Corrupt lawfare gone wild
19 May—Soon-to-be Republican ex-Senator Bill Cassidy and the Democrats in D.C., among many others, appear to have no sense of humor. Or reality. Cassidy and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, for instance, yesterday called the Trump administration’s creation of a $1.7 billion “compensation fund” to reward convicted 6 January insurrectionists and, presumably, other Trump-supporting criminals “a slush fund”—and one “without legal precedent,” as Cassidy reminded us.
Sen. Schumer said on the Senate floor, “Trump is shaking hands with himself in order to fund his insurrectionist army to the tune of two billion dollars.” And Dr. Cassidy explained it this way, quoting a lawyer: “It is as if somebody sued themselves and agreed upon a settlement with themselves that’s going to be funded by the rest of us. If that’s the case: What?!” Where’s the expletive?
Keep in mind that Schumer isn’t the majority leader at the moment and Cassidy lost the Louisiana primary to a Trump flunky last week. Very sad. But that’s life and politics. And things won’t improve as long as Trump is around to intimidate, prevaricate, and retaliate. As long as Trump is around. Period.
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden called the slush fund “among the most corrupt acts in American political history.” Ninety-three House Democrats filed a legal brief referring to the “specter of corruption unparalleled in American history.” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren called the lawfare fund “an insane level of corruption—even for Trump.” And MS NOW commentator Chris Hayes called the gift to goons and thugs “the greatest heist in American history.”
No shit, Sherlock!
But look at it positively. Trump was really being rather charitable in withdrawing his $10 billion suit against the IRS for leaking his tax returns that he had promised to reveal himself but never got around to. Wasn’t he? Sure, it was likely to be thrown out of court and unlikely to be resurrected even by Trump’s SCOTUS pals. But what the hell.
The critics of Donald Trump’s undeniably corrupt “weaponization fund,” ironically named that by the most corrupt and weaponized federal justice department in history (in the most corrupt federal government in history), must realize that his second deleterious reign of terror isn’t even half over and that the grifter-in-chief and his satrap-flunkies are certain to devise even more bizarre, precedent-setting, and incredibly corrupt schemes to enrich themselves, fleece taxpayers, and continue to get away with whatever Trump damn well pleases . . .
Remembering the Great Apostate
18 May—On this day in 1860, Republicans (at the time the grand new party and the good guys), convening in Chicago, nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency on the second ballot, after front-runner New York Senator William Seward had failed to go over the top on the first ballot. Maine Senator Hannibal Hamlin got the vice presidential nod, also on the second ballot, defeating Cassius Marcellus Clay of Kentucky, an abolitionist planter and namesake of boxer Muhammad Ali’s father.
Lincoln and Hamlin went on to win the general election, with 39.7 percent (1,855,276) of the 4,122,819 popular votes in a four-way race, taking 180 of the 303 (59.4 percent) of the electoral votes from 18 of the 33 states, 16 in the north, two in the far west. (California and Oregon were in fact the only states in the far west, with Oregon having been admitted in 1859.)
It’s worth noting that Democrats were the bad guys back then, generally regarded as conservative and not anti-slavery. Enough or at all. Kind of like Republicans today. That said, in the 1860 general election, Kentuckian John Breckinridge, James Buchanan’s vice president at the time, running as a Southern Democrat, scored 72 electoral votes from 11 southern states with 14.4 percent (672,601) of the popular votes.
Stephen Douglas, on the other hand, running as a Northern Democrat, carried only Missouri with its nine electoral votes (by an incredibly thin 0.26 percent); but he also won the popular vote in New Jersey, although he took only three of its seven electoral votes under a fusion ticket—for 21.5 percent (1,004,042) of the total popular vote.
Tennessean John Bell, known as the Great Apostate, was a slaveholder who opposed the expansion of slavery to the territories and maintained that secession was unnecessary because the Constitution protected slavery. The current SCOTUS majority likely would have agreed at the time. Bell ran in 1860 as the Constitutional Union Party candidate and carried three borderline (northern-southern) states by a slim margin with 590,980 popular votes (12.6 percent) and 39 electoral votes.
After the Battle of Fort Sumter, Bell abandoned the Union cause and supported the Confederacy. And the electoral college continues to distort and abuse the democratic process.
