According to the conspiracy theory, the Trilateral Commission ran the world. The question wasn’t which world leader was part of the Trilateral Commission. The question was who wasn’t.

Conspiracy theories surrounding it were bolstered by the fact that the thing actually existed. In fact, it still does, even if the excitement that once surrounded it has mostly died off.

The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by one of the world’s oligarchs at the time, David Rockefeller, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security advisor under Jimmy Carter, along with a group of influential private citizens from around the world. This sharing of hands alone raised eyebrows. The organization was filled with folks from both parties. This, too, got people chattering. The phrase “world government” echoed through the beer glasses that made up the rumor-dissemination networks of those days.

It didn’t help matters that the organization never had many members. Usually around 400 or so. This raised suspicions because its membership consisted of an almost impossible class to be a part of.

Its mission statement was not earth-shattering or controversial. It began with an acknowledgement that of the two main foreign policy philosophies of its time, power politics was out, and interdependence was in.1 By itself, the organization’s opening statement would not set off alarm bells:2

“Growing interdependence is a fact of life of the contemporary world. It transcends and influences national systems... While it is important to develop greater cooperation among all the countries of the world, Japan, Western Europe, and North America, in view of their great weight in the world economy and their massive relations with one another, bear a special responsibility for developing effective cooperation, both in their own interests and in those of the rest of the world.”

What stoked conspiracy theories was its membership, which was a who’s who of international elites, from Jimmy Carter to a deputy director of the CIA and enough international CEOs to cause a small riot if they were to appear together chumming with someone like Zohran Mamdani.

The Trilateral Commission still exists, presumably mostly as a quiet international organization devoted to facilitating free trade, but the rumors and fiction surrounding it have largely disappeared.

Then came Trump

When Trump 1.0 descended upon us with its toxic brimstone, so did a new class of conspiracy theories. Most of us have heard the worst of them by now. For example: Pizzagate, in which Hillary Clinton held captive children in pizza ovens or some such. I’ve never been much of a student of Pizzagate, so I may have the details wrong.

Trump himself has promoted dozens of conspiracy theories, including one that claimed Obama was born in Kenya. The worst of his promoted conspiracies, as we all know, led to a riot on January 6, 2021, that resulted in the deaths of several law enforcement officers and a never-ending battle against the certified results of the 2020 elections. 50+ failed lawsuits on his behalf never silenced the election deniers.

And now they control the levers of power.

One result is that it becomes nearly impossible for groups who find problems with the 2024 elections, groups such as , to gain any traction, because Trump was the boy in diapers who cried wolf, thus eroding confidence in any evidence of well-researched voting discrepancies and ballot tampering.

Any attempt to accuse Republicans of election trickery during the midterms will be met by the same fate. Democrats called Trump and his minions out on their false claims of election fraud, easily defeated him in dozens of different courthouses, and will thus face immediate pushback when they try to stop Republicans from trying to throw the midterm elections.

You don’t need to be convinced by the reams of data the “This Will Hold” folks present to understand how dangerous it is to discount everyone who points out something looking fishy.

The same is true with the current kerfuffle over the guy who crashed Trump’s dinner party in Washington, D.C., last Sunday night.

According to Newsguard, social media posts calling the incident “staged” reached 80 million views.3

It makes sense, on the surface, to immediately want to debunk this kind of stuff. For one thing, it reeks of QAnon. In fact, Newsguard derisively calls those who promote the “staged” theory “BlueAnon.”

The problem here, though, given the dearth of information about the event, the fact that the Justice Department is currently headed by Trump’s personal attorney, and the fact that the current occupant of the Oval Office is a serial liar, convicted criminal, thief, con man, and, according to reams of evidence, was at least at one time a prolific pedophile, dismissing inquiries one day after the event occurs is more dangerous than any conspiracy theory that pops up.

Besides, this regime lost its right to dismiss conspiracy theories ten years ago, but especially after January 6. Trump’s devotion to conspiracy theories is the reason that the far-right press is the 2026 version of the Weekly World News.

So when people question why a mild-mannered, and apparently troubled, software engineer was carrying multiple knives through a well-protected entrance and easily scooted past several Secret Service agents while holding a long gun in his hand, I think it’s fair to ask questions. Who was he going to use all those knives on? Would he know how to use one in combat against elite law enforcement personnel?

