83 Comments

With your Substack, you do the best work of wading through pure evil. Like your readers, I kept up with the evil since 2015. Did not intend to read Jan. 6 Report but took a look and am on page 417. Shocking and horrifying but it fills me with gratitude that it got done! It’s out there in the universe forever. The best Christmas gifts: President Zelensky addressing Congress & the Jan. 6 Report.

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Yes! To both.

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I agree too, TC.

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Here's hoping that, as the walls close in and his oily sweaty clammy claustrophobic panic increases, he lashes out in the only way his childish ego knows and he publicly spills all the beans about every one of the bastards he has dirt on. Take them down with you boy, make them all losers too. Tell us where the bodies and skeletons are.

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You’re such fun to read. I’d subscribe twice if I could swing it.

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:-)

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First to read, always spot on

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Grinning and shamelessly enjoying every single minute of the implosion!

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Well, I've always known you are brilliant and love the country right down to the bottom of your Sunday School heart, Donald. You've told me so so often that I know it just has to be true. But clairvoyant? I fear you're maybe pullin' my leg just a bit on that one, ol' buddy. If that were true, seems to me you'd have seen all of this coming and wouldn't be freakin' out about it quite as much as you seem to be. But if you need a heads up on what's comin' next, you might want to give California Psychics a call. I hear those guys are pretty good. They've got a toll-free number and their rates are, well, chump change, in the truest sense of the term. Which really puts them right in your wheelhouse, the best I can figure.

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As an empathetic person, I should have an iota of mercy. But damn, every time I try, I see the millions who died of Covid, the deliberate scams that would make a carnival barker blush, the soulless use of soulless “Christian’s” to make Karl Rove blush, his trying with all his might to sell us out to Putin, and his use of hatred against any and all who don’t have his orange hue or his billionaire buddies. I could go on all night. How I wish for a quick end to him. But his damage will leave us twisting in the wind for decades, so a slow agonizing trip down Justice Lane is just fine with me. May same be true for republicans with that white stripe down their backs.

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Jeri - I'm sure you are a very empathetic person! But one have to have at least a tiny morsel of decency and humanity for that empathy to latch onto. There's nothing there. NOTHING. He's a slovenly empty husk that outwardly resembles a human being. He is full of pettiness, anger, and hate and despite his lavish lifestyle and getting everything he ever wanted in life... it is and never will be enough. I'm terrified he will try and take down the world with him when he goes. I can't help but worry about what classified information he sold and to whom.

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Hi, Jeri, as another one cursed/blessed with empathy, I don't think it means we are always merciful but only that--like it or not--we are able to feel what someone else feels. Frankly, I've always had enough of my own feelings to be thrilled that I can feel some jerk's down the street. However, having zero sympathy for DJT, I do know what that sweaty panic of fear feels like, when you know you're about to be found out. I have done some less than admirable things in my long life, have been dishonest, cheated, hurt some folks--not for a long time now but those moments never completely vanish from memory. The one thing about Trump that I haven't ever done and have a hard time understanding is to set out deliberately to hurt someone or to take pleasure in doing it. So, I don't see one single redeeming part of this man, not one, but every once in a while I cringe at the behavior TC describes so well because for just one second I feel it again.

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Well said, Jeri. You nailed it. Now may the Justice Department nail The Donald. Jack Smith, bring it on!

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I think the guy is going to choke on a cheeseburger and then have a cardiac event. Sounds like his head is about to explode. Or already has.

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holy shit. That’s all I got. Holy shit.

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It's really all the news requires.

It's no doubt very wicked of me, but I am going to enjoy the schadenfreude of drumpf's panicky, but ultimately useless, flailing about in the mucky quicksand of his own making.

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I feel ya. The longer it takes for him to get what’s coming, the more schadenfreude-y I get. There is no punishment that would be too severe for this craven creep.

