The Conversation -- May 4, 2024
Azi Paybarah & Mariana Alfaro of the Washington Post: "President Biden on Friday gave the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to 19 people -- with recipients covering nearly every corner of American life, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Olympic champion Katie Ledecky, Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh and, posthumously, civil rights leader Medgar Evers. During a ceremony held at the White House on Friday, Biden said he had the 'extraordinary honor to bestow the nation's highest civilian honor to 19 incredible people whose relentless curiosity, inventiveness, ingenuity and hope have kept faith in a better tomorrow.'" This is an update of a story linked yesterday.
Maxine Joselow of the Washington Post: "President Biden on Thursday expanded the boundaries of two national monuments in California by nearly 120,000 acres, using his executive authority to protect vast swaths of land of cultural significance to Native American tribes and nearby communities. During a ceremony in the Oval Office, Biden signed two proclamations enlarging the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, both of which were originally designated by President Barack Obama."
Jamie Frevele of Mediaite: "Pop culture icon and Star Wars actor Mark Hamill kicked off Friday's White House press briefing wearing a new pair of aviator shades -- a gift from President Joe Biden. Hamill told a delighted White House press corps that he had a visit with the president, calling Biden 'the most legislatively successful president in my lifetime' and listing a few of Biden's accomplishments. '... The Bipartisan Infrastructure law, the PACT Act, the Chips Act, all of that, inflation, 15 million jobs. It's all good....'"
The Trials of Trump & the Trump Mob, Ctd.
Ben Protess, et al., of the New York Times: Trump's former aide Hope Hicks testified Friday against her will "that [Donald] Trump was an image-obsessed micromanager. She also acknowledged that it seemed implausible that Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump's fixer, would pay hush money to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, without the then-candidate's say-so. And Ms. Hicks testified that Mr. Trump had shown awareness of that payoff years after the fact. 'Mr. Trump's opinion,' she said, was that 'it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.' But she was not totally unhelpful to the defense, providing Mr. Trump's lawyers grist to argue that their client was a family man, and that his motive for suppressing damning stories might not have been solely to win election but also to protect his home life." Politico's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Both the NYT & the Politico report emphasize that Hicks' testimony was helpful to Trump in that she boosted his "family man" defense. However, two legal experts [one was Ryan Goodman; I don't know the name of the other person] appearing on CNN yesterday said that two things can be true simultaneously: that a person is concerned about both his personal AND his business or political interests. That is essentially what Hicks said in court. So the fact that Trump seemed to be concerned about his wife's reactions to the sex scandals does not diminish the government's assertion that he wanted to hide the stories from voters.
** And There's This: According to Maggie Haberman's notes in the Times liveblog linked below, Hicks testified during cross-examination, "President Trump really values Mrs. Trump's opinion, and she doesn't weigh in all the time, but when she does, it's really meaningful to him. He really, really respects what she has to say. I think he was just concerned of what her perception of this would be." What that says to me is that the Family Guy didn't care as much about hurting Melania's feelings as he did about getting the benefit of her "opinion" and her "perception" of the scandal, IOW, how Melania thought the story would affect his campaign and how he should manage it. So still totally narcissistic, as we would expect. ~~~
~~~ AND. Michael Luciano of Mediaite: "MSNBC commentator and former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said the testimony of Hope Hicks dealt a 'body blow' to ... Donald Trump in court on Friday.... The jury heard testimony from Hicks ... [that] Trump had told her that [Michael] Cohen made [the payment to Stormy Daniels] 'out of the kindness of his own heart.' [Even] during cross-examination, Hicks appeared to back up the prosecution's argument that Trump arranged the hush money payment to prevent it from being an election issue. 'Mr. Trump's opinion was that it was better to be dealing with it now and it would've been bad to have that story come out before the election,' she said.... Weissmann said, '... I also thought about how her crying was kind of icing on the cake for the D.A.'s office. I'm not in any way suggesting that they sought it, but her testimony was a body blow to the defense here because she put the guilty knowledge of the hush money payments into Donald Trump's mouth.... Her crying would underscore to the jury, in my view, that she was not there because she wanted to help the government, that she had all loyalty for the Trump Organization. And so, it was going to make it impossible for the defense to actually say that she was lying to help the government and to hurt Donald Trump." ~~~
~~~ AND. Michael Luciano of Mediaite: "Jim Trusty, a former attorney for Donald Trump said the testimony of Hope Hicks in the ex-president's New York criminal trial 'certainly hurts' his case.... '... You see a person that is clearly uncomfortable with being there, doesn't want to hurt anybody, doesn't want to be a part of it, but they end up giving devastating, very entertaining, and interesting information.'... During CNN's coverage of the trial, network legal analyst Norm Eisen theorized that Hicks cried on the stand 'because she was throwing her former boss under the bus.'"
