Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

Damn! That face! Those eyes! Those teeth! The Aura Of The Crazy! How can anyone even look at Rudy Giuliani and want anything to do with him? Obviously, the answer is that you have to be as crazy as Donald Trump and all those lunatics at FOX "News." I mean, of course, just look at goons like Lou Dobbs, Tiki Torch Carlson, and Sean Insanity. I guess all of us just like to hang out with our own kind. I know that if I was sitting in a park somewhere and some guy with that face, those eyes, those teeth and that disturbing aura sat down next to me and started sweating and spitting saliva all over the place, I'd immediately go find another park!

How and when did Rudy go off the rails? When did the cheese fall off the cracker, Rudy? Does it have something to do with that dent in your head? What if he brought along a friend; some 400 pound guy with yellow plastic hair, an oversized red tie and gooey orange makeup? Then comes Stephen Miller, with or without his fake hair painted on that strange dome of his, or Kellyanne Conway shows up on her broom with Mitch McConnell waving a Russian flag and Russian currency pinned to his lapels, or Pence with his comfort fly? I'd know the circus of freaks was in town for sure. All that would be missing would be "Mother" and Elaine Chao dressed up as bearded ladies.

Tonight's meme of course references Donnie Psycho tweeting to the world last weekend that he was about to hold a press conference not at The Four Seasons but at Four Seasons Landscaping in Virginia. Is that who does his hair? But, perhaps the most interesting thing about the apparent choice of Four Seasons Landscaping is that it's right next door to a porno shop. Yep, Trump must have left the location choice up to his lawyer, Rudy. Well done, whack-o!

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

I haven't tucked in a shirt in a long time, but, when I did, I never laid down on a bed to do it!

Oh, and then, there's this guy:

Will The Movie About The Trump Campaign Be A Spy Thriller? A Tale Of A Crime Family? A Tragedy? A Comedy? All Of The Above?

 

2 bullshit artists the public is done with

Ultimately, Trump will lose in less than two weeks because most Americans are sick of him (some literally with COVID and some just of his rotten persona) and because we're in serious times and serious times call for... well, not a self-serving clown. His non-response to a pandemic that has sickened over eight-and-a-half million Americans and killed over 227,000 of us has made most voters sit up and take notice. But there are other factors that have played into what is shaping up to be the biggest repudiation of an incumbent president since Herbert Hoover.

Some of those reasons are big-- like the unemployment number and Trump's inability to force McConnell and the Republican Senate to agree to a pandemic relief bill. Or how Trump's own campaign attorneys have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the Biden campaign-- and just $50 to the Trump campaign. Others are, by themselves, barekly a blip on the radar-- like Trump's latest bankruptcy: his campaign.

Mike Murphy is a well-known GOP political operative who worked for John McCain, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lamar Alexander to name a few, In an interview with NBC News about how Trump wasted a billion dollars of his contributors' money yesterday, Murphy noted that the Trump campaign "spent their money on unnecessary overhead, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous activity by the campaign staff and vanity ads way too early. You could literally have 10 monkeys with flamethrowers go after the money, and they wouldn’t have burned through it as stupidly.”

Then there's the whole "strategy" behind Trump's desperate super-spreader rallies. side from the fact that he should eventually be charged with negligent homicide, the whole endeavor is a tragic joke. Nancy Cook gave away the punchline at Politico yesterday. With the Orange Blob yearning for "the magic of his 2016 upstart campaign: the multi-rally days, crisscrossing the country in a Trump-branded plane, the screaming crowds... he’s designed a 2016 redux in 2020 to recapture that spirit, casting off the constraints of a pandemic, his own presidency and even the advice of some of his own advisers."

Trump views rallies in battleground states as the linchpin of his closing argument, a means to excite his supporters and ensure they vote on Nov. 3. But many Republicans close to the White House, former senior administration officials and political advisers say the rallies are largely a way to keep the unscripted and undisciplined president occupied, since they do little to persuade new Trump voters. Rallies, they note, do not woo senior citizens, independents or suburban women, many of whom have moved away from the Trump ticket this election cycle. Most of Trump’s rallies are no longer televised nationally as they once were.

And with coronavirus infection rates climbing, the Trump rallies often draw negative headlines in local news markets because the packed events defy public health guidelines, featuring few masks and almost no social distancing. After Trump’s recent rallies in Bemidji and Duluth, Minnesota-- both in counties the Trump campaign hopes to win-- local health authorities connected roughly 24 new Covid-19 cases to the rallies and protests outside of them.

