym going through the ballots, more than two million of them, famously looking for the ones with âbamboo fibersâ from China. When they issued their final report, they found no faults in voting machines. None of them had been hacked. They examined every mail-in ballot and compared signatures on the ballots to voter registration rolls. They even examined the mail-in ballot envelopes to ensure they had been properly filled out and signed.
They found no faults, other than the fact that after they had examined every single ballot, Joe Biden received 360 more votes than he had been allocated on official tallies after the election.
Trump didnât look good tonight. He was whiny and out of sorts and he sped through the script like he just wanted to get to the end of it and take the elevator upstairs so he could start posting on Truth Social about what a great speech he had given and how he had had the largest television audience in American history.
It was a joke. His MAGA 30 percent, those who watched it or will hear about it on Fox News or right-wing podcasts, theyâll believe what he said. But not the rest of the American electorate. Theyâre tired of him. They didnât tune in. They donât believe his lies.
It didnât work. Heâs tired. Heâs worn out. He fell asleep at a big military security conference he went to at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania yesterday. Tomorrow and Sunday he will play golf. Heâs going to hold rallies. Theyâll have to get the FBI to arrest people and haul them to the rallies in cuffs to fill the seats.
People are tired of his act. He didnât light a fire under anyone tonight. He put people to sleep. Even your trusted correspondent fought to keep his eyes open, and heâs a pro.
âSometimes I dream of revolution, a bloody coup dâetat by the second rankâtroupes of actors slaughtered by their understudies, magicians sawn in half by indefatigably smiling glamour girls, cricket teams wiped out by marauding bands of twelfth menâI dream of champions chopped down by rabbit-punching sparring partners while eternal bridesmaids turn and rape the bridegrooms over the sausage rolls and parliamentary private secretaries plant bombs in the Ministerâs Humberâcomedians die on provincial stages, robbed of their feeds by mutely triumphant stoogesâ âandâmarchâ âan army of assistants and deputies, the seconds-in-command, the runners-up, the right-handmenâstorming the palace gates wherein the second son has already mounted the throne having committed regicide with a croquet-malletâstand-ins of the world stand up!ââ
â Tom Stoppard, The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays
Every single decent Politician should stand up to this vile ugly stain of a human who is occupying the White House. Every single humane & reasonable Politician should stand up to this racist rapist rabid animal who is running amok in the People's House. Every single Politician has a responsibility to the people of this country, to our very lives, to uphold the Constitution.
It should sicken every single one of us that this man - this vulgar nasty deplorable human - is leading this Country. This isn't Man of LaMancha people, we're not marching into hell for a heavenly cause, he is leading us into hell because he's a troubled vicious self-centered motherfucker bully. Just when you think he can't go lower, he goes lower, he's the limbo stick of humans. Just when you think he can't say something or tweet something more vulgar or hideous, pure mean & ugly comes spewing out of his mouth & his fingers. Just when you think he can't be any more tainted, huge splashes of despicable are revealed.
This isn't a fucking reality show: this isn't Survivalist, or America's Most Vile, or Name That Rapist; this is AMERICA and she is bleeding and he is treating America like he treats all his women; with disdain and hatred and repulsion; he wants America on her knees.
Well, fuck that.
And one more thing - ONE MORE THING: this goes to every Politician whose got a hand out: do not call me, or email me, or text me and ask me to donate to your campaign: DO YOUR FUCKING JOB and then send me a bill.
"When you encounter difficulties, the feelings and stories that arise in reaction are just that, feelings and stories. They are whirlwinds of confusion, based not in what is happening now but in deeply held beliefs about you and your relationship to the world. Let them swirl- leaves in the wind. Sometimes you fall back into them and lose touch with the present, but a moment of recognition always comes. Right then, come back to your body, come back to your breath, and rest. The confusion, the stories and the feelings are still there. They continue to swirl, but you are not lost in them."
~ Ken McLeod, 'Reflections on Silver River, teachings on TokmĂŠ Zongpo's 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva' (Ian Sanders)
Testing Military Men Over 30 For Testosterone Levels In Order To Put Them On it--
Trump's drunken rageball idiot Secretary Of Blitzkrieg (who is usually blitzed more often than not) is engaging in yet another piece of Fourth Reich Nazi-f__kery this week, announcing his plans to put soldiers with so-called "Low T" on Testosterone therapy.
I'll leave the medical mish-moshery for others with more background to sort out. I want to briefly address just what in the AF this really is about.