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as for the "very wicked" part, the way I finesse it is to remember the fact that this piece of stinking effluvia occupied a much larger part of my brain and was responsible for so much anxiety and rage during the last seven years that a little schadenfreude on my part (and everyone else's) is nothing to apologize for. and for those of us who live in NYC, all of this stuff came after...what?...over forty years of having to read about this walking mass of detritus, I think we're ESPECIALLY entitled to gloat when we see him suffer.

and then, on top of even that, I grew up a few miles from him in Queens, which has for too long furnished the punch line for far too many bad jokes. we were just crawling out of that hole and then he descended that escalator....

so fuck him.

this one made me laugh a LOT, Tom.

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GLOAT! Great word choice-

Greatest Loser of All Time!

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I like that! Thanks!

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Well, he always says he's the Greatest, right? Now other people get to fill in that blank. He is desperate. A child throwing a temper tantrum, his face turning blue. It won't end well, and lord the damage he has caused.

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Stealing this. Perfect!

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WONDERFUL!

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Early morning laugh attack, no apologies. Won’t laugh long though, he is still a dangerous arse

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Yup.

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Your sister from Queens, Bayside, to be exact, enjoyed trailing your words and broke out with a smile when you reached '...he descended …', I thought of his descendance, including father Fred, real-estate developer and businessman (He built and managed single-family houses in Queens, barracks and garden apartments for U.S. Navy personnel near major shipyards along the East Coast, and more than 27,000 apartments in New York City. Trump was investigated by a U.S. Senate committee for profiteering in 1954, and again by the State of New York in 1966. Donald became the president of his father's real estate business in 1971, and they were sued by the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division for violating the Fair Housing Act in 1973) 'For decades following World War II, Trump concealed his German ancestry (instead claiming Swedish heritage) to avoid associations with Nazism in light of the Holocaust. He also supported Jewish causes. During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, reports of Fred Trump's arrest at a 1927 Ku Klux Klan parade resurfaced, although there is no direct evidence that he supported the organization. As president, Donald repeatedly and falsely claimed that his father was born in Germany.' (Wikipedia)

Queens is about more than Trump, but that's another story. THE STORY is how far up DJT got with his con, his LIES, and by going down. He and America are intertwined now TJD may be truly 'TERRIFIED' and falling, but what about his and our MAGA descendants and his enablers into much worse than mishegas in the Senate, the House and the state houses? So, we can 'fuck, fuck, FUCK' to our heart's content, there's still a lot of MAGA going on.

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now I gotta ask where you went to high school. I lived in Flushing, but went to Forest Hills ('66) before Bowne opened. a good thing, since I met my still-best friend in the same tenth-grade English class in which we heard about the JFK assassination. then, a few months later, I met my songwriting partner, with whom I still occasionally work. I also had a bunch of friends who went to Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. the only one I knew at Bowne went to Harvard and became a rabbi. so FHHS was a much better fit.

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Bayside HS and I'll refrain telling about all my BRILLIANT friends, where they went to school, THE BOOKs they wrote, THE MOVIES we made, THE CASES they tried, the people they loved and the ones they married, so there!

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jeez, Fern...I didn't even MENTION what those friends do for a living. just the one I DIDN'T go to HS with who became a rabbi (we both went to Campbell, which got closed down and used to house CUNY Law School). what's funny is that the guys I knew who went to those MAGNIFICENT high schools all--to a man (remember Stuyvesant wasn't co-ed)--became psychotherapists, which I consider (having been one myself for a time) a humble profession. I have two friends who went to Bayside. one went to California and became a pot grower and the other (I met him later) became Guitar Hero Johnny Gale (born Neil Posner), whose classmate was Ron Jeremy (ew).

what can I say? I move with greatness, greatness itself having eluded me. did you read my comment about Santos in which I said that folks from Bayside like to think of themselves as being from the North Shore?