...[T]he rallies offer the president his own form of soothing, along with a major ego boost in the middle of a tough campaign, said aides, advisers and allies. Trump feeds off the energy of a crowd regardless of whether the appearance makes the most political sense or can help him make gains against Biden in states like Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.

“Trump thinks, ‘I have the rallies to prove that I am the greatest. No one can attract crowds like me,’” said Tony Schwartz, the author and Trump critic who ghost wrote The Art of the Deal and just published a memoir titled Dealing with the Devil: My Mother, Trump and Me. “It is like taking a shot of testosterone to pump himself up, particularly now.”

One of the funniest, though, is how the planned October surprise-- a Trump-Putin-Giuliani con-job of a Ukraine scandal that is the defining moment in American politics on the right-wing fringe, but not taken seriously by any normal people-- went awry. The cooked-up evidence is likely to wind up on a rap sheet when Giuliani is eventually prosecuted.





And it has already spun off an hilarious sub-plot: Giuliani the Trump-like pervert. Catherine Shoard exposed the latest Giuliani caper for Guardian readers. Borat is in the house-- and Rudy missed the chance to sneak out the back door! Giuliani's reputation of is already in tatters, to put it mildly, but Shoard contends that it "could be set for a further blow with the release of highly embarrassing footage in Sacha Baron Cohen’s follow-up to Borat." The film is being released Friday and in it, Rudy "is seen reaching into his trousers and apparently touching his genitals while reclining on a bed in the presence of the actor playing Borat’s daughter, who is posing as a TV journalist."

Following an obsequious interview for a fake conservative news programme, the pair retreat at her suggestion for a drink to the bedroom of a hotel suite, which is rigged with concealed cameras.

After she removes his microphone, Giuliani, 76, can be seen lying back on the bed, fiddling with his untucked shirt and reaching into his trousers. They are then interrupted by Borat who runs in and says: “She’s 15. She’s too old for you.”

...Word of the incident first emerged on 7 July, when Giuliani called New York police to report the intrusion of an unusually-dressed man.

“This guy comes running in, wearing a crazy, what I would say was a pink transgender outfit,” Giuliani told the New York Post. “It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top, it looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn’t what I would call distractingly attractive.

“This person comes in yelling and screaming, and I thought this must be a scam or a shakedown, so I reported it to the police. He then ran away,” Giuliani said. The police found no crime had been committed.

Giuliani continued: “I only later realised it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen. I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me.”

Viewers may be less convinced that Baron Cohen, reprising his role as the bumbling reporter Borat Sagdiyev, and Maria Bakalova, who plays his daughter, Tutar, had no success.

In the film Borat is dispatched by the Kazakh government back to the US to present a bribe to an ally of Donald Trump in order to ingratiate his country with the administration. After the monkey earmarked for the gift is indisposed, Borat’s supposedly underage offspring becomes the replacement present.

Even before he reaches into his trousers, Giuliani does not appear to acquit himself especially impressively during the encounter. Flattered and flirtatious, he drinks scotch, coughs, fails to socially distance and claims Trump’s speedy actions in the spring saved a million Americans from dying of Covid. He also agrees-- in theory at least-- to eat a bat with his interviewer.

Giuliani has become a key figure in the late stages of the US presidential election after obtaining a laptop hard drive purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden and left at a repair shop in Delaware.

His efforts to unearth political dirt on Trump’s rival for the White House mean that the film’s mortifying footage can be seen as an attempt to undermine Giuliani’s credibility. The film, released on Amazon Prime less than a fortnight before the election, ends with an instruction for viewers to vote.

Unless He Pleads Insanity, Giuliani Is Going To Prison

Super Ethical, Always Legal by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal quoted Señor Trumpanzee admitting what people who watch Giuliani have long known: "He looks for corruption wherever he goes." Republicans have been claiming Giuliani has been helping Trump with foreign affairs. Giuliani, on the other hand, has claimed je was just tending to his own business. Yep-- looking for opportunities "for corruption wherever he goes." That's Rudy alright.

CNN reporter Erica Orden wrote yesterday that "Federal prosecutors in New York have subpoenaed the brother of one of the recently indicted associates of Rudy Giuliani, according to two people familiar with the matter, as they escalate their investigation in the campaign-finance case." Igor and Lev-- and presumably Giuliani-- are in deep doo-doo, of their own making. It was Igor's bro-- Steven-- who got subpenaed. According to CNN, "Investigators have doled out multiple subpoenas and conducted several property searches, in one case blowing the door off a safe to access the contents." That sounds serious. While Democratic presidential nominee hopeful/pipsqueak, Mayo Pete was saying how he'd appoint more judges like Kennedy and Souter, neutral right-of-center wishy washy "moderates," a strong justice-and-values-driven judge has been signing some search warrants that are probably not making Trump and Barr very happy.