Hegseth calls it a part of his "warrior ethos" and is imposing new arbitrary standards of fitness for all personnel. In his mind, being a woman, an ethnic minority of color, or an LGBTQ person makes a soldier unfit, either for duty, promotions, awards for valor, or memorializing. You all know he is a white supremacist, an Ăźber-misogynist, and Christian nationalist. But sometimes I grow tired of using so many words to label him, so for the sake of brevity, let's just say he's a Nazi.
So, what is this Testosterone thing really? Is it an attempt to "Rambo-ize" the military, to take a bunch of otherwise relatively healthy and fit men, and turn them into movie action heroes with muscles bursting out everywhere, including inside their craniums? No, it's much worse.
The overall policy is Hegseth trying to recruit, brainwash, and build "Supersoldiers," elite units of what will be a modern version of Hitler's "Einsatzgruppen" which carried out the majority of the mass executions of Jewish and Slavic civilians on the Eastern Front during "Operation Barbarossa" when the Nazis invaded Russia. They were in fact death squads.
Trump and Hegseth are preparing a ground war against Iran. They are likewise planning to invade Cuba, then Mexico, then Greenland, and not too far down the road will target the Brazilian government of Lula DaSilva. They are in a mad imperial war drive to seize raw materials, energy, water supplies, and food, just as Hitler intended through his expansionist war drives for more "Lebensraum." Meanwhile, Trump, Hegseth and ICE will be conducting a ground war against the American population which opposes the entirety of this nightmare.
And yes my friends, Hitler's military prescribed pharmaceutical assistance to enhance their soldiers and sailors.
He and his doctors put them on Meth. And then they put the adult German working population on it in order to speed up war production and "enhance" them too.
Those who have argued that such comparisons of the Trump regime to Hitler's Nazis are hyperbole, exaggerated, paranoid, or simply inaccurate, should think again. The reason they are comparable is because that is their model, and because both Trump and his "Secretary Of Penis Envy" Hegseth admire Hitler's methods and copy them. Those pompous academic loudmouths still living in denial should just step back, take a minute and STFU.
Testosterone is today's drug of non-choice for our military. Which ones might the regime make compulsory next?
So, that said, here is the story from my archives on how Hitler and his quack Doctor Theodor Morrell hooked Germany on Meth.
A poem by Frank OâHara, from *Lunch Poems*, 1964 (the painting of OâHara is by Elaine de Kooning, 1964, about which she said: âWhen I painted Frank OâHara, Frank was standing there. First I painted the whole structure of his face; then I wiped out the face, and when the face was gone, it was more Frank than when the face was thereâ)Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul
It is 12:10 in New York and I am wondering
if I will finish this in time to meet Norman for lunch
ah lunch! I think I am going crazy
what with my terrible hangover and the weekend coming up
at excitement-prone Kenneth Koch's
I wish I were staying in town and working on my poems
at Joan's studio for a new book by Grove Press
which they will probably not print
but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night
wondering whether you are any good or not
and the only decision you can make is that you did it
yesterday I looked up the rue FrĂŠmicourt on a map
and was happy to find it like a bird
flying over Paris et ses environs
which unfortunately did not include Seine-et-Oise
                                   which I don't know
as well as a number of other things
and Allen is back talking about god a lot
and Peter is back not talking very much
and Joe has a cold and is not coming to Kenneth's
although he is coming to lunch with Norman
I suspect he is making a distinction
well, who isn't
I wish I were reeling around Paris
instead of reeling around New York
I wish I weren't reeling at all
it is Spring the ice has melted the Ricard is being poured
we are all happy and young and toothless
it is the same as old age
the only thing to do is simply continue
is that simple
yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do
can you do it
yes, you can because it is the only thing to do
blue light over the Bois de Boulogne it continues
the Seine continues
the Louvre stays open it continues it hardly closes at all
the Bar AmĂŠricain continues to be French
de Gaulle continues to be Algerian as does Camus
Shirley Goldfarb continues to be Shirley Goldfarb
and Jane Hazan continues to be Jane Freilicher (I think!)
and Irving Sandler continues to be the balayeur des artistes
and so do I (sometimes I think I'm "in love" with painting)
and surely the Piscine Deligny continues to have water in it
and the Flore continues to have tables and newspapers
                                    and people under them
and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy
we shall be happy
but we shall continue to be ourselves everything
                                    continues to be possible
RenĂŠ Char, Pierre Reverdy, Samuel Beckett it is possible isn't it
I love Reverdy for saying yes, though I don't believe it
âThere's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.â
â Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Trumpâs âsuccessâ is due in large part to his preternatural ability to identify men and women who harbor ambition, vanity, and weakness in equal measure. Trump exploits their ambition and vanity by dangling access to power, knowing that their weak characters will look past his corruption, depravity, and malignant narcissism that threaten our democracy. On Wednesday, the bitter fruits of Trumpâs sordid recruiting efforts were on sorry display in the US Senate.