So fifty-seven years later, in 1917, a little over a month after the declaration of war against Germany (the legal way to do it), President Woodrow Wilson signed the Selective Service Act, which Congress had just passed at his behest. “The most democratic form of enlistment,” as Wilson called military conscription, unpopularly known as the draft, required all men in the United States (not just citizens) between 21 and 30 to register for military service.
The age limit was shortly thereafter raised to 45, but the draft was discontinued in 1920—only to be reinstated in 1940, requiring men 18 to 64 to register. Senior citizens weren’t actually drafted in what was known as the old men’s draft. But they could have been. Yet American women of all ages have been exempt. So much for equal responsibilities being concomitant with equal rights.
And 46 years ago today, after several months of volcanic action and a magnitude 5.1 earthquake, Mount St. Helens in Washington erupted. Needless to say, it was a cataclysm, but we’ll say it anyway . . .
Impeachment and the wrath of Trump
17 May—Louisiana Republicans demonstrated their lack of judgement and principle as well as their ovine docility and sheer stupidity yesterday by effectively ending the political career of Republican U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy in favor of a person endorsed by Donald Trump. Dr. Cassidy, a gastroenterologist, isn’t perfect, mind you.
In February 2020, for instance, Cassidy voted to acquit Trump on both articles of his first impeachment—abuse of power and obstruction of Congress—both of which the scumbag-in-chief clearly was guilty of. But a year later, in a questionable post-presidential impeachment intended to foreclose another term for Trump, Cassidy was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict the then-former scumbag-in-chief on the single charge of incitement of insurrection.
“Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person. I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty,” Dr. Cassidy declared solecistically—unless the Constitution and the country are construed as an inseparable single entity. But why quibble?
So that’s the vote—and comment—that pissed off Trump. Of the seven principled Republican senators, four—Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania—chose to retire rather than subject themselves to pretty certain electoral defeat by Trump diatribe.
The three others are Bill Cassidy, of course, who has just suffered Trump’s wrath; Lisa Murkowski of Alaska who was reelected in 2022 despite Trump’s endorsement of her opponent in the state’s ridiculous ranked-choice voting, which may be repealed; and Susan Collins of Maine, who wasn’t challenged in a GOP primary but may be unseated by an antisemitic oyster-farming Democrat in an election that likely won’t involve the state’s ridiculous ranked-choice voting.
On the subject of impeachment, yesterday’s Hearst RepublicanAmerican informed readers that “On this date in 1868 having already been impeached by the House of Representatives, President Andrew Johnson narrowly avoided impeachment by the Senate, which voted 35-19 in favor of impeachment—one vote shy of the required two-thirds majority.”
Sure. Except that Johnson didn’t in fact avoid impeachment by the Senate. He only avoided conviction by the Senate—essentially the jury—after an 11-week trial for violating the Tenure of Office Act—technically, for high crimes and misdemeanors—which required Senate approval for a president to fire executive officials and had been passed in 1867 over Johnson’s veto.
The Tenure of Office Act was repealed in 1887. Even worse, in 1926 the Supreme Court ruled (in Myers v. United States) that laws requiring Senate consent to remove executive branch officials were in violation of Article II of the Constitution. The separation of powers have been a constitutional bugbear ever since and the SCOTUS troglodyte majority is currently looking for a way to rationalize Donald Trump’s firing of anyone he doesn’t like for any reason.
And while on history, bet you didn’t know that on 17 May in “1787 37 American sailors were killed when an Iraqi warplane attacked the U.S. Navy frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf. (Iraq apologized, called it a mistake, and paid more than $27 million in compensation.)”
That’s what the Hearst RepublicanAmerican tells us. In all events, we must give credit to the Iraqis where it’s due, because the Montgolfiers and Benjamin Franklin were still flying in balloons in the 1780s. And even though $27 million in 1787 would be worth about a billion today, the Iraqis still got away cheap—and with murder . . .
Trump comes to Litchfield
16 May—Here’s why Connecticut residents from Windsor Locks to Litchfield may have been awakened early this morning by the unbearable din of a squadron of helicopters. First, rest assured that it had nothing to do with Armed Forces Day.
Not at all. Rather, it was Donald Trump taking his new super-duper BFF Xi Jinping to Litchfield to visit the site of their hideaway love nest. The Monitor has the scoop about the Trump-Xi love match that evidently has eclipsed Trump’s amorous obsession with Kim Jong Un. It would appear that Trump has a thing for Asian men but now prefers grown-ups.
