POKING AROUND ON DAY 180

This is Day 180 of Trump’s increasingly beleaguered assault on America. There are 474 days till he finds out what comeuppance feels like.

After I posted this morning about the Epstein Files disaster, Gramps posted the following on Lies Anti-Social: “Scams and Hoaxes are all the Democrats are good at – It’s all they have – They are no good at governing, no good at policy, and no good at picking winning candidates. Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years. I have had more success in 6 months than any President in Our Country’s History, and all these people want to tlak about, with strong prodding from the Fake News and the success-starved Democrats, is t he Jeffrey Epstein Hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Yes, he is seriously freaked out at his inability to bring MAGA to heel. It is becoming clear to him that the one thing he could do to stop all this is the one thing he cannot do, since he will be revealed to be even more monstrous than we all think he is.

A YouGov poll released yesterday: “Should the government release all documents it has about the Jeffrey Epstein case?” 79% answered “Yes.” Only 5% said “No.” 67% think the government is covering up evidence it has about Epstein, with only 8% disagreeing

The longer this goes on, the more damaging it becomes. For the first time in a long time, the Right and the Left want the same thing: release the Epstein Files. This will bleed support for the GOP ahead of the midterms, especially if the party becomes part of the cover-up.

And this weekend will provide another example of Maladministration II’s inability to do one damn thing right. The incompetents get to deal with the growing concern for another significant rain and flooding event this week, this time along the Gulf. The would-be storm was a broad area of showers and thunderstorms over the Florida Panhandle Wednesday morning. It will drift west into the Gulf by Thursday, where it has a medium chance of becoming a tropical depression, according to the National Hurricane Center. This system will bring tropical downpours to Louisiana and parts of the Gulf Coast over the next several days. This already impacted Florida: Daytona Beach was drenched with 2.25 inches of rain on Tuesday, breaking its previous daily record of 2 inches set on July 15, 1935. The most serious flood threat will come Thursday and into the weekend as the system drifts west into Alabama, Mississippi and southeast Louisiana. New Orleans officials opened several sandbag distribution sites Wednesday. Good luck to any of you living down there. And to everyone from there to New Jersey, since there are flooding alerts across the Midwest and the central coastal states.

Grampaw Shitstain continues to go off the rails on everything else:

Yesterday, at the dog-and-pony show at Carnegie Mellon University, Gramps participated in a roundtable discussion on energy and innovation. He nodded off sound asleep twice in front of the cameras and struggled to stay awake through the event. He then went off about his famous Uncle John the MIT Professor Who Knew Everything, claiming among other things that dear old Uncle John taught physics to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Sorry Gramps, Ted attended Harvard, not MIT. And dear old Uncle John died 11 years before Kaczynski was identified as the Unabomber.

Photos of Gramps taken during his adventure yesterday reveal his hand is heavily made up, which would be one way of covering up the scar from an IV drip. His perpetually-swollen ankles were also on display - as one knowledgeable observer noted, the major fluid buildup in his ankles is a 100% sign of heart failure. (Who knew he had one? Wow!) When will the DC Press Corpse take notice of what is right in front of them? They went after Biden last year for diseases he didn’t have, but Grampaw Shitstain shows all this off in public and it’s crickets.

After promising to cut inflation to zero on Day One of his kakistocracy, Donnie’s lie is out there for all to see. CNBC: “Consumer prices rose in June as President Trump’s tariffs began to slowly work their way through the US economy. The consumer price index, a broad-based measure of goods and services costs, increased 0.3% on the month, putting the 12-month inflation rate at 2.7%. The annual rate is the highest since Feb and still above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, core inflation picked up 0.2% on the month, with the annual rate moving to 2.9%, with the annual rate in line with estimates. The monthly level was slightly below the outlook for a 0.3% gain.”

Economist Heather Long: “You can see the jump in inflation in June. Some key imports are starting to spike in price. Price hikes in June alone: Durable goods +0.5% Linens +5.9% Oranges +4.7% Olives +4.4% Cookware +4% Audio equipment +2.9% Major appliances +2.4% Coffee +2.2% Sports equipment +1.8% Toys +1.4% Some items did see decreases: Eggs -10.8% New vehicles -0.2% Bottom line: This is just the beginning. But we need to watch food closely. Increases there are really tough on middle class and moderate-income households.”

Minutes after the rising inflation report was released, Gramps threw out another distraction on Lies Anti-Social: “I have always suspected Shifty Adam Schiff was a scam artist. And now I learn that Fannie Mae’s Financial Crimes Division have concluded that Schiff has engaged in a sustained pattern of possible Mortgage Fraud. Schiff said that his primary residence was in MD to get a cheaper mortgage and rip off America, when he must LIVE in CA because he was a Congressman from CA. Mortgage Fraud is very serious, and CROOKED Schiff needs to be brought to justice.”

