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Inevitable: You Show Up
Apologies for invoking again the awful noise that never stops. But a month before mid-terms, a fascist feckless clown show run by the dumbest people ever churns on with lies, bribes, cruelty, crude racism; their flailing leader grows daily more perilous; and fiery patriots remind us we cannot grow weary. Oddly, we find solace in Lindsey Graham's 2016 prophesy to the GOP: "If we (choose) Trump, we will get destroyed, and we will deserve it." God: "And in the fullness of time...."
Because we are well and truly beyond the looking glass, an actual, NYTPitchbot-likeTimes headline just posited that "some conservatives are having second thoughts" about Trump - this, even as he continues obliterating every institution of democratic governance, bars press outlets, ignores court rulings, betrays allies, courts autocrats, spews profanities online and at rallies, turns the election into a reality show and the Oval Office into a bordello, and shovels over $1.8 billion into junk vanity projects as his approval plunges to 26% on the economy and his brain dissolves into mashed potatoes. "Second thoughts?"
Decades ago, Robert Reich warned an American economy moving increasingly overseas through the 1970s was creating a two-tired society of a few rich winners and too many left-behind Americans whose anger, resentment and historic racism could be easily manipulated by a savvy carnival barker hungry for power - especially with a right-wing SCOTUS willing to give him almost total immunity for his boundless crimes. The grim result: What Timothy Snyder calls unprecedented "superpower suicide," wherein a major country quickly crashes and burns due to incompetence at all the "basic instruments of state power."
Now, facing "the mid-term music," the GOP flounders through "a five-alarm fire," pulling out lies, bribes, denial. They "must WIN" by using "every tool" - vote early, absentee, in person, by mail (or ICE thugs). Rick Wilson: "Oh, NOW mail-in ballots AREN'T a scam? Sweaty Don is nervous." They hype a duplicitous White House App: "365 Days of Wins." Trump offers a stream of paltry bribes: $90 to 20 million seniors to offset higher Medicare costs he caused, $500 to a million "excess" Obamacare fees, $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans win, conjuring a shameless Oprah-like spectacle: "You get a car, and you get a car..."
The alleged master of the Art of the Deal grows cringey and desperate, as do his boasts. At a recent rally: "I know more about inflation, I know more about everything than anyone in this room, anybody anywhere in the world." Of his two-day "emotional support" debacle of a Texas convention, he claimed 107 million views compared to the NFL's 25 million; the reality was his 3.3 million vs. their 25 million views, with even Ken Paxton secretly complaining, "It dropped our numbers." One viral meme tells the tale: A sign with sky-high gas prices, an angry MAGA voter, and the text, "Turns out my truck doesn't run on liberal tears."
In 2015, Trump packed a rally in Mobile ALA with over 30,000 fans; last week, at a high school gym with mostly empty upper tiers, people began streaming out as he bragged the economy is "booming," with new plants "everywhere." Later, he stubbornly insisted, "There are no empty seats" and his rallies are "HOTTER than ever," so nothing to see here except mashed potatoes. "Just pretend I’m on the ballot," he pleaded, a loser's losing message amidst the debacles he's forged. In need of safe harbor, his itinerary in "a red-state October blitz" is almost entirely in deep-red states he once won by double digits: Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas.
In Ohio this weekend, he raved Democrats' "transgender for everybody" policies would “mutilize your children," he has "record-winning numbers," "Talafreako" (in Texas, not Ohio) is a "vaygan" who "eats a piece of lettuce all day long" but he's now "gone full on eating meat" to get elected so he goes to barbecues where he's "throwing up all the time." He rambled, ranted, cursed, flaunted "the utter disdain for the office he holds and the people hes supoosed to serve." NYTPitchbot: "Whether it’s Obama saying 'Yes We Can” or Donald Trump saying 'We're gonna shove it up their ass,' both presidents adopted divisive slogans."
Beyond the rallies, the carnage persists. Millions have lost SNAP benefits. Many thousands, caught in our immigration atrocities, endure "quiet reckonings with what the country has become.” The Atlantic profiled the Ohio truck driver who hit and killed Haitian student Pierre Damas Bel in an apparent suicide; he is haunted by a young man who “would have been a model citizen,” who had to charge his own ankle monitor, who "was hurting - we did not do right by him.” War agit-prop still spews. So does cultural appropriation: Park rangers blast regime theft of Smokey the Bear, a forest fire refugee: "Only you can prevent fascist liars." "Zoologically-deficient hacks" have also dropped AI slop of USA-themed penguins in Greenland, where they don't live; some suggest they "shouldn’t have dismantled the Department of Education so quickly."
