STREAKING FOR THE EXIT

Nuremberg 2.0

66% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy; only 25% approve. 30% of Americans say they are worried about being able to afford to fill their car’s gas tank in the next 30 days. Trump thinks he’s winning when his aides give him a “highlight reel” of the biggest explosions in Iran in the previous 24 hours as his “daily briefing.”

A total of 3,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne are headed to the Middle East.

A protest group called Led By Donkeys made headlines this week after they plastered a massive banner on the side of Larry Ellison’s $160 million superyacht, moored on the French Riviera. The new name? “The Trump Propagandist.”

The grifters are always in business. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first-term “national security adviser,” pleaded guilty back during Maladministration I to lying to the FBI about his conversations with a top Russian diplomat. He confessed. Then Trump pardoned Flynn as part of the bogus claim that the Department of Justice’s investigation into Russia’s attempt to manipulate the 2016 election was a hoax. In 2023, Flynn brought a lawsuit against DOJ, asserting that the criminal case against him amounted to a malicious prosecution and seeking seeking $50 million for “reputational harm”. The Biden-era DOJ had pressed a judge to dismiss Flynn’s complaint. It was so dismissed. Then in 2025, it was announced the TrumpDOJ was ressurecting the issue to settle things with Flynn. Now, for his self-inflicted trouble, it was announced yesterday the TrumpDOJ had “settled” with Flynn, who will receive $1.2 million from Maladministration II. The TrumpDOJ calls this a “settlement.” It’s not. What it is is a gift of grift. A political payoff ripped from the wallets of taxpayers by this criminal cabal.

Former special counsel Jack Smith’s team had evidence that President Donald Trump had classified documents, including materials relevant to business interests, after he left office following his first term, according to a memo the Justice Department gave to Congress. Jamie Raskin wrote a letter to the DOJ describing Smith’s memo: “These new disclosures suggest that Donald Trump stole documents so sensitive that only six people in the entire U.S. government had access to them, that the documents President Trump stole pertained to his business interests, and that Susie Wiles, then the CEO of Donald Trump’s super PAC, witnessed President Trump showing off a classified map to passengers on his private plane. This glimpse into the trove of evidence behind the coverup reveals a President of the United States who may have sold out our national security to enrich himself.”

And then there’s this whopper: Trump escalated his attacks on judges on Wednesday, speaking at a National Republican Congressional Committee event in Washington calling on Republican lawmakers to pass a crime bill that “cracks down on rogue judges.” Trump and the criminal cabal have been railing against judges who have ruled against him, including justices on the Supreme Court, but he had not yet responded by calling for a legal crackdown on sitting judges. He said: “The time has also come for Republicans to pass a tough new crime bill that imposes harsh penalties for dangerous repeat offenders, cracks down on rogue judges. We got rogue judges that are criminals. They are criminals, what they do to our country. The decisions that they hand down and hurt our country,” In his remarks, Trump took special aim at the Supreme Court, including his own appointees. He singled out the Supreme Court’s tariff decision as he spoke of court rulings that have blocked his policies. “The decisions that these people make. I got a decision on tariffs that’s going to cost our country - not me, I do it a different way - going to cost our country hundreds of billions, potentially, of refunds. Giving them back to people that have been ripping off our country.” Trump’s speech wasn’t just a fevered attack on judges he doesn’t like. It was a direct attack on the very idea of judicial independence. He’s been complaining about the “disloyalty” of the Supreme Court justices he put on the court for “ruling against what I wanted.” This is an attack on the very foundations of a constitutional republic.

JD Vance is being sent by Donald Trump on a peace mission he cannot win. The vice president is reportedly heading to Pakistan to lead the U.S. peace talks with Iran in a bid to end the 25-day conflict. With his approval ratings plummeting, gas prices rising, and the continuing stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump is looking for a way out. There appear to be two avenues open to him right now. One is to find a way to back out while claiming a triumph of obliteration on a historical scale. The other is to double down and go for broke. Either way, he needs someone to blame. The Iranians are said to be more comfortable dealing with Vance than Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, accusing them of “backstabbing.” If by some miracle, he manages to find common ground with Tehran while allowing Trump to claim absolute victory, he will be the man who called it quits in the war while leaving the fundamentalist regime battered but intact. The hawkish wing of MAGA, such as Lindsey Graham, will turn their ire on Vance. The more likely outcome is that the “peace talks” - if, indeed, they go ahead - will result in both sides throwing their toys out of the pram and a major escalation in hostilities. Wednesday, Karoline Leavitt pledged Trump would “unleash hell” if his demands were not met. It is, in many ways, a masterful political move by Trump to offload the divisions that are ripping MAGA apart onto his second-in-command.