An elderly, sleepy-headed, possibly confused Donald Trump returned to the courtroom yesterday to face his accusers in a trial for financial records crimes the Manhattan D.A. alleges he committed in relation to his 2016 campaign for president*. New York Times reporters were on the scene to relay developments. Yesterday's Conversation includes many of their observations.
Links to transcripts of the proceedings are here. (At 2:30 am ET Saturday, they do not yet include Friday's testimony.
Even Trump's Auditors Are Crooked. Matthew Goldstein of the New York Times: "An accounting firm that audits the financial statements of hundreds of public companies including ... Donald J. Trump's social media company can no longer do so, U.S. securities regulators said on Friday. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged the firm, BF Borgers, with fraud, saying that it had failed to comply with accounting rules. In settling with the S.E.C., the firm agreed immediately stop filing audited statements on behalf of its clients. The regulator held BF Borgers and its owner, Benjamin F. Borger, responsible for 'deliberate and systemic failures' to comply with accounting rules. The accompanying settlement requires both the firm and Mr. Borgers to pay a total of $14 million in civil penalties. Many companies that used BF Borgers must now find new auditors." (Also linked yesterday.) A CBS News story is here. ~~~
~~~ Here's the SEC's press release.
Brandi Buchman of Law & Crime: "Charges have formally been made public against Mark Meadows, the onetime chief of staff to ... Donald Trump, in the expansive fake electors case now underway in Arizona.... Though several Republicans were named directly in the fraud and forgery indictment including, among others, leaders of the state's Republican party and two incumbent state lawmakers, some of those charged had their identities redacted, including Meadows and Trump's former attorney ... Rudy Giuliani.... The reason they were not named openly is because they had not yet been formally served."
Perry Stein & Marianna Sotomayor of the Washington Post: "Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) and his wife allegedly accepted $600,000 in bribes from an oil company controlled by the Azerbaijan government and a bank headquartered in Mexico, according to a federal indictment unsealed in Texas on Friday. The 68-year-old congressman and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, are accused of setting up front companies that entered into sham contracts with the bank and the Azerbaijan government, the indictment said. Through their lawyer, they denied wrongdoing. The 54-page indictment details a bold corruption scheme in which Cuellar -- who co-chairs the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus -- allegedly promised to wield his power as a U.S. congressman to advocate for his benefactors. To Azerbaijan, he pledged to influence legislation related to the country's conflict with neighboring Armenia, insert favorable language into committee reports on economic aid programs and deliver a pro-Azerbaijan speech on the House floor, the indictment says. To the Mexican bank, Cuellar allegedly promised to pressure executive branch officials to back off money laundering enforcement practices that threatened the bank's business interests and to support legislation that would block regulation of the payday lending industry, which has been accused of exploiting poor Americans." The AP's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Nice to see Cuellar, who admittedly is a conservative Democrat but still a Democrat, join Sen. Bob Menendez in the (Alleged!) Crooked Democrats Club. It isn't fair that Republicans get to claim all the crooks.
