It's the Ten Percent, Stupid

The "replica Trump arch" at the Great American State Fair in the National Mall celebrating the semiquincentennial (half of 500th) anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, (Latin had a word, sēstertius, for "two and a half", which would have given us the more mellifluous "sestercentennial", and I think they really should have gone with that). I wonder, can you really have a "replica" of an edifice that hasn't in fact been built and likely never will be? Or is it a replica of one of the three-dimensional mini renderings Trump has been showing visitors in the Oval Office? If so, it's missing an awful lot of architectural detail on its vinyl coating over a wood frame (which had already started to buckle by Thursday evening), and the statue on top is wildly disproportional. Photo by Evy Mages via Washingtonian.

The Wingèd Liberty (classier, by Trump standards, than the flightless French one in New York Harbor), torch aloft, prepares for takeoff while her eagle companions nervously avert their eyes. The ferris wheel might have been full of customers—it was said to have attracted the longest lines on the site—had it not broken down due to generator issues.

The Normalizing

Semaphore tower, via Encyclopedia Brittanica.

The Semafor story ("How Donald Trump learned to love the January 6 prisoner movement") about the lengthy evolution of Trump's views on the January 6 insurgents—

A detailed examination of his public statements and ten interviews with people now involved in the movement to support January 6 defendants show a gradual path from Trump’s instinctive support for some of the most hardcore members of his own MAGA movement to a semi-formal alliance with an organization founded by the family member of a January 6 convict.

—is the most classic example I've seen in a long time of the Trump "normalization" narrative, portraying the ex-president as a deliberative thinker, carefully considering how to respond to a problem, right from the lede

On January 7, 2021, as shell-shocked staffers swept up the Capitol and National Guard troops patrolled the Mall, President Donald Trump released a video denouncing the “heinous attack on the United States Capitol.” He declared himself “outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem” and promised “to those who broke the law, you will pay.”

As if he'd had anything in particular to do even with writing the text for that video, which he read aloud in his most dead-voiced, resentful fourth-grader manner, making one of his typical reading-disability errors (because the phrase "in so doing" is a little too fancy for him),

Grift for the Mill

 

Image by Yellow Scene Magazine, December 2020.

A surprise, at least to me but I believe to pretty much everybody, in today's Select Committee hearing, was the video shown at the end. While the rest of the day was devoted as scheduled to showing how widespread the knowledge was in the administration that the stories of election fraud were entirely false, and Trump was repeatedly told they were false, the last bit was about something Trump did with the lies, which was to raise money, some $250 million worth by January 6 2021, as Washington Post live-blogged it, under very Trumpy false pretenses:

Amanda Wick, a committee investigator who has previously prosecuted financial crimes, said the Trump campaign sent millions of fundraising emails between Election Day and Jan. 6, 2021. The emails asked supporters to “step up to protect the integrity of the election” and promoted an “Official Election Defense Fund.”

The committee, Wick said, “discovered no such fund existed.” Instead, it was a “marketing tactic,” as a senior digital adviser on the Trump campaign confirmed to investigators.

I'd just like the record to show I was telling you guys about this back in December 2020, on the basis of WaPo reporting, how money raised by the frantic emails after the election loss was actually ending up mostly in Trump's "leadership PAC" Save America (a leadership PAC is a vehicle through which politicians can do things from which a normal campaign committee is prohibited—like spending it on personal stuff.

It's Save America, which started out taking 60% of the contributions raised for the fictional "Official Election Defense Fund" and has been taking 75% since 19 November, and Trump can do whatever he wants with that three-scoops share. 

The story doesn't suggest he might just put it in his own bank account, in other words, but it's pretty clear he could, without any consequences; FEC just doesn't look at leadership PAC spending. It's one of those norms nobody ever thinks of violating. Even young Duncan Hunter only stole his $250,000 from his personal campaign committee; if he'd ripped off his leadership PAC instead (every congressman has one), he would not be in prison today. One of those norms, like presidents releasing their tax returns, or putting their financial interests in a blind trust, or not running businesses where foreign diplomats could spend millions of dollars in return for a favor, that Trump has specialized in ignoring.

