The Jest and the Blightest
Freed from diversity, Trump assembled America's finest minds at his cabinet meeting
Feb. 27: Undiverse/best-possible cabinet meeting includes many things said wrong … Media ignore cabinet prayer said “in Jesus’s name” … Social Security staff to be halved … Wait til you hear the plan for egg prices: Save us, socialism and Canada! …
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Liberated from the crazy notion that a nation’s leadership should reflect the nation’s people, Pres. Donald Trump yesterday held the first cabinet meeting of his second presidency. The executive branch leadership accurately reflects Trump’s brain, whiter in its whiteness than Ahab’s whale.
There were literally more billionaires than Black people. There were an undetermined but not-zero number of radical Christians who believe the Bible should supersede the Constitution and that Trump should supersede the Bible.
Thanks to banishing diversity, though, Trump was finally able to select as America’s leaders only the finest and most qualified people. Meet the team of excellence made possible by ditching diversity:
The military leader who previously co-commanded the airwaves on Fox weekends and whose most-studied attack was led against an unarmed woman in a hotel room.
The attorney general whose prior experience at the national level was as a lobbyist for Kuwait and Qatar. And who was picked as second choice because Matt Gaetz was unavailable.
The vice president with two years experience in government.
The billionaire Education Secretary whose closest experience to leading a classroom was running an entertainment company in which young people beat each other up.
The billionaire Commerce Secretary whose past experience wasn’t in creating an environment for commerce to thrive but in exploiting that environment so that non-his commerce would die.
The space-industry taxpayer-funded-contracts billionaire who’s not Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, but Jared Isaacman, who will now oversee America’s space exploration based on his experience running a company that made
rocketsplanesmoney.The Treasury Secretary billionaire who got rich betting on currencies to fail.
The Small Business Administration administrator, the $800-millionaire whose experience with itty-bitty business consists of running a crypto platform and marrying the billionaire CEO of the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange.
The Interior Secretary who ran a real-estate development (not preservation!) company and whose background in
conservationcomputer software began when he raised startup capital by mortgaging a plot of farmland.
And if you’re wondering who stands where with Trump, you can get a good idea from who sat where with Trump. Here’s a look at who got to sit on the Trump side of the table (Last Supper photoshopping encouraged):
There is one (1) Black person on the Trump cabinet, holding the same post held by a Black guy in the previous Trump presidency. As the meeting started, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner (y’know…urban) literally stood behind Trump.
Here’s the White House thumbnail for video of the prayer. You can almost see the top of Turner’s nose!
But to Trump, Turner was literally invisible. Like, an invisible man.
Trump: “Before we begin the Cabinet, I’d like to have Scott and a couple of people say a few things. But most importantly — where are you?”
Turner: “I’m right here, sir.”
Trump: “This is a gentleman who’s going places — the head of HUD. And he’s going to say — you all know him. And you’re going to say…”
What does Trump want Turner to say, Newsfuckers?!? Policy goals? Strategic plans?
Trump: “…grace.”
Trump asked Turner to say grace, a prayer for a meal. Newsfuckers, they were not eating.
So Turner offered a prayer. And not just any prayer, a prayer… “in Jesus’s name.”
I wonder whether the Jewish cabinet secretaries — Lee Zeldin and Howard Lutnick — said “amen” to Turner’s prayer in the name of their somewhat more famous fellow Jew.
And if you curious Newsfuckers are wondering how many times a White House prayer has been so openly sectarian, excluding Jewish, Muslim, and other non-Christian people? According to Google, this many:
And you remember Trump said Turner’s going places? Well, where did he go when he was done? Did he sit down next to the president? Newsfuckers, he did not. Turner appears to have been seated on the opposite side of the table, out of sight of the TV cameras.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy (no relation) Jr., was on camera and was asked about the measles outbreak in Texas. And now in New Mexico.
Kennedy said two people had died. Only one was known beforehand, so it’s possible that Kennedy’s agency had identified an additional fatality by the side of the road and he then dumped it in Central Park and/or ate it.
Kennedy also described the outbreak as “not unusual.” We’ve had one measles death in ten years. We had more Kennedy assassinations in just five years.
And if you’re wondering what kind of vetting process Trump deployed to pick these stellar recruits, he gave an inkling yesterday, revealing the rigorous methodology behind the nomination of Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin’” Caine to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “As soon as I heard his name, I said, ‘That’s my guy.’”
