The Convicted Felon Donald Chump is destroying the country. People are seeing this. Even some of his supporters are being confronted with reality. Noor Al-Sibai (FORTUNE) reports:
Tech CEOs rallied behind Donald Trump
in hopes that he would lower regulations and increase profits — and
although he's already done the former, the latter now seems like a pipe
dream.
As Vox reports,
any gains tech companies have gleaned from Trump's deregulation are
minuscule in comparison to the economic havoc the president has wreaked
with his foolhardy tariffs.
As the election ramped up last July, tech venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz insisted in a Substack blog post
that the only way for the United States to maintain "economic and
technological preeminence" over China and its "much darker, more
totalitarian" policies would be, essentially, to beat our erstwhile
trading partner.
Shortly thereafter, the monied pair revealed on their podcast
that they were all-in for Trump despite being lifelong Democrats
because he was, to their minds, America's last best hope at defeating
China and becoming the tech utopia they've always wanted.
Though
such warmongering sentiments are clearly behind the president's
enormous tariffs on Chinese goods, it also undermines the Silicon Valley
CEOs who lined up to kiss his ring because, to put it bluntly, almost
all the components for American tech are made in China.
Their greed, it turns out, was not a good motive. And their greed blinded them to the reality that Mr. Chump is a convicted felon who breaks his word all the time and who has no understanding of the economy.
After January 6th, the only thing these people worried about was how to rake more in millions for their own pockets.
And somehow this greed did not bear good fortune for them.
Shocking.
No one has ever told us that greed is bad.
They should have had lessons and labeling of greed as a sin and --
What is that?
Greed is considered to be one of the seven deadly sins?
Oh.
Well someone should have told the tech geniuses!!!!
They f**ked around and they found out.
His first 100 days are still ongoing and they are a complete disaster. He is a failure, 100% failure. His legacy is corruption and incompetence.
I had a dream last night where he had a stroke in his sleep and one person after another -- in the administration and out -- spoke on camera about how awful he was as the country entered a one week period of celebration.
Friday, April 18, 2025. We're all a blink away from seeing
democracy in Chump Land -- unless of course we don't see it with our own
eyes because Chump shipped us off to a prison in a foreign land.
The Politics of Destruction are pulling Donald Chump right down the sewage drain.
Yesterday
was Senator Chris Van Hollen spent his second day in a row in El
Salvador. That is the country where Convicted Felon Chump has been
sending people to rot in human rights disaster of a prison that's
honestly little more than a torture chamber. The people were given no
due process and one of them, Kilmar Ábrego García, is a constituent of
Senator Van Hollen. With Donald Chump refusing to follow the Supreme
Court's order that he facilitate the return of Kilmar to the United
States, the senator flew to El Salvador on Wednesday.
He was denied access to Kilmar.
The attention that resulted from media around the world
probably explains why, late yesterday, the senator was finally allowed
to see Kilmar.
Later on Thursday, a federal court ruled
against the Trump administration in case which could mean government
officials are deposed over the deportation.
In its judgement, the three-judge panel said:
"The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this
country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is
the foundation of our constitutional order."
Mr
Ábrego García's lawyers are suing the US government for sending him to a
mega-prison in El Salvador in March, in what the Trump administration
has admitted was an error.
Lawrence O'Donnell offered this commentary on MSNBC last night.
Chump's
a crook and people are rightly worried so the administration that
refused to go before the courts has started attempting to try Kilmer in
the press. Daniella Silva (NBC NEWS) reports:
The
Department of Justice shared records, not previously made public,
detailing how police officers in Maryland assessed Abrego Garcia was a
member of the MS-13 gang during a 2019 arrest. He had no criminal
history at the time, which the documents also state, and his attorneys
have denied that he is a gang member.
In
a document titled “gang field interview sheet,” the Prince George’s
County Police Department detailed how in March 2019 they approached
Abrego Garcia along with three others for loitering at a Home Depot
parking lot in Hyattsville. Abrego Garcia said in a court filing he was
there looking for day labor work.
Police
said he was wearing “a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of
money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents” on the
bills.
The officers said such
insignia — indicating “ver, oir, y callar” or “see no evil, hear no evil
and say no evil” — was “indicative of the Hispanic gang culture.” The
officers said they consulted with a reliable confidential source, who
“advised that [Abrego Garcia] is the rank of ‘Chequeo‘ with the moniker
of ‘Chele’” in the gang.