You see what I'm saying: Trump, and his full partner in the Trump Make America Great Again Committee Ronna Romney McDaniel, are raising this money under blatantly false pretenses, not because they have any hope whatever of reversing the election and keeping their promise to the donors, but because they just want the money; McDaniel perhaps only for "legitimate" campaign purposes, but there's no reason to assume Trump wouldn't use it to pay off his and his family's personal lawyers in their own jungle of litigation (as he's been known to do, illegally, with contributions to his charity), or indeed just salt millions away for himself, maybe in those bizarre golf course account books.

Only. now, the Committee seems to have some idea exactly where the money is going:

That PAC, Save America, has sent millions of dollars to allies and former officials in the Trump White House, as Wick detailed. More than $200,000 has gone to the Trump Hotel Collection.

The committee has been looking for this information, starting with a subpoena for records from the Republican National Committee's fundraising vendor, a company called Salesforce:

the subpoena to Salesforce would help investigators understand the impact of the false messages sent before January 6, the flow of funds and whether contributions to the RNC and Trump campaign were directed to the purpose indicated in the fundraising emails. 

RNC sued to stop them in early March, and a (Trump-appointed) judge ruled in favor of the House committee on 2 May, but RNC got an injunction on 25 May that would effectively stop the House from getting the information before the hearings, but it looks like it has some other sources:

“...The Select Committee no longer seeks the Salesforce documentation on a highly expedited schedule, and the Select Committee will continue to evaluate its needs for information on these and other related issues as additional material potentially becomes available from other sources.”

Can't help thinking Roger Stone and his thugs might have been among the recipients of all this cash, not to mention Rudolph Giuliani and his shysters, and that there's a real case of wire fraud against Trump and Mrs. McDaniel lurking in here. We'll see.

For the Record: God Rest You Merry

 

Ecumenical Holiday Ugly Sweater via Zazzle, $31.05

Aren't you special! Happy Kwanzaa-if-you-celebrate to you too. If you don't, what business is it of yours?

— Condemn That Shit ASAP (@Yastreblyansky) December 27, 2021

The "village" in Nigeria she comes from is Owerri, a city of 1.4 million people. It's predominantly Christian, but lots of "villages" in Nigeria aren't. Plenty of Christians in US celebrate Kwanzaa. It's allowed.

— Condemn That Shit ASAP (@Yastreblyansky) December 27, 2021

Kwanzaa is not an alternative to Christmas. The two are celebrated on different days and represent similar social values. I mean I guess you're not too big on Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men and Women, but you're unusual. pic.twitter.com/ouiQV7S2Bv

— Condemn That Shit ASAP (@Yastreblyansky) December 27, 2021

Just in case it's not totally clear what Ted is attempting to do here, it's to vilify Kwanzaa without sounding like My Little Margie here:

Squirreled

Squirrel stash, North Dakota, September 2021. Photo by Bill Fischer/Facebook via Driving.

This crazy story by Roger Sollenberger in Daily Beast about one of the organs of the Trump fundraising machine goes back to early August, but it didn't seem to have any legs, and Sollenberger is now trying to push it on Twitter, which seems a little pathetic, but hear me out:

America First Policies, a nonprofit which does not have to disclose its donors, was the core of a pro-Trump dark money network, with an organizational scheme that seems confusing by design....

According to IRS records first obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, America First Policies filed to change its name to America First Works in October. But on Friday, a spokesperson for America First Works told The Daily Beast it wasn’t a name change—America First Policies had been “sold” to America First Works “in a private deal” earlier this year, he said.

Shit Show

 

Photo via Curious Historian.

Looks like the only Trump business that isn't falling apart is grifting from Republicans: the Washington hotel is empty, and though they've found another broker to try to sell the lease ($3 million a year), they've lowered the asking price from $500 million to $400 million and still found no takes after two months, they're under legal attack in New York and Washington, and, in the latest, tenants in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue can't pay their rent:

Inside Trump Tower, swank suit-maker Marcraft Clothes once rented the entire 18th floor, outfitting its offices with fireplaces, mahogany-lined closets and two bars for schmoozing customers.

But then Marcraft fell $664,000 behind on rent and went out of business last year — its assets having dwindled to $40.75 in a checking account and “1,200 damaged coats,” according to court filings.