Caine is replacing Joint Chiefs Chair C.Q. Brown, whose name Trump apparently also heard.
Trump’s Just Getting Started Stopping Our Government
Pres. Donald Trump’s government staffing cuts so far have focused on easily-fired employees: Those on probationary status because they were newly hired.
We know it had nothing to do with performance, because some were on probationary status because they had just been promoted to a new role. Well, now documents obtained by the Washington Post show that the Trump administration, aka Elon Musk, is gearing up for wholesale staffing cuts.
And, yes, these will be challenged in court and in Congress, but those challenges will be more effective the more awareness there is, so let’s not downplay the gravity of these plans! Among them, per Jeff Stein:
Agencies will submit plans by March 13 for significant staff cuts
Social Security staff will be cut in half
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission staff to be decimated; literally, 10% will remain
Wholesale cancelations of federal leases are now under way, including 100 IRS leases
One document lists exempt staff as those with “law enforcement, border security, national security, immigration enforcement, or public safety responsibilities,” which the Post says includes the executive office, postal workers and political appointees.
In other words, the people getting fired are those whose work involves making life better, rather than enforcing order.
Geniuses at Work Ending Government Work
Pres. Donald Trump at his cabinet meeting said that the Environmental Protection Agency will cut as much as 65% of its staff. Here’s The Hill’s headline, referring to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin:
And here’s Politico’s headline, a few hours later:
The net impacts are probably roughly the same, but there are two points here.
One, of course, is that this is yet another example of Trump’s sloppy, slipshod, shallow engagement with the government-reduction process that even his own voters don’t want him to do. (The EPA earlier this month already fired 2.5% of its workers…and then rehired some of them because governing is hard for stupid idiot-faces.)
The infinitely bigger point is not about scoring points against Trump et al. It’s about what that 65% cut to something means.
It means more asthma for our kids. Dirtier air for our lungs. Toxier water for our bodies. Filthier communities for our fellow humans. Rising seas. Droughts and famine and migrations and disease. More poisons in our world. Bon appetit, you MAGA fuckwits.
The War on Egg Prices
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins yesterday announced a plan to bring down the price of eggs. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
She announced a billion dollars to fight bird flu. Which would sound pretty impressive if you didn’t know that Pres. Joe Biden allocated $800 million and there’s still $450 million of it left.
The Trump administration isn’t ruling out the possibility of vaccines…for chickens. And it’s chickens who are getting free government health care now. Rollins said half of the money they’re allocating will go toward protecting chickens from getting sick. Egg farmer socialism, in an eggshell.
But here’s the best part. The USDA is temporarily increasing egg imports to increase supply and lower prices. Turkey, for instance, is expected to ship us some eggs. (Wait, are turkey eggs even a thing?)
But isn’t there somewhere closer that we could import eggs from, you geography-nerd Newsfuckers may ask? And there is! Canada.
One Ignored Shocking Moment from That Meeting of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The White House video cuts off before it happens. And only right-wing media seem to have noticed it. But it’s right there in the White House transcript.
It’s Pres. Donald Trump and Vice Pres. JD Vance mocking concerns about U.S. troops. Specifically, they mimicked media asking questions about the possible deployment of U.S. soldiers to Ukraine.
That’s right, Trump and Vance are in the White House transcript laughing about concern for U.S. soldiers. Here was the first, on-camera exchange:
Question: Mr. President, would you — would you send U.S. peacekeepers to just — to support the — the European peacekeepers? Would you do any sort of U.S. —
Trump: No, we’re going to support Europe, yeah.
Then, at the very end of the transcript, Trump wraps it up and engages with Vance — who fuzzed his own military record — and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose firm lost 658 people on 9/11. Again, this is from the White House transcript:
Trump: Thank you very much, everybody. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.
Question: Thank you, Mr. President.
Trump: Thank you very much, Doug. Pulitzer Prize.
Vance: Sir, how many peacekeepers are you going to send to — (laughter) —
Trump: “What will you do?” “How will it be?” (Laughter.)
Lutnick: “How will you address this?”
END 12:47 P.M. EST
The quotation marks and “(laughter)” notations came from the White House. So someone in the White House says they were laughing and someone in the White House put quotation marks to indicate that Trump and Lutnick were making fun of journalists asking about deploying U.S. soldiers to a potential combat zone.