At some point in their lives, Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton were respected members of the bar with outstanding reputations among lawyers, judges, and clients. Todd Blanche has trashed his reputation over the last three years by representing Trump in the Manhattan hush-money trialâwhich ended in conviction on 34 felony countsâand in two federal prosecutions that were abandoned after Trump's 2024 re-election, a result made possible by the Supreme Court's immunity ruling in Trump v. US.
But the jury was out on Jay Clayton. Until today. The damning verdict was delivered by Clayton himself through his sniveling, evasive, shameful appearance before the Judiciary Committee. In the legal vernacular, âClayton has drunk the Kool-Aid.â
For those not familiar with Clayton, he is currently the US Attorney for the SDNY. He previously served as the Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He served on the Management Committee of Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the worldâs largest and most respected law firms. His financial disclosure showed he drew a salary and bonus of more than $6.7 million from Sullivan & Cromwell in the year before his SDNY nomination, lofty salary that reflects his stellar legal training, his government experience, his purported legal acumen, and his wise counsel.
But in a brief exchange with Senator John Ossof, Jay Clayton demonstrated that either (a) he is willing to lie to a Senate Committee while under oath, or (b) he is functionally illiterate and cannot be trusted to serve as the nationâs chief intelligence officer. I believe the answer is option (a), but I will let you judge after watching the video of the exchange between Senator Ossof and Clayton, below: (Press the âplayâ arrow at the bottom of the embedded video to watch the exchange.)
If Claytonâs testimony was truthful, he was unaware that his predecessor in the job of Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was present at the execution of the FBI search warrant that seized the Fulton County, Georgia, ballots. Clayton claims he was also unaware that Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress that Trump requested that she attend the FBIâs seizure of ballots in Georgia.
Gabbardâs presence at the Fulton County raid was extensively covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, and widely reported on cable news, including Fox News. So, too, was Tulsi Gabbardâs testimony that she was at the raid at Trumpâs request.
Again, Tulsi Gabbard is Claytonâs immediate predecessor in the job for which he is seeking a favorable report by the Judiciary Committee. For Clayton to pretend to be unaware of the biggest controversy surrounding his predecessor is (in the words of Jon Ossof) ânot credible.â
But Clayton has performed the calculus. He has weighed the stain on his reputation and the behind-the-back whispers that will follow him for life, and concluded, in his weakness and vanity, that access to power is more important than truth, honor, and patriotism.
Such are the men selected by the partners of Sullivan & Cromwell to lead their firm. It is no surprise that S&C never capitulated to Trump. It never had to; instead, it voluntarily aligned with him, serving as the White Houseâs favored intermediary to coerce other firms into capitulating to Trump.
And, now, Jay Clayton will be our nationâs chief intelligence officer, delivering critical briefings to a president who cannot abide bad news. Jay Clayton is the wrong man for a job that affects the safety and security of every American.
Tell your Senators that Jay Clayton is unfit to hold a position of public trust in the federal government!
As bad as Clayton's confirmation hearing was, Todd Blanche's was worse. Blanche walked into the confirmation room having protected Ghislaine Maxwell, obstructed the production of the Epstein documents, approved the bad-faith prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James, and approved the $1.8 billion slush fund for January 6 insurrectionists and the IRS immunity agreement for Trump. It is difficult to see how it could get worse. But it did.
One of the first questions posed to Blanche was whether he was Trumpâs friend. He replied, âI am his lawyer . . . was his lawyer.â
There you have it! For two seconds, Todd Blanche spoke the truth before he caught himself. But in that momentary candor, he explained why he was unfit to be the Attorney General of the United States. He views himself as the president's lawyer, rather than the lawyer for the people of the United States.
The influential New York City Bar Association filed a lengthy objection with the Chair and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, explaining why Todd Blanche is unfit to serve as Attorney General. See City Bar Opposes Todd Blanche Nomination for U.S. Attorney General (2026).
Senator Adam Schiff released key moments of his examination of Todd Blanche. See Schiffâs notes, Todd Blancheâs Conflicts of Interest. In a key moment in the examination (beginning at the 9:30 mark), Senator Schiff got Blanche to admit that he approved the $1.8 billion slush fund.
