Opening Arguments in Trump Voter-Deceiving Trial
April 22: Trump trial … Ukraine arms … Union victory … Criminalizing homelessness …
A hearty welcome to all the new Newsfuckers who’ve signed up since my reporting on Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) doing the Ukraine Two-Step with The Lord, Jesus, which got picked up by Salon and Crooks and Liars and which I discussed with Michelangelo Signorile on SiriusXM on Friday.
Just to introduce myself, I’m a longtime (old) journalist and former TV news producer who helped create Up with Chris Hayes, Anderson Cooper 360, and Air America Radio, and spent a long time kicking various ass at Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and a short time kicking no ass at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
I’m now on Substack doing The Fucking News as a daily newsletter, along with original reporting, because have you seen the journalism job market lately? So if TFN brings you a laugh to help you brave the daily newspocalypsi, or if my reporting brings you to tears of well-earned rage, please consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.
Trump Hush-Money Trial to Rebrand as Trump Voter-Deceiving Trial
Prosecutors in New York today will make their opening arguments in the historic case of The People of the State of New York v. That Galloping Multivalent Shitheel Who Somehow Managed to Avoid the Inside of a Criminal Court for Decades Until Now.
It’s always worth noting that D4FRFP1 Donald Trump’s claims of persecution — by corrupt Pres. Joe Biden using the justice system to steal the 2024 election — have left even Trump’s most fervent supporters so unmoved that they have rejected Trump’s entreaties to aid him with violence and have instead opted not to put down the remote.
Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records not for the usual reasons — role-playing as a billionaire — but for the decidedly illegal purpose of concealing payments made to help his campaign. Which is a felony.
It’s important to remember how much was legal about Trump’s actions. Trump was legally allowed to cheat on his current wife. Trump was legally allowed to have sad, shame-fueled Trump Sex™ with an actress who made a career of getting paid to pretend to enjoy sex.
Trump was even legally allowed to give Stormy Daniels money not to talk about it – presumably because the Trump Sex™ in question shared the signature attributes of other Trump Products™: fraudulent, over-hyped, short-lived, and leaving at least one party feeling disappointed and used.
What Trump couldn’t do legally was hide from voters any expenses that he incurred to help his campaign. That’s because the law says that for elections to be fair, voters are entitled to know about the campaigns’ finances.
Since hush-money can be legal, and since Trump’s not even charged for making the payments, this is not a hush-money trial, it’s a trial about the crime of defrauding voters. In other words, it’s a stolen-election trial. Or at least a campaign-finance trial.
The irony, of course, is that 2024 Trump would have saved himself $130,000, the trial, and potential jail time by simply not paying Daniels, and letting her blab, safe in the knowledge that his supporters would love him all the more for it.
The trial is unprecedented as the first time in U.S. history that a former U.S. president faced an actual criminal trial, and the first time in Trump history that Trump faced actual consequences for his actions. And just a reminder that because we have ludicrous laws and courtroom rules, there are no cameras in the court, depriving us and the children of our children on into posterity the video of Trump forced to hear testimony from his alleged former sex partner and alleged former lawyer.
Multiple polls have found a significant chunk of voters, even Republican Trump supporters, will sour on Trump if convicted. What pollsters couldn’t poll was how voters will feel about the evidence that’s about to emerge and the daily drumbeat of “...in Trump’s criminal trial today…”
Each of the charges against Trump carries a four-year sentence. Which means, if we do the math the way Trump’s accountants do his books, that if convicted on all 34 counts, Trump’s sentence could be as much as 17 days in prison.
Actually, New York law caps the sequential sentences at a maximum of 20 years in prison. Meaning when Trump got out he’d be even older than Biden. And while Trump could legally serve as president from behind bars, what he couldn’t do is pardon himself. That’s because these aren’t federal charges, they’re New York charges. How ya like states’ rights now?
Ukraine Aid Passes House on a Right Wing and a Prayer
The Senate is expected to vote as soon as tomorrow on the spending package the House passed over the weekend — with $95 billion in war funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan that also includes $9.2 billion for Gaza to undo what the other funding will help Israel do to Gaza.
The funds could start paying for Ukraine weapons within days after it’s signed into law by Pres. Joe Biden. Ukraine has been running short on ammo and other munitions — most crucially air defenses — for months. That’s meant not only casualties but also the loss of key energy facilities.
If you missed my exclusive TFN report last night revealing the secret history of the new military funding for Ukraine, then you are objectively a bad person and I will see you in Hell, esteemed Newsfucker, and we will party with the damned for all eternity.