First things first, Trump didn’t take Melania to Beijing this time. And now we know why. And Xi was able to travel undetected with his new super-duper BFF on Air Force One thanks to a clever disguise as a McDonald’s (yes they’re in Beijing, too) delivery boy who wasn’t able to disembark before takeoff. (The ruse worked because Xi actually delivered 20 pounds of greasy junk food to Trump.) (And Xi won’t have to worry about being undocumented.)
Of course, Presidents and Donald Trump don’t ordinarily land at Bradley—or come to Connecticut, for that matter. But since no one knows what to expect with Trump, the Air Force One crew and privileged philotrumpic press contingent weren’t too surprised when the 747 was diverted hither. Or thither, if you want to niggle.
The Connecticut Air National Guard was absolutely delighted to schlep the lovers to Litchfield, even at short notice. The original plan, we learned, was to commandeer Monitor Meadow as a drop-off venue. But happily the grade is too steep. So evidently and unfortunately another drop-off was found.
So why Litchfield for the hideaway love nest? Well you may ask. But we can only speculate that Trump has been saving an undeveloped tract on the Borough’s exclusive Prospect Street for just such a purpose. There was a rumor that Trump had approached Michael Peloquin about some land elsewhere in town, but we haven’t been able to confirm that. Come to think of it, the land for his affordable housing is flat and probably helicoperable.
Anyway, since pictures are worth thousands of words, then, here are pictures. The top one shows Donald and Xi renewing their acquaintance. The second one is of Xi inviting his reunited lover to come closer for a press picture. The third one is that picture, but snapped inside the Temple of Love because it provided a more intimate background.
And the fourth photo, taken right here in Litchfield this morning, is of Trump assuring Xi that the Prospect Street rubbish is nothing to worry about and that he’ll get it taken down to DC immediately and have their McMansion love nest built tomorrow by executive order and at no expense to taxpayers.
You’ll have noticed that the old lovers are dressed similarly if not identically. And not particularly well. In all events, it’s probably not a coincidence. And you may be wondering about the Trump-Xi pillow talk. Well, as you may know, Xi learned to speak English in Iowa almost 40 years ago. And of course Trump is a New Yorker. So it’s no surprise that an interpreter is present at all times and even shares the pillow.
And since the interpreter is a yenta, we know that what Trump and Xi have been talking about most is screwing. Taiwan . . .
55 states and CT’s sorry GOP
15 May—The big news today is that Donald Trump now wants to make Venezuela the 51st state. What, you may wonder, has happened to his plans to make Canada, Mexico, Greenland, and Cuba the 51st state? Since he’s never mentioned a 52nd state, it would appear that he intends for them to fight for the honor, thus fomenting a little world war to benefit his pals in the armaments business. Unless, of course, he intends to annex them all, giving the United States a total of 55 states. For now.
Word is that that an artificially intelligent flunky in a quiet recess of Mar-a-Lago is already working on a design for a 55-state flag and that instead of stars the canton (the blue part) will have 55 grimacing Trump heads to represent the states.
You may also wonder, what about making Washington DC and Puerto Rico states? Well, you can forget about that because Trump has made it clear that he’s categorically opposed to statehood for either—“absolute no” for Puerto Rico, “ridiculous” for DC. So it looks like the 55-Trump flag is it. For now.
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In other news, Litchfield’s budget passed unanimously last night, with about 70 people voting. Your $10,000 property tax bill will now be $$10,200. Count your blessings.
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In still other news, Erin Stewart is no longer in the running to lose to Ned Lamont in November. It’s not that she saw the writing on the wall, mind you—מְנֵא מְנֵא תְּקֵל וּפַרְסִין (mene mene tekel upharsin, numbered numbered weighed divided)—because that was painted over after Belshazzar’s big bash two-and-a-half millennia ago and it’s clearly a message for knackers. And Erin doesn’t do Aramaic anyway. But Connecticut GOP’s unrealistically optimistic (hopeful, anyway) apparatchiks got to the poor malfeasant former phenomenon before she could harm the party any more than it’s already harmed itself. You know they don’t care about Erin.