Senator Schiff then asked,
What happened to the Todd Blanche who was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York? What happened to the prosecutor people had respect for?
What happened to the prosecutor who once respected the rule of law? What happened to the prosecutor who said âthere wonât be a whiff of political partisanshipâ and then prosecutes the presidentâs enemies over seashells and making a video stating the plain law of the Constitution?
What happened to the Todd Blanche of the Southern District of New York that could convert him into you, someone who is willing to say the president has both the right and the duty to prosecute his political enemies?
[The above quote is my personal transcription from the video; I tried to get it right, but the official record may differ.]
There is more, but you get the point: It was a brutal hearing for Blancheâbut cowardly Republicansâlike the feckless Susan Collinsâwill vote for a man who has proven his willingness to ignore the Constitution, federal statutes, due process, the rule of law, and human decency.
Trump reverses order for ICE to âcease non-urgent traffic stops.â
Remember two days ago when Senator Susan Collins was bragging that she had convinced DHS to order ICE to cease all non-urgent traffic stops? Well that cessation lasted less than a day. See The Atlantic, Inside Trumpâs Reversal on ICE |Â Attacks from immigration hard-liners had the president worried about looking weak.
Per The Atlantic,
The president overruled his own administration after getting furious pushback from his MAGA base over the ICE order suspending most vehicle stops. White House officials told us that Trump had heard a litany of complaints from hard-line allies over the past day.
âWe CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.âs most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!,â the president wrote on his Truth Social network. âOnce we do, we are playing right into the criminalâs hands.â
Don't let Susan Collins lie about persuading ICE to suspend non-urgent traffic stops. Her plea to MarkWayne Mullin was immediately overruled by Trump. Perhaps she should've waited a few hours before taking credit for a major change in ICE policy. Now, she has proved that she is powerless to rein in Donald Trump.
Concluding Thoughts
Donât believe anything Trump says on Thursday evening.
Trump will give a primetime speech on Thursday evening. According to reports, he will allege that China attempted to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by attacking Trump on social media. However, Trump apparently has no proof that China affected voting procedures or vote count totals. And, of course, it is well established that Russia likewise attempted to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by attacking Joe Biden.
The most important point is this: Simply because Trump claims the authority to do something does not mean he has that authority. Moreover, if he attempts to exercise authority not granted to him by the Constitution, he will be stopped by the courts.
I had an email exchange with a reader that illustrates why things that âsound badâ may be bluffs designed to frighten or dispirit us. The reader asked,
Trump has fired the remaining EAC commissioners. The EAC is tasked with the certification of voting machines.
Can we predict that Trump will claim votes are invalid because machines were not certified?
Good questionâand one that may be causing some people to fear that the firing of the Election Assistance Commission will lead to âchaos.â But letâs look at the facts.
1 The certification of voting machines by EAC does not impose any obligation on states to use those machines. Itâs like a âGood Housekeeping Seal of Approvalâ on a cleaning product; you are free to purchase the store-branded, cheaper version. Some states have laws saying that they must use federally certified machines; others do not (e.g., California).
2 Once a machine is certified, it remains certified forever, unless it is decertified. Every machine that requires federal certification under state law already has itâand thus can be used in 2026. Moreover, the structure of the certification programâwhich delegates certification decisions to EAC staff rather than requiring a Commission voteâallows the testing and certification to continue despite the vacancies. See Just Security, What is the Election Assistance Commission With No Commissioners?
So, the answer to the readerâs question is, âNo,â Trump will not be able to claim that 2026 votes are invalid because âthe machines were not certified.â No federal law says anything of the sort.
On the other hand, Trump makes lots of claims that are patently illegal and unconstitutional. Can he make up a rule that, because the EAC doesnât exist, all votes in 2026 are invalid? Sure, just like he can issue an executive order stating that he can levitate. That doesnât mean he should jump off a skyscraper.
So, if Trump makes claims about voting machines not being certified for 2026, ignore him. The machines and software have already been certified.
Karl Wallenda, of the Flying Wallendas, starting his 5-year-old daughter, Carla, across a 20-foot high wire during practice in Sarasota, Florida; 1941 :: Photographed by Joseph Steinmetz
* * * *
âNow listen for the pines, the bloom, its glittering, the wild hacking of sea, bend in each stream, eddy of bendâlistenâhear all skins raveling, unendingâhear one skin clamp down upon what now is no longer missing. Here you are says a voice in the light, the trapped light. Be happy.â