In short — cuz these days receipts are looong — last Tuesday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was still praying on what to do about Ukraine. On Wednesday, Johnson gave his news conference announcing he’d sooner lose the speaker’s gavel than lose Ukraine due to lack of funding. My report fills in the gap.
Earlier on Wednesday, Johnson had what may have been a fateful meeting with the leader of Ukraine’s prayer breakfast, who introduced Johnson to an evangelical Ukrainian Baptist who lost his wife and infant son to a Russian drone last month.
Evangelical insiders are saying this meeting — and a months-long effort to frame Ukraine as a battle for “religious freedom” to preserve a “Bible Belt” country in liberal Europe — “tipped” Johnson toward pushing the aid through.
If so, it may be a rare case where covert evangelical politicking deserves credit for solving a very, very big problem. But it’s worth noting that the problem itself — and the delay during which that Ukrainian’s family members died — was caused by overt evangelical politicking: Specifically, the knee-jerk fealty to D4FRFP Donald Trump.
It’s also worth noting that there’s no sign Democrats are even aware of the potential for a Faustian bargain here — which could mean Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now obliged to transform Ukraine into a theocratic paradise-slash-hell on Earth for LGBTQ+ people.
Supreme Court to Hear Irony-Free Arguments on Criminalizing Homelessness
The right-wing, corporate-friendly Supreme Court will hear arguments today on whether cities can make sleeping outside a crime even when there’s no other place to sleep because insides are for closers.
At issue is whether it should be criminal to exist on a sidewalk even if you don’t own a home to exist in, which will be decided by judges who can legally exist on tropical islands even if they’re owned by men whose cases they’re deciding.
So far, lower courts have struck down municipal rules requiring the homeless to transcend the space-time continuum by sleeping neither inside nor outside. Some cities in the West, and wherever California is, have decided to punish homeless people who sleep outside due to lack of indoor shelter space by imprisoning them in much more expensive indoor shelter space known as jail.
The case began with Grants Pass, OR, fining homeless people $295 for sleeping outside because they can’t afford the usurious prices our Wall Street landlords have imposed on the cost of being inside. Research confirms that fining poor people for being poor is dumb.
And federal data show that soaring rents and vanishing COVID government assistance have fueled a 12% spike in homelessness in just a year.
(The Supreme Court will not be addressing whether to overturn the 1960 REIT Act, which decriminalized Real Estate Investment Trusts, opening the doors for rich people to close the doors on poor people. The REIT Act helped transform lodging from a basic necessity, subject to actual “rules,” into yet another instance of the growing category of things we’ve commodified so that rich people can use them to extract more of our money. Which we’re gonna need to pay the fines for sleeping outside.)
Tesla Shareholders to Vote on $56 Billion for Musk
Tesla shareholders will vote in June on whether to approve a $56 billion pay package for CEO Elon Musk. The money — similar to the annual, year-end bonuses that were never given even to famous CEOs like Caligula — was approved by the board years ago, challenged in a lawsuit because what the holy smoking shit, and struck down by a judge earlier this year because really what the holy smoking shit.
The lawsuit claimed that the board that signed over $56 billion to Musk isn’t truly independent of Musk (much like Caligula’s loyal senators), meaning shareholders were getting ripped off.
So now all the shareholders will vote in June whether to write a check to Musk that’s literally more money than the entire new military spending package for Ukraine. Two amusing points here, for me.
The price of Teslas has gone down, meaning less revenue. Also meaning less revenue: Despite the price cuts, Tesla sales are down this year about 9% from the same period last year.
In fact, just over the weekend, Tesla slashed prices even more and knocked $4,000 off the cost of its $12,000 “Full [sic] Self [sic] Driving [sic]” system, which older Newsfuckers will remember unleashed a horde of robotaxis onto America’s roads in 2020 in a parallel universe where Musk predictions come true.
Even before those prices cuts, Tesla’s stock had lost more than a third of its value this year.
Point two: Y’know how the right-wing and faux Libertarians like Musk and his ilk — you know he has an ilk — are constantly haranguing companies not to put money into things like diversity, inclusion, or fighting climate change? Their rationale is that publicly held companies are legally and morally obliged to focus all of their efforts on enriching shareholders. Which Tesla could pretty easily do with $56 billion. Assuming it still has the money come June.
TCB
NICOLE SANDLER I don’t know yet what Nicole Sandler wants me to talk about in our weekly “The Fucking News” segment on The Nicole Sandler Show today at 5pm eastern time. But either way there’s a damn good chance I’m gonna wedge my Ukraine evangelicals reporting in there, so please joins us to watch or listen live at NicoleSandler.com.
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Go get ‘em, kids…!
D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.