And Phillips O’Brien, writes: “We have known this for a while, but the evidence is becoming more and more damning. Putin is helping Iran try to kill US forces. And Trump is protecting and helping Putin at the same time.” This is what happens when 77 million droolers who shouldn’t be allowed outside without adult supervision vote for a convicted felon and long-time Russian traitor to lead the country down the drain.

At 6:16am East Coast Time, in the midst of yet another Adderall-fueld rageathon, Demented Dilbert, our national toddler, vented his frustration that the rest of the world won’t follow his orders and tell him what a Very Good Boy he is; he’s getting more and more upset as he realizes that he’s finally arrived the point where no one is going to take care of his latest fuckup, as has always happened since he received no punishment for hitting the teacher bck in first grade. He posted: “THE U.S.A. NEEDS NOTHING FROM NATO, BUT ‘NEVER FORGET’ THIS VERY IMPORTANT POINT IN TIME!” Yes, we really are led by a demented 5 year old.

GOP conservatives in both chambers are shooting down the idea of trying to advance key provisions of the SAVE Act through budget reconciliation, arguing the strategy has little chance of succeeding. “The Senate parliamentarian picked out a bunch of what they call policy items out of (the) One Big Beautiful Bill (Act). So how are they going to move SAVE America through reconciliation?” Rep. Byron Donalds said. Rep. Keith Self echoed similar sentiments, noting the parliamentarian will “kill” any provision of the SAVE America Act “in two seconds.” “They’re not gonna let that through reconciliation. It’s policy. It’s not budget. It won’t work.” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna accused the Senate of “lying to the American people. SAVE America Act cannot pass through budget reconciliation. And they think you’re stupid. And so, I’m calling them out, and I’m not going to play their game.” Sens. Mike Lee, a lead sponsor of the bill, and Rick Scott have also poured cold water on the proposal. Lee said:“There are many things the Senate could pass with a simple majority using the procedure known as ‘budget reconciliation. The SAVE America Act is *not* one of them So we need to keep debating it as we have been - until it passes.” Rep. Ralph Norman said of Miz Linzey’s optimism in doing this, “I would need to see what process he’s going to use to get it through. Because it’s reconciliation. It affects the budget. You have to have an income and expense. I don’t know how he’s gonna do that. He would need to have a plan, I would think, before he puts that out there.” The Senate is set to leave for their two-week recess beginning March 30. Thune has been facing pressure from conservatives to cancel the break and instead continue the debate on the SAVE Act until it passes.

Thursday, Democracy Docket exposed a pattern of extreme anti-voting and conspiracy theorist beliefs by Chad Bianco, the Ultra-MAGA sheriff of Riverside County, California, who is currently running for governor. Bianco is currently in a high-profile clash with California state officials after he seized 650,000 ballots from the Proposition 50 referendum, which established a new mid-decade congressional map to draw out five Republicans in retaliation for GOP efforts to do the same to Democrats in Texas. Even some Republican leaders in the state have condemned his actions. Bianco’s seizure of ballots, evidently to try to investigate baseless allegations of fraud, is part of a broader pattern of his disdain for democracy. “’That’s why some people should never be allowed to vote,’ the sheriff wrote Wednesday in response to a commentary video about the Iran war on the social media site,” said the report. This “wasn’t an isolated incident,” the report said, “Over the past months, Bianco published numerous comments and posts on social media promoting false claims that elections are rigged and Democrats rely on illegal voters to win races.” Among other things, Bianco also claimed that Democrats have “created an environment where cheating and illegal voting is keeping them in office,” and that “Non citizens can vote, you can vote for someone else even if they are dead, people can vote multiple times with different names.” There is no evidence to support any of this; all of these things are illegal and have been prosecuted in the rare cases they have occurred. Bianco, has one of the worst crime-solving records and some of the deadliest jails in California. He is ormer member of the Oath Keepers paramilitary and is affiliated with the “Constitutional Sheriffs” movement. ere is a good chance this guy could end up on the November ballot, since there are ten Democrats - including Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell - with little chance of winning the June primary, who are continuing their hopeless candidacies. There are two Republicans running. The “jungle primary” here could see Democrats diluting the vote to the point the two GOP candidates are the ones on the ballot. Never doubt the fucking STUPIDITY of a California Democratic office-wanter. People wonder why I quite professional Democrat politics here 50 years ago.