my mom, after my dad died in 2003, moved to the Bay Club, which I find notable only for its access to Ben's Deli and Five Guys. and oh yeah...the mall scenes from "Until the Devil Knows You're Dead" were shot there, although in the script it was supposed to be Westchester. and there's a great dog park between the two bridges, although it lacks shade.

my old neighborhood, Kew Gardens Hills, is now famous only for the vast number of hasidim who reside there, where the "No Parking" signs designate Saturday as the forbidden day for parking.

my biological sister lived in Jamaica Estates, not three blocks from the horrifying T***p people. but I welcome you as a sister, having fired the aforementioned one. that'll make two, since my Work Wife insisted on being the first. is this a disorder? will it make it into the DSM-VI, in which there will be diagnoses for Video Game Addiction, Social Media Addiction (actually, a very real thing), Clutter Worship (my own deal) and Breathing Hard?

but I'm still the same stuttering agoraphobe (the pandemic clinched the deal) who seldom wears his teeth and whose aging English Shepherds are champing at the bit (was that officially a mixed metaphor? was it a metaphor at all??...is it actually CHOMPING???...it's embarrassing that I used to be an English teacher) so thank god the weather is normal.

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Thank-you, Mr. Levine, both for the chuckle your comment gave me and for the potential self-justification I can use--although I must admit, such 'wickedness' as I confessed doesn't keep me awake at all 😁😎

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I think I knew that. and thanks so much.

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The last thing trump wants is to be labeled a loser, and being indicted will be the final straw in his total embarrassment as a fake strongman, a fake businessman, and a fake human being. Like his mentor Roy Cohn, eventually the law did catch up to him, as well as disease (AIDS?), and he died alone, abandoned by his “friends” and his prime student, TFG. I wish the same for TFG…oh, and one question, if he dies, does he get a (p)residential send-off at taxpayer’s expense? I hope not…

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The chances are he would not get the presidential send-off. Unless the Republicans paid for it.

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Well, they have been behind the drive to make pathetic Ronnie a saint. Probably didn’t pay though. Hope that ship has sailed with this POS, but republicans keep digging, look at Santos…

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And they STILL stand behind this lying jerk! But then - the people who VOTED for him - why????

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well, there's an angry letter from somebody in his district in today's NYT, but that's one person and it's not clear that person voted for him. so yeah...go figure. apparently, this is also his second go-around, which makes it even more egregious. there was talk yesterday that his House Repug colleagues all knew and joked about it.

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Joked about, huh? Certainly makes it clear the lack of ethics in Repub party. Just think - if this guy was a democrat!! Of course, by now he would have been drummed out by dems. But the mess the Rs would have created?

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I know that I have always disagreed with Republicans on nearly every issue, but surely they haven't always been this horrifying. I almost convince myself that they were once human beings and then I recall the outline of the half-century of focused planning to set up the repeal of Roe and I wonder if I was just naive.

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Ronnie is one of those ghosts who will never go away. Saint and Devil, depending on your philosophy of the relationship between the government and the governed. But poor Ronnie was just dumb as a bag of rocks. trump has gone him one better, he's added crazy. And, in my experience, stupid and crazy are a bad combination

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James Garner nailed Reagan: "Amiable dunce."

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And, for his sins, he got Nancy

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Fascinating question. If a former president dies in jail a convicted felon, whaaat form of obsequies would mark the occasion? I wonder if it would depend on which party is in office… no, wait, I’m an idiot. If convicted and sent to prison, he would be pardoned and freed by the next Republican president, at the end of his four or eight years, so as to avoid paying any political price for freeing the The Flaming Dumpster. Of course, that’s assuming he survives his trial, avoids having a public meltdown so severe the day he’s convicted that he is rerouted to a facility for the criminally insane, and actually lives long enough in prison for the next Republican President to get to the end of his term. Predator Epstein “committed suicide” in jail. Whitey Bulger was beaten to death within hours of being transferred to a prison where he was within reach of other inmates, who presumably had long memories of their criminal friends whose continued survival Bulger had found inconvenient.