And we’ll probably see that evidently ingrained self-destructive tendency dominate the Connecticut Republican convention on Saturday and Sunday, at which Trump stalwart and shameless hollow promiser (i.e., typical political bullshitter) Betsy McCaughey—considered the underbitch ever since she carpetbagged her way in a few months ago—may just upset new favorite Ryan Fazio for the gubernatorial nomination simply because of what normal people—i.e., non-nincompoops—would consider the Trump taint.
Pity that Fazio hasn’t had the scrotal content or political smarts to at least disavow Trump. Sure, that would piss off Connecticut Trumpublican nominators but it would ingratiate him with and even impress far more—and more important—Connecticut voters. Of course, that’s assuming Fazio isn’t a Trumpublican himself.
Connecticut clearly needs to get rid of the dangerously entrenched and therefore arrogant Democrat trifecta in Hartford. But it doesn’t look like that will happen this year . . .
Israel, Litchfield, New Britain, China
14 May—Israel celebrates its 78th birthday today, having declared its independence on this day in 1948, thus ending the British Palestine Mandate. It’s utterly amazing that the little “Jewish and democratic state,” as Israel defines itself—a secular parliamentary democracy rather than a theocracy of any sort—has been able to survive, let alone thrive, immediately surrounded as it is by sworn enemies intent on destroying it for trumped up religious reasons. And of course in a decidedly antisemitic world.
Since Israel is first and foremost a refuge and homeland for all Jews, quasi-theocratic concessions to ultra-orthodox Jews have been inevitable from the get-go and have been grudgingly tolerated by the non-orthodox. But that’s politics rather than religion.
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Updating Litchfield’s annual budget meeting tonight, thanks to a half-million dollars the state has thrown the town’s way at the last minute, the mill-rate increase to be voted on will now be about two percent rather than five percent. The whores of Hartford may consider the half-million-dollar state aid a sort of gift, but it’s actually compensation for some—just some, mind you—of the excessive onerous mandates they’ve inflicted on towns and cities in the name of big-brotherhood.
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Corollary to yesterday’s condolences for Erin Stewart’s moribund political career, let’s assume for the sake of argument that the poor girl hadn’t in fact known what was going on about tax favors and carelessly—mistakenly, rather than intentionally—used a New Britain city credit card instead of her personal one for $200,000 worth of undeniably personal purchases.
Does Connecticut need another governor like that?
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And wouldn’t it be nice if Donald Trump never made it back from visiting his BFF Xi Jinping in Beijing? No no no, don’t get us wrong. We don’t wish any harm to our most benevolent philistine-in-chief, of course. Perish the thought. But maybe he’ll fall in love with the beautiful People’s Republic of China and do a deal with Xi to desecrate it as he’s done in and with Washington and so many other locations that have fallen prey to his execrable, tasteless, self-indulgent instability.
And don’t forget that Beijing is only about 500 miles from Pyongyang as the 747 flies, so Trump could spend lots of quality time with his true love, young North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un . . .
Positives for Trump
13 May—Before dealing with the positive aspect of Donald Trump’s current reign, we must extend condolences to former New Britain mayor and current candidate for the Republican Connecticut gubernatorial nomination Erin Stewart. Whether Erin during her 12-year tenure actually had misappropriated over $200,000 of municipal funds by using a city credit card for personal purchases and/or originated or even was aware of tax favors for the right people is irrelevant.
Erin probably was the announced Republican gubernatorial candidate least likely to lose to entrenched Democrat incumbent Ned Lamont. But even if she’s able to prove beyond any doubt at all—not just reasonable doubt—that she hadn’t done anything wrong or at least present some sort of credible defense against the accusations of misfeasance and malfeasance, her campaign is dead in the water. Because people—and voters (even some Republican voters) are people—remember negatives and forget positives, especially in political campaigns.
Negative campaigning—mud slinging, knocking copy, vexatious innuendo, and the like—are effective campaign strategies and tactics because mud sticks and even when it’s washed away it leaves a stain.
With Erin Stewart out of the way, then, here’s the positive aspect of Donald Trump’s current reign. Be aware that positive with regard to Trump can only be understood mathematically: an increase, represented by a positive number. So what has increased in Trump’s current reign of terror? You name it.