When we are told that he had the presence of mind to send out a bizarre “manifesto” to his loved ones ten minutes before confronting Secret Service agents, who are probably among the most lethal armed services personnel in the world, it really is okay to scratch our heads and wonder a bit.

When a well-trained Secret Service agent shoots five times4 at the mild-mannered engineer and misses, it’s okay to raise a red flag without Newsguard telling us to lower the flag less than 24 hours after the incident takes place. Sorry, Newsguard, that’s a white flag.

Especially when you consider that the motives for a staged event like this are not in question. Distraction from Iran, which in turn was a distraction from the Epstein Files, to name just two.

The chances are extremely high that the party crasher was simply a kook. It would not be easy for this regime to pull off a staged event like an assassination scare because these morons can’t even really keep their bathroom habits secret.

But what if it was staged? Unlikely? Yes. But how will we know if we simply accept what the Trump propaganda machine tells us with no inquiry, no curiosity, no questions?

Thanks for reading!

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Footnotes

3

NewsGuard's Reality Check

‘Staged’ Shooting Claims Hit 80 Million Views — and Counting

Welcome to Reality Check, NewsGuard’s nonpartisan newsletter that tracks the false claims and conspiracy theories that shape our world — and who’s behind them…

Read more

3 days ago · 35 likes · 4 comments

I knew I was in for a treat when that obsequious, pandering slop rolled in. I’m going to reproduce its awfulness in its entirety, with, of course, my comments. Grab your morning Sunday rum and settle in for the ride.

The original report is in

block quotes like this.

And my annotations/comments are in bold italics underneath the relevant passage.

Like this.

Politico’s report and my comments

Good Sunday morning. This is Jack Blanchard, writing on a White House Correspondents Dinner weekend like no other.

Drop me a line.

Oh, Jack, my sweet summer child, I think the only line of yours I’ll be interested in is a line of the coke you jingoistic cheerleaders snorted before the dinner.

WHAT WE KNOW:

I was afraid you’d start with that.

The armed man accused of trying to storm last night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner is in custody and scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow in a D.C. courthouse.

I would have started with, “The man recruited for Trump’s latest false flag fake assassination attempt,” but you do you.

He faces two charges related to using a firearm and assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon, though more will likely follow.

You’re acting like he’ll stay alive in jail.

Multiple law enforcement officials named him as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance, California, per the AP. Federal officers swarmed his California home overnight, though it’s unclear if they entered, per NYT.

The attack: Police said the suspect was armed with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives, and tried to storm a security checkpoint just outside the ballroom at the Washington Hilton. (President Donald Trump posted this extraordinary security footage.)

Alrighty, stop right there. You call this extraordinary?

My dude. You couldn’t produce grainier footage if you used video editing software’s “grain” filter. Also, that doesn’t look staged. Like, not at all. Well done!

BREAKING…

As y’all might expect, Ruminato has obtained exclusive footage that Trump originally intended to release. He was talked out of it by the Secret Service.

Multiple shots were fired, and a Secret Service agent was hit in the chest. Trump said the agent’s bulletproof vest absorbed the damage, and the agent was in good spirits at the hospital last night.

“We did such a better job than those dummies in Butler. I can’t wait for the next one! Let’s blackmail a female shooter next time!”

The suspect was quickly apprehended, as this picture (also posted by Trump) shows. Police believe he was staying at the hotel and acted alone.

Ummm, the video shows the guy running right past about ten of them. I would hope he was quickly apprehended. Also, great picture, Donald, but I do have one question.

Question: Is it now official policy to disrobe before participating in a false flag event? Thank you for your attention to this matter.

INSIDE THE ROOM: We were just finishing the salad course when shots rang out, the mood lurching from convivial chatter to confusion and panic.

I looked up the word “convivial,” just to check if the definition of the word hasn’t changed in the past 50 years or so, with me unawares. Sure enough, AI has generously added its own flavor to what Webster might say:

Convivial (adjective) describes a person, atmosphere, or event that is friendly, lively, and enjoyable, often involving eating, drinking, and good company.

If you can refer to the host of this shit show as good company, even when accompanied by a fellow paid trickster (a mentalist and magician who calls himself Oz, of course), it quickly becomes clear why the media has transformed into a propaganda arm for the world’s worst child predator.

Shouts to get down, the crash of dishes, a flurry of tuxedos and ball gowns diving under tables. Oz Pearlman was literally mid-trick on stage with the president.