Well, yesterday was just a Star Wars kinda day ~~~
~~~ GOP Battle of the Jewish Laser Beams! Alex Griffing of Mediaite: "Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) took aim at his Republican colleague, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), on Friday after the Georgia Republican criticized him for authoring a bill regarding anti-Semitism that passed the House this week. Greene wrote on X, 'Since George Soros is Jewish and funds the radical left including the Pro-Hamas Protests breaking out on college campuses, thanks to Mike Lawler's new Antisemitism bill, college kids who speak out against Soros could be convicted of being Antisemitic.'... [Lawyer wrote in a Tweet,] '... #MoscowMarjorie has gone off the deep end -- may be the result of a space laser.'... PolitiFact fact-checked claims that Soros has funded the protest, writing, 'Soros' grant-making organization, Open Society Foundations, has awarded grants to two groups that the New York Post article linked to the demonstrations, but the connections between Soros' money and specific campus protesters had several degrees of separation.'"
The New York Times live-updated developments yesterday in the protests on U.S. college and university campuses.
Donald Trump Has Been Asking, "Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?" Let's Check. Top News in the New York Times, May 4, 2020: "President Trump predicted on Sunday night that the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic ravaging the country may reach as high as 100,000 in the United States, twice as many as he had forecast just two weeks ago, even as he pressed states to reopen the shuttered economy." MB: The actual number of recorded U.S. deaths from Covid -- so far -- is more than 1.1 million. ~~~
~~~ Better Than Bleach! I didn't know that Akhilleus was a scientist, but in yesterday's Comments he presented a proof that Donald Trump is not as smart as an orangutan. Bill Chappell of CNN: "When a wild orangutan in Indonesia suffered a painful wound to his cheek, he did something that stunned researchers: He chewed plant leaves known to have pain-relieving and healing properties, rubbed the juice on the open wound -- and then used the leaves as a poultice to cover his injury. 'This case represents the first known case of active wound treatment in a wild animal with a medical plant,' biologist Isabelle Laumer, the first author of a paper about the revelation, told NPR."
~~~~~~~~~~
Missouri. Adam Edelman of NBC News: "A proposed amendment to enshrine abortion access in Missouri's constitution cleared a key hurdle Friday to appear on the ballot this year after a coalition of reproductive rights advocates submitted the required number of valid signatures to state officials. Missourians for Constitutional Freedom ... announced it had collected signatures from more than 380,000 registered voters -- more than the approximately 172,000 it needed to move forward with the process of qualifying their proposal for the ballot."
South Dakota. "Hey, Where's Cricket?"Ashley Parker of the Washington Post: "First, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem wrote about killing her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, in her soon-to-be-released book, 'No Going Back.'... The scene of slaughter [during which Noem shot dead not only the young dog but also a buck goat] ends with Noem's kids getting off the school bus, and her daughter asking, 'Hey, where's Cricket?'... Then, over the course of three separate days, the Republican posted on social media about killing her dog -- a series of missives that ranged from book promotion to defensive explanation to, finally, blame-the-media spin. And on Wednesday, Noem appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, where the two devoted five minutes to Noem's late wirehair pointer, as a befuddled Hannity tried to give Noem -- who wrote about dragging her female dog out to a gravel pit and shooting her -- the benefit of the doubt.... In short, Noem just can't stop talking about killing her dog -- much to the collective confusion of horrified observers." ~~~
~~~ Marie: According to reports, Noem's telling of her murderous domestic animal rampage was not framed as a confession but as a boast about her super-MAGA toughness, apparently in an effort to impress Donald Trump enough to tap her as his running mate.
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Reader Comments (11)
What's in a name like Noem?
Is she auditioning for the Pretender's running mate, a spot on the SPCA board of directors, the nation's premier dominatrix, Sarah Palin's new consort, or some he-man's life partner?
Kinda hard for me to tell...