There have been more government employees fired than ever before, for instance; more lawsuits—invariably vexatious—filed by Trump’s unweaponized justice department; more desecration and destruction of government buildings and property; more unqualified political appointees than in any previous administration; highest national debt ever (approaching $40 trillion); more extrajudicial murders by an unlawfully deployed military; more lies out of one president’s foul mouth than could have been imagined.
And let’s not forget inflation. During his distasteful 2024 campaign, Trump promised to end inflation and bring down costs for American consumers—to “Make America Affordable Again” on “Day One” of his new term. Even though presidents don’t as a rule have much influence over such things, the great prevaricator would reduce energy and electricity prices by half, for instance, and make groceries and consumer goods affordable. Right.
Keeping positive, then, Trump’s family, friends, and associated ass-kissers have in fact done quite well with the philistine-in-chief on the gilded throne. Not only has self-dealing been at an all-time high in and around the administration, but the stock market (which doesn’t reflect reality) has gone up. And so has real estate.
So what else matters?
Hanta, Luke, John, and Jeanine
12 May—With hantavirus the disease du jour, de la semaine, du mois, de l’année, and so forth, it must be reported that last year the Trump administration, among its countless humanitarian policy initiatives, cut funding and effectively killed the West African Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases (WAC-EID), which was in the middle of a project specifically designed to study how hantaviruses jump from rodents, like the cute little white-footed mouse, to humans.
Hantavirus is extremely rare in Connecticut and there were no state residents aboard the hantaliner, MV Hondius, as far as can be determined, but since travel within the United States has not yet been restricted for people of acceptable color with proper credentials, you never know.
While in Connecticut, then, it was rather surprising to learn that snotty young former Hartford mayor Luke Bronin won the First Congressional District Democrat convention last night, defeating mature 14-term incumbent John Larson for the party endorsement on the second ballot, 51.2 to 48.8 percent. Of course, even if the result had been reversed there was certain to be a primary in August.
So it’s not surprising that Larson may well have given the victory to Bronin—just barely—and allowed a third candidate to join the primary without needing to petition—just barelier. A fourth candidate evidently already has enough signatures on a petition to be in the primary. In all events, the third and fourth candidates are more likely to draw Democrat voters away from Bronin than from Larson. Publicity and appearances—and finessing and trumping the competition—are what it’s all about.
And we can’t let this disquisition pass with warning Jeanine Pirro, Donald Trump’s fashionable U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, to watch her step. Seriously. And with the best intention, of course. This is a picture of Jeanine and the Acting Librarian of Congress hawking firearms. Look at Jeanine’s ultra-bell-bottom slacks. Suffice to say, if she’s not careful, she’ll trip over them and fall flat on her glamorous face . . .
11 May—Litchfield’s annual budget meeting will be Thursday night, 14 May, at 7 p.m. in the misnamed Lakeview High School auditorium. Here’s the link to the call:
And here’s the link to the proposed budget:
Just like Region 20’s 2026-27 budget that sailed through three of the unprepared region’s four towns in last week’s referendum, Litchfield’s 2026-27 municipal budget is likely to fly through this week’s budget meeting unscathed. That’s because even though—again like the Region 20 budget—the town budget has been driven up at roughly double the rate of inflation and will result in almost a five-percent increase in the mill rate, virtually no active interest outside of understandably self-interested town boards has been shown in reducing it or even analyzing it.
Not like the good old days when the town’s perennial pain-in-the-ass led the watchful cadres of civic-minded fiscal waste-fighting activists (mislabeled by big spenders as cheapskates) that pored over virtually all town and (especially) school board bare-bones budgets, found lots of meat to cut away, forced referendums, and usually got the budgets reduced.
Every once in a while we’d be able to cut budget waste simply by packing budget meetings and cutting line items, per statute and/or dexterous manipulation of parliamentary procedure. (By statute, budget items can be reduced—but not increased—at meetings. But if a referendum is forced, a budget may not be amended at the meeting that’s adjourned to that referendum because the referendum will have been called on a specified budget. Got it?)
I fondly recall the time I was threatened with physical violence after such a meeting—at which an education budget had been reduced—by an aggrieved teacher who didn’t realize Constable Dodgie Doyle was standing right behind him. And a time after a referendum that cut another school budget, when I found a Mary Kay Cosmetics bag containing a fair amount of dog poo (evidently from a larger breed) halfway up my driveway—doubtless from a school-child’s parent—who, a friend said, must have been shit-faced . . .
