June 23: Media press Trump on his Bush-ian failure to protect America from box-cutter-wielding terrorists … Vance struggles to get Iran deal remotely near as good as Obama’s … Judges toss out Justice Department’s illegal voter database and its subpoenas against Tim Walz, on grounds of give it a rest ipsa loquitur … Mystery of why Kash Patel gave up the search for Savannah Guthrie’s mom solved, but not in a good way …
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This is 100% the kind of story TFN likes to bury beneath a thick film of clotted policy issues that will actually affect people’s lives. But the administration’s handling of this farce is reflecting clearly and powerfully enough to sway even some of the die-hardest MAGA holdouts.
Let’s begin with that unidentified media hero who finally did what TFN, your loyal armchair quarterback, has been begging White House media to do — instead of arguing with Pres. Donald Trump’s inanity, judo it, “Yes and” him, and advance the premise of his lies.
Trump is now claiming that vandals — or possibly visigoths — are responsible for the state of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. He’s portraying the presence of algae in the 2-and-a-half-foot pool and peeled lining as proof that saboteurs attacked it. Because evidence of his failure is proof of someone else’s guilt.
The media attention on the pool would suggest that we’ve had three national tragedies this century: 9/11, 1/6, and 2’6”. But here’s Monday’s judo demonstration:
Q: National Guard and police have been all over the Mall. How would these vandals have gotten so close to do something like that? Do you have any proof?
Trump: I mean, we didn’t have, we didn’t have a lot of them [patrols] then. Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it?
The media didn’t follow up on Trump’s implied scenario that trained eco-ninjas somehow evaded not only America’s finest federal security forces but also cameras, but the damage was done. Trump was revealed as having failed to protect us — despite warnings of al Gaeda determined to strike within the pool — or as lying about it.
Trump is now more transparent than the pool, literally arresting future wrongful-arrest plaintiffs, and mounting a federal hunt for al Gaeda, Antifae (Algifa?), or possibly the Swiss Army.
There’s also the Lone Knifeman Theory, implying an attacker with skills of great caliber. Or ex-caliber!
Possible suspects include Zorro, Blade, Jack the Pool-Lining Ripper, and a veritable rogues gallery of potential pool-lining slashers.
Trump dug, or cut, himself deeper on Monday, citing fictional evidence as proof of fictional attackers:
Q: …do you have proof of that, that they used a knife?
Trump: Yeah, we have proof.
Q: Do you have photos or videos?
Trump: Well, let’s put it this way. When you have a 350 -- I think it’s 350, not 250, a 350 foot slit from one end to the other, you think that’s proof? You think that’s proof?
Q: But reporters have been down there today looking for that slit that you mentioned, and there’s no evidence of it.
Trump: Well, all you’d have to do is see the Parks Department. They’ll show it to you.
First of all, “Let’s put it this way” is what you say when you stumble home drunk at 3am and the ghost of Charlie Kirk asks you whether you’re cheating on him with Vice President JD Vance.
Secondly, no, even if it exists, a slit is not evidence that someone cut the slit. The only invisible hand actually slashing at America is the Invisible Hand of capitalism that propped up Alan Greenspan for 100 years.
Also, America doesn’t have a Parks Department, because Trump hasn’t yet reduced the nation to town status. So Trump is now reduced to seeking non-existent evidence from an un-actual government agency that wouldn’t prove a non-happened crime was committed by non-real people.
And the National Park Service, which somehow still does exist, has yet to show anyone a 350-foot gash.
Let the TFN record show that Trump has now arrested people for creating a naturally-existing phenomenon in a federal pool that he himself fucked up, after personally, without being arrested, devastating America’s national parks, vandalizing its history, defacing federal land and waters with oil wells, destroying the East Wing of the White House, and pardoning the people he personally invited to attack, damage, and deploy weapons of ass defecation against the U.S. Capitol.
Also worth noting, for any surviving MAGA unprotected by the Endangered Species Act: Trump himself bragged that the new pool was knife-proof. Here’s Trump Monday saying that al Gaeda, a decentralized group composed of single cells, may have used box-cutters. Again.