Federal prosecutors told a judge this week that they are sifting through data from more than 50 bank accounts. In addition, they've put a filter team in place as they examine communications obtained via search warrant and subpoena, sensitive to material that could be subject to attorney-client privilege because Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, counted Parnas as a client. A filter team is a separate set of prosecutors who are assigned to examine evidence and set aside material that is privileged.

Since the October 9 arrests, federal agents visited the New York home of Steven Fruman and served him with a subpoena from Manhattan federal prosecutors, the people familiar with the matter said.

...It's not clear why prosecutors are interested in Steven Fruman, or what specifically agents sought from the safe. Steven Fruman is listed in US Security and Exchange Commission filings as the vice president of FD Import & Export, the same company his brother ran.

Igor Fruman also appeared to use the address of a property in Woodmere, New York, that belongs to his brother when making certain political donations, according to Federal Election Commission and other public records.

As they pursue an ongoing investigation into Igor Fruman, Parnas and their co-defendants, prosecutors are also investigating Giuliani's Ukranian business dealings... In recent days, Giuliani has been seeking a criminal-defense attorney, CNN has reported. He says he has not been contacted by the FBI or by New York federal prosecutors.

Bess Levin noted in Vanity Fair yesterday that Giuliani "is now being investigated by the DOJ’s criminal division, in addition to a probe by the Southern District of New York... That makes things awkward not only for Giuliani, in that he’d presumably like to stay out of prison, but also for numerous members of the government with whom he worked on his Ukraine scheme, as well as, of course, for the president. "He appears to be a subject, if not a target, of an active investigation. So to have him be a part of the legal team would be troublesome, to say the least," Greg Brower, who worked as the FBI’s top liaison to Congress until 2018, told Politico. "At best it’s a messy situation and more likely it’s just completely dysfunctional." According to reporter Darren Samuelsohn, Giuliani was notably absent from the White House this week when Trump’s other lawyers huddled with him for an impeachment strategy session.

Giuliani has also been notably absent from the TV circuit of late, which suggests a rare prudence for a man who has had no problem incriminating his presidential client on television before. In recent days the anti-ferret activist turned presidential attorney’s only public comment has been a tweet that read, “With all the Fake News let me make it clear that everything I did was to discover evidence to defend my client against false charges. Dems would be horrified by the attacks on me, if my client was a terrorist. But they don’t believe @realDonaldTrump has rights. Justice will prevail.” Per Politico, a “back channel effort has been underway for more than a week” to help Giuliani lawyer up, and potential charges include “everything from violating federal statutes dealing with bribery, foreign lobbying registration, and disclosure to making false statements to government officials.”

Giuliani and Hunter Biden weren't just looking to squeeze the Ukrainians. Eric Levitz reported that both crooks did legal work for the same slimeball Romanian real estate tycoon charged with corruption, Gabriel Popoviciu. "As of last month," reported Levitz, "none of the fallout from Rudy’s Kiev vacation was enough to quell his appetite for unearthing Hunter Biden’s shady dealings in the former Soviet bloc. 'We haven’t moved to Romania yet,' Giuliani told Fox News in September, referring to Hunter’s unspecified illicit activities in that nation. 'Wait ‘til we get to Romania.'"

As it happens, Hunter Biden did once enjoy an ethically questionable gig in Romania. In 2016, when his father was still vice-president, Hunter agreed to provide legal advice to Gabriel Popoviciu, a Romanian real-estate tycoon who’d recently been convicted on charges of corruption, and was mounting an appeal. In 2014, Joe Biden had forcefully advocated for the Romanian government to crack down on graft within its borders. And there is no evidence that Popoviciu secured any favors from the White House as a result of hiring Hunter. But it is extremely plausible that he hired Biden’s son in the hope that doing so he might ingratiate himself to the Obama administration. If Popoviciu merely wanted the advice of any undistinguished young attorney, he presumably could have found one with a lower hourly rate-- and more familiarity with the finer points of Romanian law-- in his home country.

So, you can understand why a stickler for legal ethics like Rudy Giuliani would object to Hunter’s behavior. After all, Popoviciu ultimately lost his appeal, and was sentenced to seven years in prison for his kleptocratic land deal. To monetize one’s affiliation with the White House-- by providing legal assistance to such a crook-- goes against everything Giuliani stands for.