Dear God, why won’t you answer my prayers? I was praying for Oz to disappear Trump, or, at the least, send him to an Antarctic ice floe wearing his skivvies.

Also, Jack. A flurry of tuxedos? I normally don’t like to bash another writer, but “flurry of tuxedos” is the best you can do for such an amazing, terrific (best ever) news event?

The famed mentalist “didn’t see it coming,” he told Playbook’s Ali Bianco afterward. “I thought the room was about to explode, I dropped faster than anyone.”

If only it had exploded, Oz, if only it had. Also, Oz Pearlman is famous? I’m running with the wrong circle.

Evacuation:

Stop, Jack! I don’t want to see the word “Evacuation” and “Trump” in the same sentence! It makes me think of his diapers and stench, and not in a good way. Phrasing, Jack. Phrasing.

The president, VP JD Vance, then other Cabinet members, were whisked out by armed teams. (This Getty footage is remarkable.)

What you call remarkable, Jack, I call comic relief. Let’s have a looksee, shall we?

I especially appreciated the lady crawling on all fours at the end. I assume she was a journalist who had simply remained in the position that journalists who cover Trump always adhere to.

“I was sitting with Dr. [Mehmet] Oz and his wife Lisa,” Dasha recalls. “His security detail ran at us really fast, and everyone was getting shoved under the table.

I would pay for the opportunity to shove a pile of bootlicking journalists under the table, then maybe even entertain them with some inappropriate water sports. Also, Dasha, why were you sitting with that clown? Did he regale you with MAHA mayhem?

Oz was in ‘doctor’ mode, and kept popping his head up to check if everyone was OK.

Oh my God, Dasha, you think he was popping his head out to help people? Oz? More likely, he wanted to get away from you and other potential targets.

Lisa kept yelling at him to put his head down.”

I really don’t want to hear about their sex life, Dasha. Ick.

Also of note: If it were Trump and Melania, Melania would have booted him in the ass out from under the table to make sure he was alone on the floor and an easy target. Just sayin’.

Flashbacks: For Dasha, who — like many others at the dinner — was in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, it all felt horribly familiar.

Let me guess: “I had visions of Trump slicing his other ear with a razor blade!” No? Okay, well, go on with your subservient, sad report, if you must…

“As I was hearing the sounds and everyone was going under the tables, I was having flashbacks,” she says.

Of Trump groping you? No? I’m not good at this guessing game, am I, Dasha?

“It was exactly the experience, the confusion — thinking, ‘could that be gunshots? No, that can’t be gunshots.’ Then hiding; thinking, ‘are we crazy? Can this really be happening? Again?’”

Muscle memory: And then the room — packed with hundreds of journalists — got to work filming, streaming, texting, scribbling notes.

The only muscle memory I sense is that overpowering urge all mainstream media journalists feel to scramble on their knees as quickly as possible to lick the soles of Trump’s Florsheims.

“You could see the muscle memory of this profession kick in,” POLITICO’s Ben Johansen reflects.

I am glad I did not witness this, Ben. I bet the sight of a hundred mainstream and far-right journalists crawling toward him at a frenetic pace even frightened Trump a tad.

Among them was his colleague Megan Messerly: “Over the next hour or so I wandered the ballroom — barefoot, heels are horrible for reporting

I know. This is why I never entered the profession after majoring in Journalism in college. I said to myself, “Charles, you can’t do this job in high heels.”

— talking to people about how they felt about such a close call,” she tells Playbook.

Megan. A close call is when a staged bullet whizzes by your ear, and you have to whip out a razor blade on a dime! Luckily, there are people nearby who have had a decade or so of experience shooting bad reality TV shows.

“Three administration officials expressed varying degrees of disbelief about what had happened.” POLITICO founder John Harris filed this dispatch from inside the room.

Official Number One: “I just can’t believe this happened again. Especially with us losing the Iran War and on the verge of getting smoked by Epstein Survivors. Such a thing!”

Official Number Two: “Ditto!”

Official Number Three: It’s the economy, stupids!

GET READY FOR THE INQUIRY: There are serious questions about the security.

I thought they did a fine job. They managed to not only capture the shooter, but undress him first. It was a beautiful thing. Good God in heaven, must everyone be a critic?

Trump himself — while heaping praise on the Secret Service — said last night the hotel was “not a particularly secure building.”

Not like that ballroom/rubble thingy he’s got goin’ on!

Like previous years, normal paying guests filled the lobby throughout the evening.