Sen. Schiff responded: “Since I led his first impeachment, Trump has repeatedly called for me to be arrested for treason. So in a way, I guess this is a bit of a letdown. And this baseless attempt at political retribution won’t stop me from holding him accountable. Not by a long shot. This is just Trump’s latest attempt at political retaliation against his perceived enemies. So it is not a surprise, only how weak this false allegation turns out to be. And much as Trump may hope, this smear will not distract from his Epstein files problem.” This was another “shiny object” that has turned out to be not so shiny.

“I can’t believe all this shit is happening, Dad.”

After yesterday’s news that inflation is on the rise because of Grampaw’s tariff policy, he responded by demanding an interest rate cut. He is setting up the US economy for a worst of all worlds scenario, and he is trying to keep a lid on the interest rate hikes that he will cause by firing the Fed Chair. In a meeting last night with GOP House members who voted against the crypto legislation, Gramps told them he plans to fire Jerome Powell. A senior White House official said: “The President asked lawmakers how they felt about firing the Fed Chair. They expressed approval for firing him. The President indicated he likely will soon.” Yeah, the storm is about to get far, far worse.

The Financial Times reported: “Trump has privately encouraged Ukraine to step up deep strikes on Russian territory, even asking Zelensky whether he could strike Moscow if the US provided long-range weapons, according to people briefed on the discussions. ‘Volodymyr, can you hit Moscow? Can you hit St Petersburg too?’ Trump asked on the call. Zelenskyy replied: ‘Absolutely. We can if you give us the weapons.’ Trump signaled his backing for the idea, describing the strategy as intended to ‘make them feel the pain’ and force the Kremlin to the negotiating table.” Gramps was asked about the report yesterday and said he has no intention of providing Ukraine with long range missiles.

Gramps gave Putin 50 days before he imposes tariffs, potentially halting momentum for the Senate’s bipartisan Russia sanctions bill. Sen. Lindsey Graham said, “The argument for the bill is that you’ll have an overwhelming bipartisan vote. You’ll have flexibility, politically. And legally, you’re stronger.” Some Republicans want to move sooner than that. “I’d like to have it in the bank,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. Graham’s partner on the bill, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called Gramp’s praise for their work “a powerful sign of unity between the president and Congress,” even though the president stopped short of an outright endorsement.

Putin intends to keep fighting in Ukraine until the West engages on his terms for peace, unfazed by threats of tougher sanctions, and his territorial demands may widen as Russian forces advance. Three sources close to the Kremlin said Putin will not stop the war under pressure from the West and believes Russia - which has survived the toughest sanctions imposed by the West - can endure further economic hardship, including threatened U.S. tariffs targeting buyers of Russian oil. Last night, Russia launched hundreds of drones and missile strikes on six Ukrainian regions.

Tariffs really are Grampaw’s “squeaky toy”: Gramps just imposed a 17% tariffs on Mexican tomatoes. 50% of the tomatoes in the US come from Mexico.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was asked on CNBC why we are now putting 50% tariffs on copper: "If all you do is import, aluminum, and copper, how are you going to fight a war? We need steel to be made domestically, so that if we want to fight a war, we can make our own ships, our own missiles." Atlantic columnist David Frum: “Almost all America's copper imports come from Canada, Chile, and Peru, so that offers a fair idea of the countries that Lutnick wants to go to war against.”

Grampaw wants to put Emil Bove on the Appeals Court so he can then pressure Clarence Thomas to resign and adopt his billionaires lifestyle without further notice by anyone, so he can install Bove as his most reliable toad on the Unsupreme Court. The battle for Senate approval of this Piece of Shit is far from over, as CNN noted yesterday: “More than 75 former fed and state judges called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject the nomination of Emil Bove, President Trump’s former personal attorney, to a prestigious appeals court judgeship. The group pointed to a series of controversies Bove has been at the center of over the past 6 months while serving as a high-ranking DOJ official. Those include investigating FBI and DOJ officials who worked on cases related to the J6 insurrection and dropping federal charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams.” … “The letter also noted allegations that Bove ‘explicitly plotted to violate court orders and direct law enforcement officers to engage in illegal acts’ in an effort to further Trump’s deportation agenda, referring to a whistleblower report from a former Justice Department attorney.” And the Senate Judiciary Committee vote is tomorrow; he’ll be approved because there is nothing too bad to make the spineless Senate GOP act like Senators. Gramps could nominate his horse and they’d follow the example of the Roman Senate.

I never ever thought I would see news this Thoroughly Awful. The Atlantic reported: “Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump admin has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it. Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow. Within weeks food meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be ash.” The Administration says that feeding Afghan children will “promote terrorism” since they’ll all grow up to be our enemies. The food is so thoroughly rotted now it cannot even be used for animal food. After posting Monday about our performance in the Berlin Airlift, this really hurts.

