Good morning! Here is today’s ramble.
And here is a transcript, edited for clarity:
Good morning. It’s Friday morning, August 7th. It’s quarter past 4 a.m. here in New York. I am awake for some reason, so I thought I would get right to it.
As you know, I’ve been on vacation for the last two weeks, whatever it is, 12 days, I guess. And I want to thank everybody for indulging me and reading over the archival pieces from PREVAIL that I’ve been sharing this week. And thanks to everybody who signed up for subscriptions. That’s always appreciated. It was fun to go through the archive and try to figure out which pieces to run, which ones were still relevant. Unfortunately, quite a few of them are still relevant.
On my break, I really did try to put my phone away and not be on social media the whole time and not be trying to keep up with every last little story that happened, like I usually do. I figure, “This is good. I’ll step back, take a breath. I’m sure when I come back, there’s gonna be lots of new developments to talk about.”
And there have not been a lot of new developments to talk about. It feels like nothing much changed in the twelve days that I’ve been gone.
We’ve got, you know, men in politics, particularly in the GOP, defending sexual abusers. That hasn’t changed. That’s the same old thing.
Todd Blanche is still out there. He’s still probably going to be confirmed. Susan Collins is going to be concerned, but she’s going to confirm him, and and these two jokers that threatened to hold him up in committee, they’re going to capitulate. They really already have. So we’re going to have this Epstein apologist, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, representing the Department of Justice—representing us, the people, really in name only—probably for the rest of of Trump’s term.
And the the whole idea that he’s going to make the slush fund go away? They keep saying it’s $1.8 billion. It’s $1.776 billion. It’s 1776. That’s the number. It’s important. God. The slush fund is going to continue a pace.
Mitch McConnell is still dead. Still. No, I’m sorry. I mean they put out a press release that he’s left rehab and is recovering at home. No pictures, no evidence of that happening other than a press release, which the press is just reporting like it’s absolute fact, like the guy hasn’t been hiding from everybody for the last, what, forty-five days now, whatever it is. So that hasn’t changed. Democrats haven’t done anything about it. That hasn’t changed, but that’s predictable.
We’re still in war with Iran. There’s no way out of the war with Iran. Trump keeps manipulating the market so that he and his cronies can make money from this. The Iranians basically said so and showed how it was done. There are real banks, like legit banks that have no connection with the administration, that have mapped out how the stock market moves based on when he says stuff and have programmed algorithms to act accordingly, which is ridiculous. The market is based on AI bullshit, data centers that will never get built, and the utterances of a mad, addled, evil, Kremlin mobster who’s in the Oval Office.
(I need more coffee than usual this morning. Sorry. Bear with me.)
Yeah, about the only thing that’s changed is that the reflecting pool is now empty. It’s really a microcosm of of the United States, isn’t it? I mean, Trump comes in, everything’s working in the reflecting pool pretty well. You know, there are problems with it, but for the most part, we all believe in it, we all like the reflecting pool, we all want it to do well. But he decides that there’s a problem with it that is not a problem, pays our tax money to one of his ridiculous cronies to fix the problem, it goes wildly over budget and then it doesn’t work. He fucks up the whole thing, and then even though it’s completely his fault, he arrests an Olympic athlete who represented the U.S. at the Olympics and accuses him of vandalism—even though there’s so much no vandalism that even Pierro, box-of-wine, the attorney for the District of Columbia, could not make a case and indict this guy, much to Trump’s consternation. And that led to a big dust up between the two people. And now we have basically a cement empty bowl there that isn’t reflecting shit.
So that’s a microcosm of the Trump experience, and the presidency of the first term and certainly of the second term. And it’s right there in the middle of Washington, D.C., a city he is destroying. Literally destroying.
He’s also not helping Ukraine defend itself, but we knew that was gonna happen. And he’s depleted all of our you missile supplies, our THAAD missiles and other things, which was also very predictable.
And he doesn’t care about inflation, he doesn’t care about affordability, doesn’t care about you, doesn’t care about me, he only cares about himself and staying out of prison—and, you know, the omelet station at Mar a Lago where he can ogle the girls there.
So yeah—not much has changed. Not much has changed. And I don’t know if everybody was just waiting for me to get back or what, but I don’t even see on the horizon what’s coming that’s going to change much.
The Iran thing is actually pretty easy to solve. It’s very easy to solve: Trump and Vance are removed by impeachment or by Fourteenth Amendment. Whoever the new president is says, “Hey, this guy was not legitimate. Sorry, let’s get back to the negotiating table.” Or just that that treaty that Donald ripped up? That wasn’t us. That doesn’t count anymore. We’re back to the treaty. And blame him, and then the Iranians would presumably come back to the table and we could make things right.
There’s no way for Trump to fix the problem other than by leaving. And I think he knows this, which is why he was yelling at Pete Hegseth—another abuser. An abuser yelling at an abuser. It’s really disgraceful.
And then I woke up this morning and I thought, I have to do a video. What am I gonna talk about? I have nothing to talk about, I’m not sure what to talk about. And I go and I check the social media feed, and there’s just an article there about how Eric Swalwell once hooked up with Katie Miller, back before Katie Miller was Stephen Miller’s wife. So yeah, I vomited in my mouth and I tried to go back to bed and it didn’t work. So I got up and made coffee and here I am.
But things have to change because we’re not in a moment that’s sustainable. This hasn’t been sustainable for quite some time, but it’s really not sustainable now. There’s a great episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns, who’s the old rich man, and his assistant Smithers, they’ve retreated like Howard Hughes. And Burns is in a bathrobe and he has tissue boxes for shoes, and his fingernails are long, and he’s walking around muttering crazy things. And he has this model airplane that’s about as big as this spray bottle. And he says, “Look, Smithers, it’s the Spruce Moose.” And Smithers says, “That’s a very nice model, sir.” And Burns says, “Model?”
And then later in the episode, Burns says, “Let’s go to” wherever it is they’re going to go. And Smithers says, “Okay.” And Burns says, “We’ll take the Spruce Moose. Get in.” And Smithers says, “But how can I get in? It’s a model.” And then Burns takes out a gun and clicks the gun and points it at Smithers and says,
And the point of that Simpsons reference, that extended Simpsons reference using props on my desk, is that there is a point when reality does come back to haunt you. You cannot live in a fantasy land forever. Because at some point, reality’s gonna come and bite you on the ass. That’s just how it goes. And I feel like we’re heading for that right now.
And ultimately it’s going to be a good thing for those of us who are on the side of justice and democracy. But I don’t know that it won’t be painful and that there won’t be damage. And it’s sad that it had to get to this place, but you know, it’s coming. This is a guy who keeps saying that that gasoline is $1.98 a gallon. It’s just—it’s just not true. It’s just flat out not true.
But he lies about everything. He lies about his height and his weight and the size of the crowd and the economy and the this and the that. And now they’re trying to lie about Fauci, and it’s just all disgraceful.
But at some point, things will bite us in the ass. And Trump’s case, he should really worry, because he’s got a prodigious ass. And that’s a pretty good place to end: right with Trump’s ass.
So I wish everybody a fantastic weekend. Stay cool out there, and until next time: we shall prevail!
TONIGHT
The Five 8 also returns and we have a fantastic guest lined up.