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Yes, Elizabeth, I agree about a fascinating question, and is there even a precedent for this? I don't think so. I wonder if there is or would be some kind of last straw or point-beyond-which that would govern a decision to deny a former president a presidential send-off. I'll say one thing for the last nightmarish seven years--they have been a graduate level civics course.

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I've been noticing in the Report that every time someone quotes him talking about the election before the Biden inauguration, he tries very hard NEVER to say the word "loser," and very seldom uses the word "loss." his dad taught him well: "Advanced Sociopathy." the one grade he's actually earned.

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Yup--AIDS

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I’m really glad for the summary at the end, TC. This is a fabulous look at a slow-motion dumpster fire in progress.

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one thing reading all these transcripts does (to me, in any case) is to demonstrate, over and over again, how genuinely moronic and unhinged TFF always was. and EVERYBODY knew about it, all the time. right now, this might be the most disturbing aspect of the inarguably worst administration in our history.

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Yes, they knew and they went along. Bad.

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Yes, indeed, they knew, and they chose him as a convenient fool. And I think that, at a certain point, they lost control of him. But, to TC's article, I don't think a nation--or many of us as individuals--have had this kind of front row seats at the slow and complete unravelling of a human being. It is not a show I would buy a ticket for again.

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god knows I wouldn't either. his so-called administration aged me ten years in four.

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Trump doesn’t have the linguistic skills to write any of it--this sounds like Donny, Jr. BS. Either way, I hope that family loses their money and experiences psychological suffering for decades to come, commiserate to what they have inflicted upon this nation.

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TC, thank you for reading and quoting some of Dumpster’s choicer outbursts on “Truth”Social. It’s heartwarming to see him spliiting apart at the seams. Not only did he try to overthrow our democracy so he could continue to play President, but by his knowing lies downplaying Covid, his foot-dragging, and his egregiously bad misinformation, he caused, by the New York Times’ analysis, tens of thousands of preventable American Covid deaths. And that’s just the beginning of the list of his sins. Jeri listed them eloquently. I normally feel pity and sympathy for fallible humans done in by their own shortcomings. But I have no compassion for the Dumpster. He has caused destruction and suffering on a mass scale and he did it all on purpose. Let him twist.

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He could have stayed in New York, not run for president, and gone on as he had before.

Of course, he could always have John Barron leak something to The Habes. As we know from the report, she's a friend.

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That's the problem with being desperate for acceptance from people who will never do so. He is still the kid with his nose pressed against the glass door that separates him from where he wants to be, and always will be.

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He's a poster boy for victims of horrible parenting. But I still can't feel in the least bit sorry for him.

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You feel sorry for the ones who try to get out from under it, not the ones who embrace it.

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EXACTLY!

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So many had flawed parenting, it is a burden for life, most don’t try to pass it on to every soul they meet.

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Maybe we was just born evil - or wired wrong from birth? Whatever the cause, I have nothing but contempt and loathing for the man, his life, and everything he unleashed on the world.

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Damn, I’m usually for the underdog, don’t make him human, not even for a nanosecond. He was the bully who never had a moment of self-awareness. My take anyway…

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Comparing a fat, self-serving, incompetent, loser human to an honorable pack supporting and epitome of leadership; the wolf is disturbing. I still am counting on wolves to save the planet from the destruction of man when the big plague eliminates humans once and for all.

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Yeah, I'm a wolf Fan too - I'm thinking here of the Disney version in Three Little Pigs.

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small piece of theatrical trivia: Laurence Olivier maintained that his makeup for "Richard III" was directly modeled on Disney's Big Bad Wolf. check it out...you'll see it's true.

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TC, i got it. But I could not let an opportunity to give my Trump, Human, Wolf rant. Best wishes to you and your wife.

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It has been clear to me for at least the past year that tfg is becoming increasingly delusional. Awaiting the final meltdown....

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