@Ken Winkes: Hard to say, but she is reportedly (okay, the Daily Mail, but it is a report) in a long-term extramarital relationship with Corey Lewandowski, who I read someplace (not going to look it up) is working on Trump's 2024 campaign.
So that checks off at least two of your boxes: (1) "Pretender's running mate" and (2) "some he-man's life partner."
Good summary of our clouded past, which raised as I was in a small town parts of which might have served as a Norman Rockwell model, I was able blithely to ignore until my late teens.
An entire political party has ignored it much longer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/04/opinion/trump-second-term-illiberalism.html
5-alarm fire
"Donald Trump, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, wants to kneecap the Federal Reserve. This should be a five-alarm fire for anyone who claims to care about inflation.
The former president and his advisers keep finding new ways to outdo themselves on bad economic ideas. Should Trump be granted a second term, he plans to slash the labor supply by ratcheting down immigration (including legal, work-authorized immigration). He wants to devalue the dollar. He’d levy worldwide tariffs of 10 percent or higher, plus perhaps a 100 percent tariff on some Chinese goods, apparently failing to notice that the costs of his previous tariffs fell almost entirely on American consumers.
Now, according to a Wall Street Journal scoop, Trump also wants to strip the Fed of its political independence. Proposed changes include enabling the president to fire the Fed chair at will, or even play a role in setting interest rates himself."
"real men wear diapers."
Trump people are weirdos.
Re: terrible economic ideas, like firing the Fed chair if Trump doesn’t get what he wants…
It’s all part of wanting to be king. No checks on any personal whims or desires, surrounded by sycophantic lackeys at the court, the ability to arrest and condemn opponents for any reason, or no reason at all, control of all media—no more Sleepy Don stories, full control of the courts (he’s almost there now), immediate access to the nation’s wealth, no more elections, and total immunity.
Noem would be the perfect running mate with the Donald.
She's against everything unless it making money for her, and she
won't state exactly what she's for, except things like no gun control.
no LGBTQ rights, etc.
The family also opened a lodge and restaurant on the ranch she owns.
If you go there, don't order anything with ground meat. You just
never know.
@Forrest Morris: Ha ha. Think I'll pass on the hog dogs and hush puppies, too.
People have joked the Republicans are so oppositional that if Democrats said they love puppies then the Republicans would oppose puppies. They really are just charactures of human beings.
It’s elemental…or maybe Ella Mental?
So last night, dipping into a book on the elements, I happened upon the entry for cobalt, Co, atomic number 27. Pretty interesting stuff. Did you know cobalt is one of the only metallic elements that can bond with carbon? Yup. You could look it up, as James Thurber used to say. In fact, vitamin B12 is the most common example of a cobalt-carbon bond. I’m guessing you could win some serious bar bets with that bit of trivia.
But…I digress. Where was I? Oh yeah. Cobalt. The name comes from the word kobald, German for goblin. It was awarded that somewhat nasty name because attempts to smelt it resulted in clouds of arsenic oxide. Not cool!
Anyways…goblins, being nasty underground thingies have a bad reputation which brings us to…puppy killer Kristi Noem!
I’m thinking, if Fatty was the genius he claims to be, he would recognize “noem” as a homonym for “gnome”. Gnomes, although mythical cousins to nasty goblins (Encyclopedia Britannica describes gnomes as small subterranean goblins), they also have knowledge of and access to the treasures of the earth. Trump being the fat greedy fuck he’s always been, might like that.
But there’s a catch. Gnomes are not interested in contact with humans, which sounds a lot like Noem! Oh, but wait! Trump himself is barely human. So great! A match made in underground caves filled with clouds of arsenic.
Now go win that bar bet. You’re welcome.
As an alternative to sending Trump to the cooler, a NYT writer has suggested that Judge Merchan use his legal power to issue punishment in the form of community service. Sentence him to say two Wednesdays in orange uniform picking up trash in some of the municipal parks. His security detail could seal the park off as Trump collects the trash of the city with a wheelie bin and s pickup stick.