This year, it’s more like preying guests from the far right media that the regime prefers at these little get-togethers.

Quick question… Did Trump have a special, Dr. Seuss-like money vacuum machine installed at the entrance that shoots the money from paying guests directly up into his ass?

The ballroom itself was downstairs behind a security cordon, although IDs weren’t checked and security otherwise felt porous. It’s hard to believe future events will follow suit.

Unless, of course, another false flag is needed, which, I’m guessing, will be soon after the malignant moron of Mar-a-Lago manufactures his next crisis.

Unbowed: The president was in a reflective mood during a late-night press conference at the White House.

Here we go. You’re gonna lay it on really thick now, aren’t you, Jack? But can I just make one comment before you continue? Using the word “reflective” in reference to the mad clown is actually prohibited now in the AP Stylebook.

“It’s a dangerous profession,” he shrugged, after leaving the same hotel where predecessor Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. “When you’re impactful, they go after you. When you’re not impactful, they leave you alone.” But Trump was unbowed. “It’s always shocking when something like this happens,” he said. “I can’t be so concerned that I can’t function.”

You can’t function because your brain stopped working about ten years ago, PedoFührer Crazy Pants. Hey, let’s revisit the new MAGA anthem while we’re at it!

Nobody missed the bigger picture:

You mean that Herr TrumpEpshTeen manufactures domestic and international political events and crises at about the same pace that Kellogg’s cranks out Fruit Loops?

yet another bleak chapter in a national story of spiraling political violence.

Oh. That. Someday, Jack, long after your generation of Trumpy bootlickers is retired and this unbearable decade of madness is over, AI will write books on how you helped usher in this national story of spiraling political violence so that you could collect paychecks from your corporate masters.

No image from the night was more striking than that of Erika Kirk being led from the room in tears.

More striking than this????????

As Trump himself pointed out, this was supposed to be a dinner “dedicated to free speech.” It was brought to a halt before the first speaker took the stage.

You mean a dinner dedicated to Trump and his effort to destroy free speech and any media company that dares to criticize him? That dinner?

THE SHOW MUST GO ON:

No, Jack. Put away your party dress. This show does not need to go on.

Trump was equally clear that the dinner be rescheduled, bigger and better than before.

Trump hasn’t been clear about anything for at least ten years.

“We’re not gonna let anyone take over our society,” the president said. He even promised to be nice to the journalists next time.

What’s wrong with you, Jack? Did they inject you with something?

That was the prevailing mood at the after-parties, which went ahead last night despite the dinner’s sudden curtailment — albeit with heightened security and a very different vibe.

Oh, thank God!!!!! Maybe y’all can go back on with your lives sooner than you thought!

MS NOW’s gathering at Dupont Underground struck a more somber tone than the raucous party that was planned.

Seeing as they are the only group there that offers even a hint of criticism, I can imagine they were somber long before the “shooting.”

The venue pivoted to a space for journalists to process what they’d just been through, spokesperson Richard Hudock told Ali. NBC’s after-party at the French ambassador’s residence had a similar feel, with one room commandeered by working journalists — though others still danced to Dolly Parton.

Shit, even I would dance to Dolly after peeing my pants, and I’m a pretty terrible dancer.

Today’s brunch events will go ahead as planned — and we’ll see you all at the POLITICO Brunch hosted by Goli Sheikholeslami later this morning.

I won’t be there, Jack. You didn’t invite me, and if you had, I would have shoved you under a table myself.

The brunch is implementing an enhanced security posture.

And providing knee pads for said posture, I hope.

The lasting sense today is rare indeed — of D.C. pulling together in the face of adversity.

Ruminato, in another exclusive, has learned that the grifter in chief is going to sell “United We Stand” condoms on a new merch website dedicated to this event.

HOW LONG WILL IT LAST? The questions around security have quickly become political. It wasn’t just Trump in the room last night, but first lady Melania Trump, Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and scores of other Cabinet officials and members of Congress. Is the climate simply too dangerous to hold events of this sort in a D.C. hotel?

Please, dear Lord above, I pray that it is so.

Trump and his supporters are already making the case this is why his new (fully bullet-proofed) White House ballroom is a good idea. “I don’t want to hear one more fucking criticism of Trump’s new ballroom,” Meghan McCain wrote on X.

Thanks, Meghan, for desecrating the memory of your father. Keep coming back.

Others, like Katie Miller, agreed and said it was also time to “fund DHS” — the (still shuttered) agency that pays the Secret Service.