Calvin Kline.
I
think I've talked about this before. I do a ton of public speaking and
always have. Sometimes it's a favor for a friend. I do not remember
what the thing was for but it was mutual friend of Elaine
and mine and I was there to speak on healing -- believe it or not --
and there was a police officer who was like Cliff Claven on CHEERS (or
like the security guard the same actor played in Goldie Hawn's
PROTOCOL). And he was speaking about teens and gang violence.
One
sign of being a gangster -- he 'taught' -- was wearing designer
clothes. Like Calvin Kline which he had on the monitors and on his hand
out.
Calvin Kline?
Never
heard of him. I was wearing a Calvin Klein dress -- and fragrance -- I
was obsessed with CK during that period -- it was right after I wrapped
up an Armani clothes obsession. (Shout out to Michelle Pfeiffer, great
lady, who wore a black Armani dress that ended my obsession with
Armani because nobody wore or wears Armani better than Michelle, it's
like a second skin on her. And I wisely moved on to another designer.)
(And friendship with Michelle is why Ava and I avoided reviewing any
David E. Kelly series at THIRD for years. We broke that rule with BIG
LITTLE LIES and did so because Laura Dern -- a very talented actress but
also a very generous person -- during the filming of BIG LITTLE LIES
could not stop praising the performance Nicole Kidman was giving. And
we agreed we'd review it when it came out because it is so very rare to
hear any actor go to the lengths that Laura did in praising another
actor's work. Again, Laura is a very generous person.)
Calvin
Klein is reduced to CK and some gangs do wear it (Crip Killer) or did.
But, no, someone wearing a CK t-shirt, jeans, off the rack or designer
clothes was not a gangster because they were wearing that article of
clothing. Millions of people bought CK t-shirts and jeans throughout
the country -- millions who were not gang members.
I
laugh when people try to present some circumstantial nonsense as proof
of criminal activity. I especially laugh when they present it as though
it's coming from an expert. I especially love the experts who cite
things like Calvin Klein in a prepared and planned speech in front of
hundreds and they misspell Calvin Klein on handouts and the monitor.
A lot of people make a lot of claims. Claims are not the same as facts.
Chicago
Bulls cap? I'm not a basketball fan. But I've owned a Bulls cap and
an Indiana Pacers cap. So I wore CK and I had a Bulls cap -- look out
Kirsti Noam's a'coming for me!!!!!
A
top Trump administration official said those demanding due process for a
wrongly deported Maryland dad might themselves be accused of “aiding
and abetting criminals and terrorists.”
Appearing
on Rob Schmitt Tonight on Newsmax, Donald Trump’s senior director for
counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, suggested critics of Kilmar Abrego
Garcia’s incarceration in a Salvadoran megaprison might even be
committing a federal crime.
He said: “It’s
not left and right, It’s not even Republican or Democrat. There’s one
line that divides us: Do you love America or do you hate America? It’s
really quite that simple.”
Gorka,
born in the U.K. to Hungarian parents, suggested in the Tuesday
interview that Democrats who argue that Abrego Garcia should be returned
to the U.S.—per the Supreme Court’s orders—don’t “love America.”
The
former Newsmax host added that those who dissent against the Trump
administration’s actions are “on the side of the cartel members, on the
side of the illegal aliens on the side of the terrorists.”
He
went even further, saying: “And you have to ask yourself, are they
technically aiding and abetting them? Because aiding and abetting
criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute.”
Gorka
failed to mention that Abrego Garcia’s alleged links to the MS-13
gang—used to justify his deportation—are flimsy at best, based upon a
single allegation made in a field interview report from 2019 and a
confidential informant telling police he was a member of the gang.
Better
get ready for the handcuffs, I guess. Gorka is proof of one important
thing, though a number of stupid people are born in this country, a
number of the stupid in this country do come from other countries -- the
United Kingdom in Gorka's case.