One floor up, a business school once led by Kardashian family matriarch Kris Jenner was consumed by lawsuits, falling $198,000 behind on payments to Trump Tower by October 2020, according to court papers. And on the 21st and 22nd floors, the company that made Ivanka Trump shoes racked up $1.5 million in unpaid rent, according to a lawsuit that the Trump Organization filed this year.

But there's one tenant, this WaPo story says, that's definitely paying its bills: the Make America Great Again PAC, which took over space on the 15th floor previously occupied by the Trump campaign in March, for a monthly rent of $37,541.67, though nobody is known to actually do anything there.

Don the Con

  

President Two-Scoops. Photo by Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press.

Am I reading this right? Per Josh Dawsey and Michelle Ye Hee Lee in yesterday's WaPo, they're not even particularly hiding it; the report doesn't exactly say so, but the campaign against nonexistent election fraud looks like a simple con—a fund-raising effort using a cause they know to be hopeless to make money for other purposes:

President Trump’s political operation has raised more than $150 million since Election Day [$170 million per New York Times], using a blizzard of misleading appeals about the election to shatter fundraising records set during the campaign, according to people with knowledge of the contributions.

The influx of political donations is one reason Trump and some allies are inclined to continue a legal onslaught and public affairs blitz focused on baseless claims of election fraud, even as their attempts have repeatedly failed in court and as key states continue to certify wins for President-elect Joe Biden.

Much of the money raised since the election is likely to go into an account for the president to use on political activities after he leaves office, while some of the contributions will go toward what’s left of the legal fight.

Off the emotions of "small-dollar donors" who contribute when "the president is under siege" for the "Official Election Defense Fund"—

And the Grift Goes On

What's that line about the last refuge of a scoundrel?

Arkansas ex-governor and holy man Mike Huckabee has been worrying during the pandemic about the needs of stuck-at-home parents and their restless, educationally challenged children, and his special little thing, writes Jesselyn Cook at Huffpost, has been offering them a special deal on merch from his Learn Our History company, advertising it for hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook:

Wonder why "FREE" is in scare quotes in the ad? Well, partly because there's a $1 charge for each item in the bundle (such as "The Kids Guide to Coronavirus", "The Kids Guide to President Trump" and "Great Again" video, the "Civil Rights Bundle For Kids", and other units with more "positive, patriotic and unbiased" messages than those "found in many textbooks in use today."

But wait, there's more!

If you don't click there in the (non-scrollable) box and check out the complete Terms & Conditions, you won't find out that you've also committed yourself to 

a subscription to Learn Our History’s “Kids Guides” that come “around once a month for the low price of $15.95 plus $4.95 [shipping and processing] per set, billed conveniently to your credit or debit card on file,” as well as an additional subscription to EverBright Kids magazine for an extra $5.75.

You'll just keep getting the stuff and getting charged, and if you think it's going to be easy to cancel once you figure out what they've done to you, you would be wrong. Cook comments,

This isn’t the first time that Huckabee has cashed in on apparent scams. The former Fox News host has spent much of his post-gubernatorial life shilling for grifters, including the sellers of a $74 biblical cancer cure and a diabetes “reversal” treatment containing a “secret ingredient”: cinnamon. (“Let me tell you that diabetes can be reversed. I should know because I did it — and today you can, too!” he said in a 2015 infomercial before railing against prescription drugs, Big Pharma and the “mainstream medical community.”)

Why don't these people ever go to jail?

And the grift goes on...

Drawing by Tom Toles.

This peculiar but sober-sounding lede (story from Washington Post flagged by Jane Mayer)

Federal prosecutors are examining the communications of a New York family doctor who appears frequently on Fox News and has been in touch with the White House to tout an anti-malarial as a treatment for the novel coronavirus, according to people contacted as part of the inquiry.

conceals a snapshot, I think, that epitomizes the soul and the style of Trump World so tightly and so hilariously that I feel a need to try telling it, as WaPo doesn't seem to want to do, involving a mistake made by wingnut villain Jerome Corsi when he sent an email meant for Dr. Vladimir "Zev" Zelenko to federal prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky instead.