Which, to be clear, is nothing. Rudy Giuliani stands for nothing (he’s more the sitting type). As NBC News reports:

Popoviciu was convicted in 2016 but launched an appeal. He assembled a high profile legal team to fight the conviction, which included former FBI director Louis Freeh … Freeh continued working on behalf of Popoviciu [after his appeal failed]. Last year, he tapped Giuliani, his longtime friend, to assist in his Romanian work.

Giuliani’s hiring created what appears in hindsight a strange-bedfellows arrangement. Giuliani, who has been the loudest critic of Hunter Biden’s work in the Ukraine, was working on the same side as the younger Biden in Romania.

In August 2018, Giuliani wrote a letter to Romania’s president and prime minister criticizing the country’s recent efforts to rein in corruption as overly aggressive. Giuliani’s position contradicted the U.S. stance on anti-corruption efforts in Romania.

I’m starting to think that Team Trump’s avowed concerns with corruption in Eastern Europe may not be entirely on the level.

Although it just because public yesterday, a couple of weeks ago, Giuliani butt-dialed an NBC News reporter at 11:07 pm and the 3 minute long message went right to voicemail. It was late in New York, but it was early in [where the hell] and the reporter heard 3 minutes of Giuliani hacking it up with [who the hell?].

Disorganized Crime

"You know," Giuliani says at the start of the recording. "Charles would have a hard time with a fraud case 'cause he didn't do any due diligence."

It wasn't clear who Charles is, or who may have been implicated in a fraud. In fact, much of the message's first minute is difficult to comprehend, in part because the voice of the other man in the conversation is muffled and barely intelligible.

But then, Giuliani says something that's crystal clear.

"Let's get back to business."

He goes on.

"I gotta get you to get on Bahrain."

Giuliani is well-connected in the kingdom of Bahrain.

Last December, he visited the Persian Gulf nation and had a one-on-one meeting with King Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa in the royal palace. "King receives high-level U.S. delegation," read the headline of the state-run Bahrain News Agency blurb about the visit.

Giuliani runs a security consulting company, but it's not clear why he would have a meeting with Bahrain's king. Was he acting in his capacity as a consultant? As Trump's lawyer? Or as an international fixer running a shadow foreign policy for the president?

In May, Giuliani told the Daily Beast his firm had signed a deal with Bahrain to advise its police force on counterterrorism measures. But the Bahrain News Agency account of the meeting suggested Giuliani was viewed more like an ambassador than a security consultant. "HM the King praised the longstanding Bahraini-U.S. relations, noting keenness of the two countries to constantly develop them," it said.

The voicemail yielded no details about the meeting. But Giuliani can be heard telling the man that he's "got to call Robert again tomorrow."

"Is Robert around?" Giuliani asks.

"He's in Turkey," the man responds.

Giuliani replies instantly. "The problem is we need some money."

The two men then go silent. Nine seconds pass. No word is spoken. Then Giuliani chimes in again.

"We need a few hundred thousand," he says.

It's unclear what the two men were talking about. But Giuliani is known to have worked with a Robert who has ties to Turkey.

His name is Robert Mangas, and he's a lawyer at the firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, as well as a registered agent of the Turkish government.

Giuliani himself was employed by Greenberg Traurig until about May 2018.

Mangas provided an affidavit in the case of Reza Zarrab, a Turkish gold trader charged in the United States with laundering Iranian money in a scheme to evade American sanctions.

Giuliani was brought on to assist Zarrab in 2017. He traveled to Turkey with his former law partner Michael Mukasey and attempted to strike a deal with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to secure the release of their jailed client, alarming the federal prosecutor leading the case.

Giuliani and Mangas were both employed by Greenberg Traurig at the time. The firm and Mangas had registered with the Justice Department to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of Turkey, according to an affidavit from Mangas.

Mangas provided the affidavit at the request of a judge to explain whether there was any conflict in Giuliani representing Zarrab while still employed by a firm registered to lobby on behalf of Turkey.

Mangas, who did not return a request for comment, says in the court document that Giuliani was never involved in the representation of Turkey.

A Greenberg Traurig spokesperson said Mangas has not been to Turkey since 2013. He joined the firm in 2014, according to his affidavit.

"Mr. Mangas has not spoken to Mr. Giuliani since before he left Greenberg Traurig in May 2018," the spokesperson said.

Giuliani's conversation partner can be heard responding to the "few hundred thousand" comment. But it's possible to make out only the beginning of his answer, and even that is somewhat garbled.