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary and strong language. President Trump’s plan to have migrants — and potentially U.S. citizens
— rounded up, flown to El Salvador, and confined there in a maximum
security facility that specializes in indefinite detention meets that
bar. However, even when news coverage and criticism has acknowledged
Trump’s vision is almost certainly illegal and unquestionably dangerous,
it has often used fairly normal terminology and referred to the flights
as deportations to a “prison.” That is not what is happening. President
Trump is sending people to the camps.
The distinction comes from some of the unique features of the
Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, the infamous El Salvadoran
facility that is holding people on behalf of the Trump administration. A
“prison” is most typicallydefined
as an institution holding inmates who have been sentenced for a crime.
And, of course, most sentences have an end date. However, El Salvadoran
President Nayib Bukele and his government have boasted that people placed in CECOT, “have no chance of getting out.”
Because of the prospect of indefinite detention and the lack of due
process the Trump administration has afforded the people it has sent to
CECOT, experts who spoke to TPM said the facility could be more
accurately described as a “concentration camp,” “penal colony,” or
“permanent prison camp.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement took violent steps earlier this
week to arrest a Guatemalan man who not only has no criminal record but
wasn’t even the target authorities were looking for, according to his
lawyer.
Juan Francisco Méndez, a 29-year old Guatemalan
immigrant, was arrested without a warrant Monday in New Bedford,
Massachusetts—but that’s not the only shady thing about this arrest.
Méndez and his wife, Marilú Domingo Ortiz, were in their car when a pair of armed officers stopped them. In a video shared by The New Bedford Light,
the couple told the officers that they were waiting for his lawyer to
arrive before speaking with the agents. When Ortiz asked whether they
had a warrant for her husband’s arrest, the officers did not respond.
When asked if she could leave, they said, “No.”
In a statement, ICE told The New Republic that Méndez “refused to comply with officers’ instructions and resisted apprehension.”
The
officers continued to ask Ortiz to roll down her window to speak. After
some time, one of the officers, who was wearing a bulletproof vest,
violently smashed the back window of Méndez’s car with what appeared to
be a pickax.
This
is the country we live in now and you damn well remember who put us
here -- MAGA and DSA. Both are crazed and both f**ked over democracy.
They both believe in tearing down the system. They are where the
fringes meet because politics is not a linear line with one extreme on
the far right over a line and another extreme on the other end of that
line, it's a loop and the extremists meet and bump into each other as it
loops around -- extremists from the right and from the left. It's why
so many DSAs rush over to the extreme right as they age. It's why the
Jimmy Dores and others can so easily move over to MAGA or claim they're
"MAGA Communists."
And they put us where we are now.
This is what we're trapped in now for the next years. This is where we are and, again, we need to remember who put us here.
Some
agreed with what I wrote regarding David Hogg yesterday, some didn't,
some agreed with a portion or disagreed with a portion of it.
Just
to make it as clear as possible, the Democratic Party does not grow via
knee jerk responses. Trying to shut down a conversation is not helpful
for the party. David has said A and the next person can say B and a
conversation can get rolling.
He
needs to explain exactly what he's talking about and do so on camera.
No more of this print interviews on the topic where we're dependent upon
a journalist for what gets printed from an interview. We need to here
him in full, not pull quotes that are included to attract readers.
David is young and that's a plus and it's a minus. Some people are old and that's a plus and that's a minus.
I'm
not afraid of diversity, I embrace it. And we can learn from other
viewpoints. David can see something in a different way. He should be
allowed to express that. Other should listen, take it in, evaluate it,
comment on it and keep the conversation going.
As
it goes currently, I support him on this though certain details may
emerge that would make it necessary for him to step down from his
official position. I pull support on the idea completely if this ends
up a Cenk-Kyle scam where a bunch of Socialists are brought in to try to
take over the party (Cenk and Kyle's Justice Democrats had and has no
Democrats, it was and is an organization for Socialist candidates). I
walk from that idea and will actively work to destroy it if that's the
case. DSA helped put Chump into the White House. Norman Solomon,
Rahsida Tlaib and all the other Socialists worked overtime to trash
Kamala.
And they always knew this could suppress turnout but they didn't care.
Just like they always knew that the election would come down to either Kamala or Chump.
They
made their choice to actively work to destroy the Democratic Party.
So, no, I'm not for any scheme or plan that works to reward that
behavior.
And considering
that destroying Kamala's campaign resulted in the hellhole we are now
living in, there's no way that actual Democrats are going to let that
trash slide on back in acting like they did nothing wrong.