Grift for the Mill

$12.99

So here's somebody called Dennis Prager writing at National Review (reprinted from Investors' Business Daily) to congratulate America's capitalists because they have—at long last, sir!—decided to stop giving money to their old colleges:

some alumni are awakening to the fact that their beloved alma mater is nothing like the decent, open, tolerant, committed-to-learning place they remember. Rather, nearly every college and university in America has become the least open, the least tolerant, the most hate-filled, and most anti-American (and, of course, anti-Israel) mainstream institution in America.

(I'd say offhand only one of them could become the least open, least tolerant, and most hate-filled mainstream institution in America, call me a grammar Nazi if you want. On the other hand, is the Republican Party still considered a mainstream institution these days? Competition is pretty intense.)

Or at least a few alumni did, according to an article that showed up in the Times a couple of weeks ago to reveal this disturbing new trend, including theatrical designer Scott McConnell, Amherst '60, who has written Amherst out of his will, and Scott C. Johnston, Yale '82, who hasn't written Yale out of his will, but is pretty darn irritated:

More insurance fraud

As you know, I'm collecting examples of people claiming they liked it and couldn't keep it and giving those claims a bit of a closer look. Today's (Happy Halloween!) Obamacare victim is Sue Klinkhamer, a 60-year-old former Democratic congressional staffer from St. Charles, Illinois:

When Klinkhamer lost her congressional job, she had to buy an individual policy on the open market.

Three years ago, it was $225 a month with a $2,500 deductible. Each year it went up a little to, as of Sept. 1, $291 with a $3,500 deductible. Then, a few weeks ago, she got a letter. [jump]

Future Rape

Here's another one of the horror stories going around about how Obamacare is going to destroy your life and force everyone to listen to Nickelback.

Image via.

This is the Real Ashley Dionne, "Objectivist, writer, movie geek, aspiring actress, and freedom-loving American" 26, from Michigan, who writes in her Tumblr:

My name is Ashley Dionne and I’m a 26-year-old recent graduate from Michigan.

The phony Obamacare signup poster boy made me want to send a message about how Obamacare is really affecting people. [jump]

Jim DeMint, Insurance Fraud

Update: I failed to enter Rod and Florence's ages correctly in the calculator, and got a false number for their monthly Obamacare premium, a little over half of what they would actually have to pay. Corrected in text. Believe me, they can still afford it.

Drawing by Charles Barsotti.

Fightin' Jim (he learned his fighting skills from Sarah Palin: Quit actually fighting and start talking about it instead while you suck up some of that wingnut welfare) DeMint writes a letter to the President:

At a time when so many Americans are suffering because of the rollout of this new law, I remain puzzled by your failure to acknowledge the faults caused by this unfair, unworkable, and unpopular measure. 

[jump]

Wheeeee!

Or is it Wiiiii?

Former House majority leader Dick Armey says he took an $8 million consulting deal in return for leaving the conservative organization FreedomWorks because the group was "dishonest" and because he "couldn't leave with empty pockets."

The arrangement, he says, will allow him to "never have to work again forever."

In an interview with ABC News as he was winding down his Wii Fit workout, Armey spoke frankly and at length about his dispute with FreedomWorks, his eyebrow raising consulting contract, and the strategy of the Republican Party. (Via Jesse Singal at Political Animal)

Whatever it is, it's delicious. Jesse was reduced to helpless giggles by the detail of the Wii Fit workout, and no wonder—it made me think the whole thing must be a spoof, but the fact is you can't make stuff like that up, at least not unless you're Shakespeare or Flaubert or in that general league.

Image from The MedFriendly Blog.

By the way, Armey denies the persistent rumor that any guns were waved when he shook down his former employer. But the 72-year-old ex-congressman is hardly hiding that it's a shakedown. The payoff is from one of the FreedomWorks board members, "reclusive Illinois millionaire" Richard Stephenson, of the cancer-profiteering Cancer Treatment Centers of America, who has promised to pay Armey $400,000 a year until he's 92, as a consultant. And what is it consultants do, actually?

"So Dick was saying, 'You know, Armey, my family and I have heard your story, about how you can't afford to retire and we want to help with your retirement,'" Armey said. The former leader of the House Republicans said it was a deal he just couldn't refuse.

Heh-indeed!

Image from Geek Preview.