"I'd say even if Bahrain could get, I'm not sure how good [unintelligible words] with his people," the man says.

"Yeah, okay," Giuliani says.

"You want options? I got options," the man says.

"Yeah, give me options," Giuliani replies.

Rudy Giuliani-- The Gift That Keeps On Giving-- Mueller Couldn't Have Imagined He Could Get This Lucky

No love lost, but late yesterday, Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey, wrote that Señor Trumpanzee's management of the shutdown, which they are kind enough to remind us is his first foray in divided government, has exposed as never before his shortcomings as a self-proclaimed great dealmaker. Fuckface "has been adamant about securing $5.7 billion in public money to construct" his vanity wall but has been incapable of winning congressional approval despite his shutdown antics and shameless hostage-taking. They wrote that "The 30-day shutdown-- the impacts of which have begun rippling beyond the federal workforce into everyday lives of millions of Americans-- is defining the second half of Trump’s term and has set a foundation for the nascent 2020 presidential campaign. The shutdown also has accentuated several fundamental traits of Trump’s presidency: His apparent shortage of empathy, in this case for furloughed workers; his difficulty accepting responsibility for a crisis he had said he would be proud to instigate; his tendency for revenge when it comes to one-upping political foes; and his seeming misunderstanding of Democrats’ motivations."

My favorite new neocon website, The Bullwark-- basically a new name for the Weekly Standard-- featured an essay by-- who else?-- William Kristol Sunday morning, Trump’s Slippage in Support is Real. Click bait? How about this: "The president is losing support-- not just among independents, but from his evangelical and white-male base, too." Nothing all that new here, just more about the Marist poll everyone else covered last week. There's slippage (anticipated) for Trump's standing due to the shutdown. "The slippage is the worst kind-- the slow erosion of support from key blocs: swing voters (independents and suburbanites) and those who put Trump over the top (blue collar white men and Republicans over 60). It’s been registering in a cross section of polling data, not just one poll. Trump’s job approval rating is down to 31 percent among independents in Gallup. His approval ratings in Rasmussen are down from the 48-49 percent range of late last year to the 43-44 percent level of the past week or so. The Marist data for PBS shows a drop of 10 percent in job approval among Republicans and a decline of 11 percent among white evangelicals and 17% among suburban men. And Trump continues to enrage the Dem base while this erosion in his base continues to progress. Blue collar white men being turned off from Trump shouldn’t surprise anyone, for they know the difficulty of living paycheck to paycheck. This, plus the skew of the tax cut package, spells political trouble for Trump long term, especially if a slow down, much less a recession, looms in 2020."

So those are the #NeverTrumpers. Then there are the actual fascists. They're mad at him too. Even the basest part of the base!

This erosion of support is coming at the worst possible moment for Trump-- unless you consider every moment the worst possible moment for Trump-- because of the Putin-Gate scandal. The video up top is Giuliani speaking with Jake Tapper on CNN and the video below is Giuliani on Meet The Press, both interviews yesterday. Does anyone understand how Trump keeps this clown on his team? He keeps giving more and more away. Today it was that the Trump Organization kept negotiating with Russia to build a Trump Tower Moscow right into November of 2016. Previous to that, all that had been dragged out of Trump was that there was some communication about the project until the spring but not beyond.

Chuck Todd had Mark Warner (D-VA), co-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on afterwards. Warner seemed pretty surprised Giuliano spilled the beans. "That is news to me, and that is big news. Why, two years after the fact, are we just learning this fact now when there’s been this much inquiry? I would think most voters... that knowing that the Republican nominee was actively trying to do business in Moscow, that the Republican nominee at least at one point had offered, if he built this building, Vladimir Putin, a free-penthouse apartment, and if those negotiations were ongoing up until the election, I think that’s a relevant fact for voters to know. And I think it’s remarkable we are two years after the fact and just discovering it today." The CNN show with Tapper was much worse (for the Trumpists). When Tapper pushed him on whether or not Trump was instructing Cohen how to answer congressional questions about the deal, Giuliani, who seemed frazzled and defensive throughout the interview, said "I don't know if it happened or didn't happen. It may be attorney-client privilege if it happened, where I can't acknowledge it. But I have no knowledge that he spoke to him, but I'm telling you I wasn't there then... So what if he talked to him about it?"

Yeah! So what! Sounds "perfectly normal" to me! You? I'm assuming that Cohen secretly recorded this perfectly normal conversation (which is considered a no-no but isn't illegal unless Individual 1 suggested what Cohen should say. Then it's illegal... and impeachable.