The White House’s attempt to halt proceedings in the case of mistakenly deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia was smacked down by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in a blistering ruling Thursday.
“It
is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But
in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right
to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the
semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional
order,” the panel wrote in its ruling. “Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.
And
this is where we all have to hope the rule of law holds. Every day, we
have to take a deep breath and hope. And DSA put us here. Our
democracy could die at any minute. So, no, plans to back DSAers? Not
with money from the Democratic Party. And right now if you're are a DNC
official and you're not supporting Democrats or you're supporting
Socialists over Democrats, your ass needs to resign your position.
“[President]
Donald Trump is finding fewer and fewer supplicants for his series of
extortion attempts,” penned MSNBC Opinion Editor James Downie.
The
"extortion attempts" he’s talking about include Trump's call for Ivy
League schools to curb and conduct investigations into anti-Israel
protests on campus, as well as public schools need to adopt his
anti-CRT/DEI ideals.
Downie
noted, “The schools are not alone: From law firms to corner offices,
some of America’s most prestigious institutions are finding their
spines—or at least their voices—in the face of Trump’s power grabs.”
The
columnist is observing a “vibe shift” in Americans’ feelings toward
Trump’s policies, and he says it is showing in the polls.
“Trump’s
net approval on immigration issues is minus 5%; on deportations
specifically, it’s minus 10%,” Downie opined. “When politicians and
pundits try to conjure a more pro-MAGA vibe shift, they not only
overstate the popularity of Trump’s agenda, but they also understate the
scale and the fury of his opposition."
The
whole country is under attack from Chump. We can't afford the nonsense
of the DSA. We can't afford their Politics of Destruction or their cry
baby, fantasy world tantrums. In 2024, it was Kamala or Chump. The
DSA launched a months long public tantrum. They were Cartman. They
wanted the new iPad and when they were told that mom could only afford
the Toshiba, they threw their tantrum in the store and ended up getting
nothing.
We're all paying for that tantrum.
And we will be paying for it for the next few years. If we're lucky and
the system holds -- the same system that MAGA and DSA wish to destroy
-- if we're lucky and the system holds, we might still have a democracy
when Chump leaves office.
A
leaked draft of the Department of Health and Human Services’ next
budget shows that the Trump administration plans to eliminate a storied
toddler health program among other major cuts, according to The Washington Post.
The
proposal, which was generated by the Office of Management and Budget,
would slash overall HHS spending by about a third, from $121 billion to
$80 billion.
One of the
programs to be eliminated is Head Start, the long-running initiative
that provides toddlers from low-income families with education and
health services. It began in 1965 as part of former President Lyndon B.
Johnson’s “war on poverty.”
Currently, Head
Start receives about $12 billion and enrolls around 800,000 children. It
was among the targets of Project 2025, the far-right political playbook
that Donald Trump denied having familiarity with while on the campaign
trail. Trump’s OMB is now led by Russell Vought, the main author of
Project 2025—one of a number of contributors now in high-profile
administration roles.
Children's
lives are being destroyed. This is Chump Land and every adult knew
what it was going to be like to live there so, no, I don't hand out
excuses to DSA. They wanted to show the Democrats how powerful they
were and then they'd be catered too.
Excuse
me? You're pariah now. The same way Ralph Nader was in 2000. And has
remained ever since. There is no comeback in the foreseeable future.
And there certainly isn't a comeback for DSA -- or even a hall pass --
while we're living under the madmen they put back into the White House.
Daniel
Berulis. He's a whistleblower that we noted in the Wednesday and
Thursday snapshot. Rachel Maddow spoke with him on her MSNBC program
Tuesday night.
Berulis
says that certain computer systems, known as DOGE, were linked to
Starlink, a satellite internet service, and that this connection may
have allowed people using Russian IP addresses to gain access to highly
sensitive government databases.
Starlink,
created by tech billionaire Elon Musk, provides internet access from
satellites in space. It’s used in remote locations and even by parts of
the U.S. military. But Berulis alleges that this powerful network became
a weak point in American cybersecurity. He claims that newly created
usernames—linked to Russian internet locations—were used to enter
systems that should have been locked down.