The attempted gerrymander of the Texas congressional map that is being pushed by Gramps, Mike Johnson, and Governor Greg Abbott might at first be difficult to understand because Texas is already extremely gerrymandered. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) explained exactly what is happening: “Texas has always been found to be intentionally discriminatory, and so I want y'all to understand the makeup of my state. The state is a majority minority state, and what this legislature historically has done is what they plan to do again, is to dilute the voices of people of color in order to make sure that they can get to where they're trying to go. So I need people of color to understand that the scheme of the Republicans has consistently been to make sure that they mute our voices so that they can go ahead and have an oversized, um, say in this. So I fully anticipate that's exactly where they're going with this map. It's the only way to do it. We didn't understand how we got to the map that they gave us last time because that state was grown by 95% people of color. They went out of their way to make sure that we got zero new seats for people of color. So that's exactly what they're gonna do this time.”

Here’s the good news:

A New York county clerk rejected the state of Tejas’s second attempt to punish a doctor for prescribing and sending abortion medication to a Texan woman. The Lone Star State last week tried to force New York, again, to recognize its ruling against Dr. Margaret Carpenter for allegedly prescribing and mailing abortion pills to a woman in Tejas, the Times Union first reported. Tejas officials sent a letter to the clerk’s office last week trying to compel acting Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck to reconsider his decision and gave him a deadline of July 16 to do so. Bruck replied: “The rejection stands. Resubmitting the same materials does not alter the outcome. While I’m not entirely sure how things work in Texas, here in New York, a rejection means the matter is closed.” Tejas Chief Crook Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Carpenter in December, alleging that she violated the state’s abortion ban after she prescribed and mailed abortion medication to a 20-year-old Texan woman. Neither Carpenter nor her lawyer showed up to a court hearing regarding the charge or responded to the lawsuit. A Tejas judge ordered Carpenter to pay more than $100,000 in penalties for prescribing the medication. Paxton’s office followed up with the Ulster County clerk’s office and requested that it enforce the default civil judgment back in March, which the clerk refused to do, citing the state’s shield law. “In accordance with the New York State Shield Law, I have refused this filing and will refuse any similar filings that may come to our office,” Bruck said in a statement. New York is one of eight states that have a telemedicine abortion-related shield law in place to protect health care providers from fines, criminal charges, and extradition requests from other states where abortion care is restricted.New York officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, have pledged to protect Carpenter and other abortion providers and their patients.

NewsNation anchor Leland Vittert derailed Bill O’Lieilly with a brutal on-air fact-check Monday night as he attempted to attack the Biden administration over the Jeffrey Epstein case. O’Lielly insisted Epstein had been “convicted under Merrick Garland’s Justice Department.” “Hold on! Bill! Hold on! You said Epstein was convicted during the Biden administration. Epstein committed suicide during the Trump administration,” Vittert cut in. “Yeah, so?” O’Reilly replied. “How do you convict a guy who’s dead?” the host asked.“He was convicted, I believe, under Merrick Garland’s Justice Department. Am I wrong on that? I don’t think so. Then he was incarcerated, then he committed suicide,” O’Lielly maintained. Vittert: “Bill, I think this is important. He was arrested in 2019, and he committed suicide in 2019, he died August 10th of 2019. So the Biden administration was not involved in a conviction or trial of him. They were in that of his madam, Ghislaine Maxwell.” “And that’s a good point of clarification, but he was arrested and indicted under Merrick Garland,” O’Lielly repeated. “No! Under Trump! Under Trump!” Vittert fired back. “No!” O’Lielly bristled. “Epstein was arrested, indicted, and committed suicide under Trump. In 2019, Trump was president, Merrick Garland is not the attorney general,” Vittert said again. “Okay, I stand corrected,” O’Reilly finally conceded. “That came in the first Trump administration, correct?” (Thanks to Al Franken for coming up with O’Reilly’s proper name 20 years ago.)

Grampaw Shitstain’s disapproval rating is at its highest level since the start of his second term, according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll. The survey, conducted over the weekend, shows 55% disapprove of the way Gramps is handling his job, compared to 41% who approve.

Here in the City of Lost Angles, the occupation is ending. SECDRUNK Kegstand ordered the removal of 2,000 National Guard troops who were mobilized illegally in response to protests in Los Angeles last month over immigration raids, a Pentagon official announced yesterday. Mayor Karen Bass said the troops' removal “happened because the people of Los Angeles stood united and stood strong. We organized peaceful protests, we came together at rallies, we took the Trump administration to court — all of this led to today’s retreat." Half the troops will remain in the area, for now, along with the roughly 700 Marines. (I’ll take victory where I find it.)

And here’s the best news for today’s Happy Ending: Narciso Barranco, the father of three Marines who was taken by ICE and beaten in public, has been released. The real happy ending will come when he sues the ass off ICE like the fucking bad joke they are.

Ho hum…

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