[Pedantic usage note: “Referendum” is the gerund of Latin “referre,” meaning “to refer.” A gerund—a verb acting as a noun ending in “-ing”—can’t have a plural. So the proper plural for “referendum” would—or should—be “referendums” rather than “referenda.” Like anybody cares.]
Suffering in school
10 May—Before adjourning last week, the Connecticut General Assembly was considerate enough to pass a bill that will allow Waterbury public school pupils to “suffer” for 176 days rather than the state-mandated 180 because of the rather catastrophic water main break in December in addition to the usual snow days. “Suffer” is the actual word used by a state representative or senator—whose name I didn’t catch—in a radio interview.
The solicitous pol’s exact words were, “Why make the students suffer for something that was beyond their control.” So, you may ask, is going to school really suffering? Suffice to say, I enjoyed school—even Hebrew school, if only to a certain extent. Shame on me?
Evidently, according to surveys and alleged experts, many kids really do suffer in school; and Waterbury, with a notably “challenged” (as the euphemism has it) school population is no exception. Pupils are said to suffer not only from classic schoolyard and hallway teasing and bullying, but also for academic, social, and emotional reasons.
To oversimplify and generalize, the poor suffering kids can’t take the alleged chronic stress and anxiety of testing and the concurrent fear of failure. And of course that leads to depression. Even in Connecticut, it would appear, where so-called social promotion is pretty much the norm even for pupils who, for whatever reasons, literally can’t make the grade. Waterbury’s is one of the school systems in Connecticut (along with Hartford, Middletown, and New Haven, among others) where teachers are required to award a minimum grade of 50 even if pupils fail or don’t attend class. That’s not just giving, that’s awarding.
Yet in many surveys, by many quasi-objective criteria, Connecticut’s public schools are rated among the very best in the country, coming in second only to Massachusetts. It would appear that the state’s more affluent towns and regions (over)compensate for the deficiencies in the less affluent cities. And, like it or not, affluence is a dominant and determinant factor in pupil performance.
Kids’ home life and parents’ interest and involvement—assuming there are interested and involved parents or parents at all at home—have a lot to do with kids’ education. Discipline should start at home, of course. But often as not parents leave disciplining their kids to school personnel, whom they regard simply as baby sitters. (That also goes for private schools. And even colleges.)
And school discipline just ain’t what it used to be. These days, leniency fills in for discipline. Among the non-disciplinary discipline is what’s known as the restorative justice approach, relying on ineffective but socially preferable stratagems like counseling and peer mediation. In other words, let the kids do whatever they want.
Back to kids suffering in school, then, everybody knows it’s really the teachers who make the pupils suffer when—if—they try to maintain even a modicum of discipline and try to impart a little knowledge rather than letting the brats get away with all the crap their parents tolerate . . .
Secret full-dress rehearsal caught on camera
9 May—The bad news: La Conservatissima hasn’t come through with any good things to say about Donald Trump. Nor indeed has any other Trump admirer, although, as you’ve seen, one brave soul tried but just couldn’t think of any. Disappointing, to say the least. Come on, La, you must have something good to say about your hero, rather than just rip his critics.
The good news: Donald Trump won’t be visiting or coming anywhere near Litchfield when he befouls and embarrasses the Coast Guard Academy graduation ceremony on the other side of the state on 20 May. As far as we can determine, no sitting president has ever visited Litchfield, although General George Washington slept here, at Sheldon’s Tavern, one night in 1780 when he was passing through, along with the Marquis de Lafayette and Alexander Hamilton, on their way to Tappan, New York, from Hartford. Separate rooms, presumably, since Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton was Washington’s aide-de-camp and young (22-year-old) Lafayette was a major general.
(Apropos nothing, in the 2024 presidential election, Litchfield only narrowly preferred Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, 2,660 to 2,545.)
The scoop: Our roving photographer, who’s always on the qui vive, was able to catch a defiantly insouciant Donald Trump in a full-dress rehearsal just yesterday for his 80th birthday extravaganza planned for 14 June. The war-criminal-in-chief was accompanied by his chief war-criminal flunky Pete Hegseth, who wasn’t too happy about being caught at the top-secret full-dress rehearsal on Pennsylvania Avenue, as well as his overtly criminal flunky Kash Patel and his covertly criminal flunky JD Vance . . .