Surreal dissonance flourishes. Because they are "committed to leading the world in Gold Standard Science," other regime goons are bravely charging ahead to "MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY, SAFE, AND BEAUTIFUL" with an executive order to "ELIMINATE FOREIGN, INVASIVE TICKS AND MOSQUITOES" to "restore enjoyment of the great outdoors" through "safe and effective technology-enabled methods," thus rebuilding "public trust in science." Too little, too late? Still, their effort aligns nicely with Press Barbie's move to Fox News, per The Borowitz Report, "as a stepping-stone" to acquiring the requisite “warrior ethos" to become Secretary of Defense. And that profound disconnect is alive and festering in the incoherent child king somehow still babbling about "the golden age of America.”
Declaiming, “Watch for the ‘Midterm Surprise!’,” he just boasted his sparse rally crowds are "unbelievable!" He even added for the 8,726th time his now parody-level, "Nobody has ever seen anything like it"and raved the GOP is “flipping races all over the place.” As a public service, Aaron Rupar, who's borne witness to years of this insanity, urges we read the transcript of his recent Time interview to grasp "the grave cognitive impairment" of "random brain firings" like, "I just got a tariff from Lindsey Graham" and "100 million people watched the midterm convention." Observers: "He’s like a criminally inclined rutabaga with some language skills" and "He looks like an attendant just asked him if he wants pudding or Jello and he’s mad he has no idea what those are."
Sunday night, Indivisible hosted a "Hands Off Our Vote" event in New York to prep for Oct. 17's No Kings and the election. Despite our fatigue - from lying, thieving, genocidal rants, fucking ballrooms - a fiery Mark Ruffalo vowed to "Hulk-out" to convey his rage. "We are so tired, but we can't give up now," he said. "They want to keep us afraid. Their only weapon is our fear. But we're inevitable." He recalled meeting with activist Harry Belafonte a few years ago and asking, "How are we going to know what to do? When are we going to know when it's our calling? And he said, 'Brother, you’ll know. And then you go. You show up.’“
Robert De Niro, out of furious fucks to give, raged at policies crazy, cruel and increasingly unpopular. "Power...to...the...people," he intoned. "It isn't just a slogan. It's the founding principle of our nation." So what do those now unduly empowered do? he asked. "They try to take our votes away. Are you kidding me?" (Ghost of Travis Bickle) "Hands Off Our Vote. Lemme put it another way - keep your fucking hands off our vote," he seethed. Then he led the crowd in an explosive call-and-response to "spineless officials, the Supreme Court, masked ICE thugs," finally "that coward, that fucking piece of shit Donald Trump. When he tries to take our voice and power away, what do we tell him?" To each, he bade,"Keep your fucking hands off our vote!" and take back the House, the Senate, our country. In brief, show up.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Trump's middle-school level AI images feature headless penguins in Greenland, where they don't live. Truth Social post
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Top Huckabee Aide Covered Up Report on Killings of 9 Americans by Israeli Settlers
A top aide to Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, is being called a "traitor" following revelations that he manipulated embassy reports to portray the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a positive light, including covering up a report about nine US citizens killed by Israeli settlers and security forces in the West Bank.
Previous reporting by Responsible Statecraft has exposed how the aide, David Milstein—the stepson of right-wing radio host Mark Levin, a close friend of both President Donald Trump and Netanyahu—had instilled what State Department officials described as a culture of fear surrounding any information that portrays Israel negatively.
This included suppressing reports of massacres of Palestinian aid-seekers by Israeli soldiers at sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, removing content critical of Israel from official press statements, confronting and pushing for the firing of colleagues he viewed as insufficiently pro-Israel, and advocating for the State Department to refer to the West Bank as "Judea and Samaria," a name preferred by Israelis seeking to annex the territory.
Based on discussions with 15 people who work with Milstein in Washington and Jerusalem and several internal cables and memos, The New York Times revealed on Thursday that the senior aide has gone even further than previously known.
In March, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and 30 other senators requested that the State Department press Israel to provide details on the cases of nine Palestinian Americans killed in the West Bank since 2022 by Israeli settlers and security forces.
One of them, 19-year-old Nasrallah Abu Siyam, had been fatally shot the previous month while trying to stop settlers from stealing livestock from his West Bank village.