And yet, here was Trump on May 4 promising that the new lining “will last for at least 50 years,” adding that it couldn’t be cut by a knife, “if you had a knife; I don’t want to give anybody ideas.”
My dude, no one wants your ideas.
Trump is now talking about draining the pool again — not a euphemism — and doing more performative maintenance just in time for the July 4 holiday all this algal agita is for, so al Gaeda won’t have time to strike again until presumably the ass-crack of dawn on July 5.
Vance Hopeful He Can Get Obama-Level Deal with Iran
Vice Pres. JD Vance left Switzerland on Monday saying his Iran talks went so well the administration might even come close to a deal almost as good as the one reached by Pres. Barack Obama.
The administration is hopeful it can end its Iran War with a deal even remotely near the effectiveness of Obama’s.
As Republicans keep reminding us, Obama won his nuclear deal — which left Iran without a nuclear bomb, with far less uranium, and under inspections — without killing thousands of people or disrupting global oil markets.
Vance said his team of crack negotiators had laid “a successful foundation,” even though he’s built nothing on it and it has cracks in it shaped like shady real-estate developers who skimp on their foundations. As soon as Vance left, Iran disputed his claim that they agreed to let in inspectors the way they did for Obama.
Which didn’t stop Vance from waiving sanctions against Iran and letting it start selling oil in U.S. dollars the way no president has for more than 20 years. Even Obama only lifted some sanctions after Iran actually agreed to inspections.
Vance also greenlit waiving sanctions on Iranian exports of terror. Sanctions on Iran’s central bank and other financial institutions had targeted the funding of terrorist activity until Vance signed off on lifting them the way Obama never did.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, normally so cool-headed, reportedly is “hysterical” about Vance and Trump helping out Hezbollah, especially as he’s facing elections in October, and those are one of his favorite ways of dodging longstanding charges of criminal corruption.
Vance did not address the possibility that a new deal could be torn up by a future president who was a total fucking asshole or by the current one who is that.
Speaking of which, Pres. Donald Trump, the greatest threat to a peace deal, said Monday that Iran has agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz and let in UN nuclear inspectors, the same way he claims women let him do stuff.
Trump also claimed that unfrozen Iranian assets will only be used to buy frozen or unfrozen American fruit and veggies. That part’s not even in the memo of understanding for the peace deal, so presumably Trump just thought of it and decided to let it pass through the treacherous passage of his face hole.
Iran obviously says, no, they’re using their money to fix the mess Trump made. No, not the reflecting pool.
Bipartisan Bill Might Actually Not Suck for Once?
There are plenty of nits to pick with the Senate housing bill that passed Monday, but it also appears to be a rare concrete curb cutting Wall Street cupidity, which I love!
And “centrist” Democrats should note that almost all Republicans are on board even though (because?) it was led on the Democratic side by progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
The bill is expected to clear the House as soon as today and then get signed into law by Pres. Donald Trump.
Cynical analysts like TFN — that warn habitually that bipartisan consensus is a warning sign of impending doom — are a little flummoxed by the possible passage of a “good” (?!?) bipartisan bill.
If enacted, it will reduce regulatory limits on home-building — which sounds super appealing but has a tendency to boomerang.
On the plus side, the bill outlaws the purchase of single-family homes by private equity and other rich predators who roam the Earth in the form of corporations and LLCs. Investors who build homes would have to sell them within seven years instead of hoarding America’s housing stock.
Warren told the AP, “For the first time ever, private equity will be blocked from buying up single-family homes and trying to turn housing into one more Wall Street investment.”
She also said the bill “acknowledges that the federal government has a role to play in lowering housing prices.” Which is a problem for Democrats!
If Republicans under Trump are now willing — cuz they control Congress — to advance stuff like this and take on Wall Street, Democrats can either get outflanked or start moving left.
Document Database Was Undocumented
Pres. Donald Trump’s massive effort to purge undocumented immigrants and documented immigrants and documented Democrats from state voter rolls violated more laws than undocumented immigrants do, a federal judge ruled Monday, deporting the law and the database from reality.
Trump last year ordered his minions to create a massive database that complicit states could use to purge people from voter rolls in hopes that so few people would be able to vote that Republicans might get majorities even in non-gerrymandered districts.