The Pentagon’s chief recruiter had no comment.1
Friday Is the Economic Blackout
Buy today the crap you won’t be able to live without tomorrow. Me, I gotta gas up the car2 for the drive home (I’m visiting my mom for a few days).
The goal of The People’s Union USA’s economic blackouts (see below for list) isn’t to rock the stock market. Instigator John Schwartz tells the Washington Post the point is for “corporations to at least pause and stop and notice.”
WARNING Friday’s economic blackout will not change anything overnight. Please adjust expectations accordingly. However, what we coalesce around matters less than the fact that we start to coalesce.
Four Quickies
Remember yesterday, when your skepticism-urging TFN urged skepticism about Republican assurances on Medicaid? They offered more yesterday. Let’s dissect that — the way uninsured Americans will be dissected after their preventable deaths — shall we? Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) last night made it sound as if he were ruling out some Medicaid cuts, but what he actually said was, “We’re talking about finding efficiencies in every program, not cutting benefits for people who rightly deserve them.” That’s our Christian speaker’s code for redefining who rightly deserves benefits, in this case medical care.
Remember yesterday, when your thing-flagging TFN flagged the possibility that Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy played Pres. Donald Trump? Specifically, it’s been reported that Ukraine inflated estimates of its natural-resources wealth. And then briar-patched Trump into a deal to develop them. Well, Trump’s half-assed assessment of Ukraine’s assets is now a whole-ass article in Politico. Headline: “Donald Trump might have made a bad mineral deal with Ukraine.”
As the Trump Justice Department gears up to go after his political enemies, it’s worth asking what the fuck checks and balances apply to federal prosecutors. The answer is some! We’ve already seen the courts intervene in Justice Dept. official Emil Bove’s attempt to put New York Mayor Eric Adams on the payroll. And there’s always my favorite check and balance: Politics, people power, etc. But there’s yet another lever to apply against rogue prosecutors. Former Asst. U.S. Attorney Bruce E. Yannett writes for the Washington Post that state courts and bar associations can take action, including disbarment, against unethical prosecutors just as they took action against Trump’s squad of unlawful lawyers during the 2020 election fight.
If any of you Newsfuckers thought I wouldn’t weigh in on Jeff Bezos changing his newspaper’s opinion section, you were sadly fucktaken. I’m working on a deep dive into Bezos’s shallow reasoning. (Which you’ll get emailed to you if your settings include getting Bonus Stories!)
TCB
NEWSFUCKER DU JOUR A Newsfucker whom we’ll call “Rob,” but who looks suspiciously like a lost comic genius, upgraded to a paid TFN subscription yesterday, and was kind enough to share with me his thoughts on why:
Well, thanks for the F’ing f’eedback, Rob! And please relay my thanks to the screaming voice in your head. I love hearing that TFN is helping folks.
I’m guessing most Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid do so because TFN has become a part of their day, and they want me to be able to keep doing it. If that’s you, and if you can afford it, I hope you’ll consider making a donation or upgrading to paid so together we can keep TFN going. Thanks, Newsfuckers!
TAKING ACTION Some dates/details unconfirmed! The People’s Union USA lists several upcoming days for action/inaction:
Feb. 28: Economic Blackout #1
March 7-14: Amazon Blackout — No Amazon, no Whole Foods, no Prime orders, and TFN is gonna throw in the Washington Post, too.
March 14: National Strike and march on Washington.
March 21-28: Nestlé Blackout (water wars, child labor)
March 28: Economic Blackout #2
April 7-13: Walmart Blackout (‘nuff said)
April 18: Economic Blackout #3
April 21-27: General Mills Blackout (no idea why, but sign me up on general principles)
Resources
CONNECTING Come say hi on Bluesky, Mastodon or Spoutible!
Go get ‘em, kids! Just don’t pay to go get ‘em tomorrow…
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 John Stewart and The Young Turks.
I didn’t actually ask them. But still!
Okay, and get snacks.
"dumped it in Central Park and/or ate it" was my first laugh of the day. Thank you!
PS- looking at that Last Supper photo, I'm gonna guess RFK Jr. will be Judas.
Not far fetched at all screenplay script:
* US collapses utterly and oligarchs move in with 5 million dollar gold cards, buying up and/or absorbing all US industry and services
* China and Russia fall out over dividing the spoils
* proxy wars are fought on US soil using drafted Americans and mercenaries
* various sub factions betray and/or support as more sides become involved
* show is cancelled due to heat death/returning ice age of the planet