Berulis
made these statements during an interview on national television. He
appeared on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, alongside his lawyer Andrew
Bakaj, who supported the claims with additional warnings about national
security.
One of the systems allegedly accessed was
the Mission Launch Readiness Board (MLRB) database. This system holds
important information about launch schedules and operations, which are
vital to U.S. space missions. According to Berulis, DOGE engineers
accessed these files without the proper clearance, raising serious
questions about how these systems were being managed.
Even
more concerning, Andrew Bakaj warned that DOGE engineers may have
unintentionally (or intentionally) exposed parts of the U.S. Department
of Energy systems. These include systems connected to the country’s
nuclear stockpile management—one of the most critical parts of U.S.
national security.
Elon
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) foot soldiers paid
another visit Wednesday to the federal agency where they were accused of
causing a “significant cybersecurity breach.”
A
whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) made the
accusation in an explosive NPR report Tuesday, offering evidence that
DOGE took large amounts of data from the agency’s systems and risked a
breach by foreign adversaries in the process.
Daniel
Berulis, an IT staffer at the NLRB, said he first noticed the “breach”
when large amounts of data left the agency’s systems after DOGE
staffers—who insisted that their actions not be tracked—gained access.
He also claimed to have observed suspicious log-in attempts from an IP
address in Russia using DOGE’s new accounts.
A source told Forbes
that representatives with the Department of Government Efficiency
(DOGE) arrived at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Wednesday for a two-hour meeting with leadership.
The topic of the meeting and the identities of the DOGE staffers involved remain unclear.
“If
DOGE wasn’t here before, the story prompted them to pay us a visit
today,” the source with knowledge of the meeting told Forbes. “All I
know is that two to three people from DOGE are meeting with agency heads
right now.”
DOGE’s presence comes a day after
NLRB general counsel William Cowen assured agency staffers in a Tuesday
email that DOGE has not been in contact with the agency.
Where
are the Congressional hearings? We need Congressional hearings on this
right now to get to the bottom of what happened or didn't happen.
Where
are the hearings? The GOP controls both houses of Congress and they're
scared living in Chump Land just like everybody else. David Gilmour (MEDIAITE) reports:
Senator
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) openly admitted that she and her Republican
colleagues were “all afraid” of “retaliation” from President Donald
Trump as she criticized what she called “unlawful” executive overreach
and sweeping federal cuts.
Murkowski’s
comments came during a 45-minute session at The Foraker Group’s annual
leadership summit and stands as one of the starkest public admissions
from a Republican yet of the political pressure facing those in the
party who push back against Trump policy or rhetoric.
“We are all afraid,” Murkowski told the crowd on Monday.
Pausing,
she added: “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place
where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m
oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation
is real. And that’s not right.”
Murkowski went
on to criticize what she called an “unlawful” approach to implementing
service cuts and recounted her staff’s constant scramble to confirm and
mitigate rumors of abrupt changes.
“It is as hard as anything I have been engaged in, in the 20-plus years I’ve been in the Senate,” she said.
They're
all afraid but some like suck up Lindsey Graham won't admit it and want
to pretend like everything's normal -- as normal as that alleged
international female flight attendant that he insists upon claiming he
fell in love with -- despite the fact that most people say the closest
he ever got to a flight attendant was dressing up Saturday nights
as Connie Sellecca's character on FLYING HIGH back when he was a young
man.
Elbridge
Colby has been confirmed as undersecretary of policy at the Pentagon
following a 54-45 Senate vote. The role will be pivotal in shaping U.S.
defense strategies. Vice President JD Vance criticized former Senate
Republican Leader Mitch McConnell for opposing the nomination, claiming
his actions were politically driven and petty.
McConnell
was the only GOP senator to vote against Colby. He raised concerns that
Colby’s policy focus on the Indo-Pacific may weaken key alliances
elsewhere.
McConnell said, “Make no mistake: America will not be made great again by those who are content to manage our decline.”
Pay attention, Lindsey. "There
are no second acts in American lives," F. Scott Fitzgerald is famous
for writing. But it's equally true that, in films, a strong ending can
make up for a lot and sell tickets. Mitch is not long for this world.
It's not as though he can clean up all the wrong he did. However, he
can go out strong. You might try learning from that.
We'll wind down with this from THE BLACK COMMENTATOR.