District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ruled Monday that the government “knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” a shocking finding, given how rarely this government does anything knowingly.
Sooknanan is a Pres. Joe Biden appointee whose name alone is capable of causing MAGA aneurysms. The list of federal acts she said Trump violated was longer than a two-act play:
The Social Security Act
The 1974 Privacy Act
The Administrative Procedure Act
Democracy Docket reports that some states — most of them red, and now caught red-handed — used the baseless database to check on the citizenship of more than 67 million voters. Thousands of people popped as possible non-citizens, some of whom were non-non-citizens.
BALLS TO THE WALZ Another, less delightfully named federal judge handed Trump’s Justice Department another loss on Monday.
In an extremely rare — okay, once-rare — move, U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz killed federal subpoenas aimed at Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN). His ruling from last week, unsealed Monday, said the Justice Department’s subpoenas were “blatantly unlawful and unethical” and part of an effort “to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action.”
Schiltz said it’s illegal for the federal government to make states enforce federal law. He said that because it is.
Trump and the Justice Department have pressured Minnesota to help out with their assault on immigrants or people who might sound like immigrants to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh or who wait for buses at bus stops like immigrants.
Schiltz said the subpoenas, which didn’t target just Walz, were “extraordinarily broad” and categorized as criminal activity members of the Minneapolis City Council advocating for their preferred policies. Which isn’t yet criminal!
Media Watch
TUCKER CARLSON After decades of speaking publicly as if he’s good at knowing things, Tucker Carlson announced last week that his vast experience and political acumen have led him to conclude that the Republican Party is bad.
“They are making decisions on the basis of other criteria, what’s best for this company, what’s best for Israel, what’s best for our donors,” said the veteran no-shit-head. “That is unacceptable, that’s treasonous, it’s immoral, it can’t continue.”
Carlson said he won’t support Republicans or Democrats at the voting booth. Meaning Trump’s now confirmed to have suppressed the vote of at least one (1) right-wing Christian male.
Carlson appeared to be under the impression that this is all new. Still, it’s believed to be the first known instance of Carlson figuring out a thing.
Three Quickies
Last year’s Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA) has already successfully deprived five million people of federal health-care coverage, a new report found. Enrollment in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is down by 3.8 million people, with another 1.2 million cut from Affordable Care Act coverage. The worst of OBuBBA isn’t slated to kick in and kick more people out of health-care coverage until after the elections. (h/t)
FBI Director Kash Patel may never succeed in his relentless quest to find Savannah Guthrie’s mom. New reports Monday say that a ransom note considered credible, or at least more credible than the FBI director, claimed shortly after her abduction that she had died and been buried somewhere she’d never be found, like Patel in an AA meeting. Which would at least explain why Patel clearly wasn’t giving a shit.
Patel also has been unable to find CBS’s missing viewers, who reportedly disappeared within about 60 minutes after CBS fired Scott Pelley and are also believed near death. The CBS morning show has fallen from 1.8 million viewers on June 3, when Pelley was fired, to 1.59 million total viewers. Almost half of those vanished 210,000 were viewers 54 or younger, known as the target demo for their spending patterns and functioning respiratory systems.
Not-Exactly Recommended Viewing…
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) is now facing off directly against Graham Platner in November’s Maine Senate election. So she’s being asked about all of his scandals.
And the comedy duo of Martha Previte and Jim Earl have created an alternate-universe version of Collins in which some other scandals keep coming up instead. (The only reason this isn’t a full-throated recommendation is my soy-boy discomfort with mocking her neurological condition, which I probably shouldn’t be squeamish about since she made it fair game by hiding it and, oh yeah, depriving millions of people of health care.)
TCB
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Go get ‘em, kids! I was in the pool!
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
Jonathan - I laughed out loud - Thank you.
"Possible suspects include Zorro, Blade, Jack the Pool-Lining Ripper, and a veritable rogues gallery of potential pool-lining slashers:"
Wolverine, Freddy Krueger, and Edward Scissorhands
"Trump is now claiming that vandals — or possibly visigoths…" Spit my coffee on that one!