Embassy officials compiled a report on the status of Israel's investigations into Siyam's killing and the eight others. According to the Times:
Its central findings suggested that, in most cases, investigations had made little progress, that some cases had been closed, and that no one had been charged in any of the killings, these officials said.
Instead of forwarding the report, Mr. Milstein argued that the embassy should send a letter saying that Israel was properly handling the investigations, two officials briefed on the discussions said.
On May 4, Paul D. Guaglianone, a State Department official, sent a letter responding to Mr. Van Hollen, saying that the embassy, which had reduced staff because of the Iran War, was focused on security cooperation with Israel and protecting Americans against Iranian attacks. (The intense fighting had wound down nearly a month earlier, after a ceasefire was struck on April 8.)
The letter, provided to the Times by Mr. Van Hollen’s office, said the embassy was working with Israel to “ensure accountability for these deaths.”
The response did not reassure Mr. Van Hollen.
"If you don’t get accountability, you endanger more American citizens,” he said in a phone interview.
The Times report comes as violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, which is often backed by Israel's military and security forces, is at a historic high, according to the United Nations, and is drawing condemnation and sanctions from around the world.
As of September 18, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had recorded more than 1,600 settler attacks causing Palestinian casualties or property damage this year—an average of nearly seven per day.
Just nine days before the Times investigation was published, the Senate narrowly voted down a resolution, introduced by Van Hollen, which would have compelled the State Department to produce an unclassified report on Israeli abuses in the West Bank, including the killings of the nine Palestinian Americans.
The resolution specifically requested that the department turn over all credible information it possessed on these killings within 30 days.
Palestinians attend the funeral of Nasrallah Abu Siyam, who was killed after Israeli settlers opened fire during a raid on the town of Mukhmas, northeast of East Jerusalem, on February 19, 2026. (Photo by Issam Rimawi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The Times also showed that Milstein had actively undermined Trump's own policy. In March, as Israel approved a record number of new settlements at a time, staff members at the US Embassy in Jerusalem prepared an urgent report warning that it could be a prelude to Israel's full annexation of the West Bank. This would fly in the face of not just international law, but also Trump's own public position opposing a formal Israeli takeover of the occupied territory.
The Times reported that Milstein stopped the report from ever making it to Washington.
He also reportedly prevented the drafting of another report in April warning that the dramatic expansion of settlements could spark a Palestinian uprising. In another cable, Milstein praised Netanyahu for his “unprecedented new initiatives to combat” rising violence in the West Bank.
This characterization starkly diverges from a UN Human Rights Office report written in February, which found that the Israeli government and military had played a central role in facilitating settler violence—including by arming settlers, providing equipment and policing powers, participating in attacks alongside them, and routinely failing to hold perpetrators accountable.
Huckabee—an evangelical Zionist who believes Israel has a biblical right to the West Bank and openly supports Israeli settlement expansion—vehemently defended Milstein and lambasted The New York Times' reporting.
"The NY Slimes w/ cowardly 'anonymous sources' did a hit piece on David Milstein," he wrote on social media. "I personally and categorically refute the elements of your proposed ‘story’ and I’m surprised that you expect to be taken seriously with such nonsense without even one named source."
The State Department responded to the report by telling the Times that “the entire team at State remains focused on advancing President Trump’s America First agenda.”
But critics have described Milstein's actions as anything but "America First."
"NYT reports that a Huckabee top aide is a literal traitor, actively covering up Israeli killings of American citizens and falsifying embassy reports about Israel’s role in settler violence," said Jasper Nathaniel, an independent American journalist who has reported extensively on attacks against Palestinians from the West Bank.
Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said that if a Democratic Congress is elected in November, it "should investigate further how Milstein suppressed information and stonewalled congressional inquiries into the murder of American citizens, if he’s not fired by then, which obviously he should be."
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DOJ Seeks to Prosecute Star Witness in Jan. 6 Probe Who Claimed Trump Tried to Join Rioters
Hutchinson, who was an aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, told Congress she overheard Trump demand the removal of metal detectors at his rally near the White House before the riot, despite knowing that some attendees were armed. She quoted him saying, "They're not here to hurt me."
She also relayed information she claimed to have learned secondhand from others in the Trump White House. She said that Anthony Ornato, the deputy White House chief of staff for operations, told her that Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of his SUV away from the Secret Service agent driving it so he could join supporters at the Capitol.