Latest Quinnpiac Poll: If the election were held today, 51% of voters want the Democratic Party win control of the United States House of Representatives; 40% want to see the Republican Party win control of the House. Among independents, 57% want to see the Democrats win control; 26% want to see Republicans win control. If the Blue Wave arrives, it’s not Democrats powering the blue wave, but Independents who swung to supporting Democratic candidates.

Maladministration II announced Wednesday that the U.S. has successfully secured $100 million worth of Venezuelan gold after the ouster of dictator Nicolas Maduro. “There hadn’t been a shipment of precious metals between Venezuela and America in over 20 years,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said during a conference in Houston. “At the end of the two days, we were able to bring home $100 million of gold — physically, the gold.” The comments come as the U.S. deepens ties with interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who spoke virtually to a crowd in Miami Wednesday to court American investors eyeing her country’s precious metals and minerals. According to a State Department report, the country mined an average of $2.2 billion of gold each year over the past five years. 1,000 square miles of forest land was destroyed as a result, the New York Times reported. Earlier this month, the U.S. issued a license allowing for transactions with Venezuela’s state-run gold mining company, Minerven.

The Democratic upset in two Florida state legislature races on Tuesday is raising warning signs for Republicans as the party faces divisions ahead of November’s midterms. The string of Democratic over-performance in special elections during Maladminstration II is a sign of growing dissatisfaction with Republicans as the national mood weakens under Trump’s second administration.

Former CIA Director John Brennan said Tuesday that Israel, through its recent actions in Lebanon and its fighting alongside the U.S. against Iran, has inflamed tensions in the Middle East as the conflict against Tehran rages on. “At this point, I really think that we need to focus on trying to bring the military operations to a close, not just in terms of the United States and Iran, but also Israel. What Israel is doing now vis-a-vis Iran and Lebanon is just basically adding fuel to the fires of hostilities,” Brennan said.

Huge bets keep surfacing on prediction platforms right before Trump jolts the markets with surprise announcements, but the White House spokesbimbos insist there is “nothing to see here.” (“Ain’t nobody in this here chicken coop but us criminal chickens.”) “The president has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities. President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner and to suggest otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious,” White House counsel David Warrington was quoted. (If you believe that, I have a super-fast train in California that goes from Nowhere to Nowhere to sell you.)

File this under strange news I really like: Once he’s done with late night TeeVee in May, Stephen Colbert already has a new gig. He’s signed as co-writer with his screenwriter son Peter McGee and Philippa Boyens to write a new Lord Of The Rings movie, with the title “Lord of the Rights: Shadow of the Past.” Colbert is such a LOTR fan that he had a cameo appearance in “The Hobbit: The Desoltion of Smaug.” The official announcement of this was made by Peter Jackson on Colbert’s Wednesday night show. Let me say as a fellow LOTR fan, “The Return of the King” is a really good metaphor for what we’re going through and how we’re going to win. (Really wish Sir PJ could have made his version of “The Dam Busters” - screenplay by Stephen Fry and the actual history, not the Official RAF Version as in the movie made back in 1955.)

Sad news: The Sunrise Movement, a nine-year old climate nonprofit, that is so politically inseparable from the Green New Deal that it organized hundreds of town hall meetings and rallies to promote the idea, no longer touches the topic. It’s not just Sunrise, even as Trump’s second term sees a remarkable reversal of the environmental movement’s hard-fought wins, the visibility of Green New Deal-style climate activism is on the decline. In a recent teach-in for members, Sunrise shared its latest four-step plan: “Slow the authoritarians” through the midterm elections, win an “electoral breakthrough” in 2028, carry out a “political revolution” in a new president’s term, and inaugurate a “new system” in 2032. It’s not just the activists: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey - who introduced a Green New Deal resolution in 2019, 2021, and 2023 - did not introduce one in this Congress. This, while Maladministration II gives $1 billion to a French energy company to scuttle a major wind power electric plant, and invest the money in a fossil fuel energy plant. (This is what I mean about “Return of the King” being a metahor - remember all the underground monsters working to destroy the world at the direction of Sauron?)

A California jury found Meta and YouTube liable for intentionally hooking a young woman on social media and causing her depression. The case sets a precedent for hundreds of similar ones, and could result in major changes to social media platforms and how they operate, especially for young users. But in a strange twist, on Wednesday Maladministration II also announced the first members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). It includes both Zuckerberg, the president of Meta, and Brin, the co-founder of Google, which owns YouTube. The two will now be advising Trump on challenges related to emerging technology, just as the companies they built are at a turning point and could stand to lose billions.

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.” - Abraham Lincoln

Ohoto: KarenRN

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