Ornato has since said he does not recall recounting this incident to Hutchinson, and the agents in the vehicle have denied that it took place, according to a subsequent investigation by Republicans in the House of Representatives. However, other witnesses have testified more broadly to Trump's anger that he could not join his supporters at the Capitol.
Hutchinson also said Meadows was reluctant to intervene as rioters threatened to hang then-Vice President Mike Pence. She claimed Meadows told her that Trump believed Pence—who'd refused to assist his efforts to overturn the election result—deserved the threats and that the rioters had done nothing wrong.
Trump has since pardoned every one of the more than 1,500 people convicted of offenses related to the Capitol attack, including those who committed violent felonies.
A man climbs down after being photographed with a noose during a protest calling for legislators to overturn the election results in President Donald Trump's favor at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Asked about plans to bring charges against Hutchinson, a DOJ spokesperson said, "The department does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations, or the lack thereof."
But the department's pursuit of Hutchinson has been public knowledge since at least April, when The New York Times reported that a criminal investigation into the former White House aide had been opened.
The Times noted that it was highly unusual for such a probe to be undertaken by the Civil Rights Division—which usually handles cases of discrimination—rather than the US attorney for the District of Columbia.
Efforts to prosecute Hutchinson follow attempts by the DOJ to bring charges against the president's other perceived enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both of which have been thrown out of court.
In a post on social media, Andrew Fleischman, a Georgia-based trial and appeals lawyer, decried the targeting of Hutchinson as "a chilling and corrupt indictment of a woman who told the truth," but also "yet another opportunity for the Trump DOJ to shit its pants in court."
Raskin Bill Would Compel Smithsonian to Preserve Trump's 'Governmental Propaganda' in Permanent Exhibit
On Wednesday, Raskin announced a bill that would compel the Smithsonian to collect and preserve objects "reflecting the rise of governmental propaganda, corruption, and authoritarianism" under Trump's two presidencies.
The 2026 America the Beautiful annual national parks pass features President Donald Trump alongside George Washington. (Photo from the US Department of the Interior via Wikimedia Commons)
The legislation comes amid Trump's attempts to warp the Smithsonian's content to reflect his personal view of the nation's history. In July, he signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to erect signs along the walkway warning that it contained exhibits that reflect the “personal, radical ideologies" of the curators.
The language is pulled from a 162-page report released that same month objecting to exhibits that it claims demonstrate "extreme political activism"—including some which highlight the experiences of immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, Native Americans, and other historically marginalized groups. It also claims that the museum does not adequately venerate the nation's founders, while accentuating their faults, including participation in slavery and other historic injustices.
Raskin said that the signs warning passersby of the Smithsonian's dangerous content—which are expected to cost $84,000 to install—are among the artifacts that should be preserved as an example of how authoritarians seek to control media, government, and culture.
He said the signs should be among several other "manifestations of authoritarian narcissism" that the museum should put on display, as well as the "Stalinist" banners of Trump's face that have adorned the departments of Agriculture, Labor, Justice, and Interior.
The inner cover of an official commemorative passport for the 250th anniversary of the United States, which featured the image of President Donald Trump. (Photo from the US Department of State via Wikimedia Commons)
In addition, Raskin said the exhibition should include other photos and videos captured by journalists and private citizens documenting the Trump era, as well as personal testimonials from Americans who "resisted and opposed the rise in authoritarianism," including those who participated in protest movements.
In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing the Smithsonian to purge its halls of what he called "improper ideology" or risk losing funding, which was followed by sweeping content reviews.
Earlier this week, The Atlantic reported that the White House had conditioned nearly $190 million in Smithsonian funding on its adherence to the order's vague ban on "exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”
The museum has bowed to the pressure sometimes in ways that critics deemed "Orwellian," such as when references to Trump were scrubbed from an exhibit on presidential impeachments before being restored following backlash.
In January, a Smithsonian staff member told The Guardian that administrators had objected to the description of the World War II-era internment of Japanese Americans as "unjust" because the label could appear partisan. Another said they changed "diversity" to "variety" in text discussing astronomical objects, fearing that the administration might flag the word during its content reviews.
Raskin said his legislation is aimed at making sure this sort of heavy-handed censorship is not forgotten.
“To avoid repeating this descent into authoritarianism," he said, "we must study this corrupt president’s actions and allow the public to learn about the numerous tools he deployed while attempting to remake American history in his own image and according to his own autocratic and white nationalist beliefs.”
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