AHA!!!!!!! Finally, we understand the genesis for this event. Praise the Lord!!!!

You can expect pressure on Democrats in the days ahead. Trump ally Kari Lake called in to Newsmax to blame CNN’s Jake Tapper and other journalists for “spreading lies” about the president.

I’d laugh, but I think I’ll hibernate the rest of the day and pretend this timeline doesn’t exist.

Thanks for reading!

Notes

Yes, I do realize there is a tiny chance this is not a false flag event. That doesn’t change the fact that reporting on it is done without the acknowledgement that the man in the Oval Office is a demented old child predator who wears crazy pants.

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Footnotes

I’ve never considered myself a poet. At all. I’ve been writing since third grade, but have studiously avoided poetry. I’ve also spent most of my life reading fiction, not poetry.1 I don’t think it’s easy being a good writer if you aren’t a reader, and I probably had read a hundred poems in my entire life until recently, when it has picked up some.

I have much respect for those who have mastered the craft, and I hate to sully their works with my effort here, but as I’ve aged in this life, I’m less like a fine wine and more like a congealed, overaged presence that doesn’t care what people think as much as I once did.

So, back in 2024, I took a stab at a poem and posted it on the Medium platform. I was grateful that my poet friends there did not yell at me. As my regular readers might expect, the poem has an underlying social justice motif.

Without further ado, here it is…

Austin’s Boggy Creek

Along Boggy Creek tiny bayonets dangle from arms
Bodies collapse within shadows of a city's dancing charms
The low montage of trash and flesh harvested by rats and flies
While the well-dressed mingle in the glittering skies
Oblivious to the rampage of our harms.

It wants us dead, this glowering, glowing town
Eyes drawn by its long sanctimonious frown,
Its maestro a coiffed man in a suit
He hurries past as he breathlessly chases his loot
Mercilessly drops a quarter in a cup and calls me a clown.

Find us home on this once boggy creek
Its bed shriveled and drained under sparkling skies that shriek
Of commerce and progress and wondrous tech
Spying on our tents they howl to the city, "clean up this dreck!"
Mocking those whose lifespan spies its final week
On this, this once boggy creek.

Thanks for reading!

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Go ahead. Restack it. I dare you.

Today, a broken, demented, defeated sexual predator pretending to be president surrendered to Iran in the most ignominious way someone deflecting attention from the Epstein files could possibly manage. His incoherent babble was issued forth from his True Sociopath social media app thusly:1

STATEMENT OF PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP:

Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other. President DONALD J. TRUMP

A temporary cease-fire extended indefinitely but now maybe permanent but nobody knows so we should just think ya, we’re gettin’ out of there while the gettin’s good, as long as Netanyahu is satisfied that he’s slaughtered enough Lebanese! And sorry, folks, but this shiz only deserves an unreadable run-on sentence.

Sometimes I feel sorry for the mainstream media trying to cover this maniac, but then I remember that they don’t lead off all their stories with appropriate descriptions of his mental state, so then I just get mad instead.

Not “throwing ketchup on the wall” mad.

Just, you know, that tired resignation we all feel every day type of mad. It’s that foggy, full head of unrelenting depression over our current state of existence. It’s a heavy feeling that never leaves. It weighs us down every hour of every day. An entire nation is stifled by the stench of an overcooked carcass of dementia, madness, and criminality basting in an oven tended by a host of drunken crooks.

And today, the carcass finally said, “I surrender.”

Iran’s victorious Islamic Republic responded accordingly when an adviser to the Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said:2

“The extension of the cease-fire by Donald Trump has no meaning. The losing side cannot set the terms.”

Ouchie poo poo, that’s gonna require a diaper change for the drooling, sleeping, King Théoden of Rohan stinky Epstein evader. No wonder his peeps drink so damn much.

Make no mistake, this is the Mad King’s surrender. He has no place left to go. No other country, besides Israel, of course, will help him deal with a war that was specifically designed to achieve two objectives:

1. Deflect from the Epstein Files. Mission Accomplished. The mainstream press says nary a word about it. Not even most of the refugees from the mainstream media who pretend to be independent journalists here on Substack are barking much about Epstein these days.

2. Insider trading to enrich his family and friends. This has also been a resounding success. Much coinage has been created and deposited into the many money laundromats in his crime empire.

The world’s geopolitics took a pretty good beating from this goofy, nasty business where the only real “accomplishment” was the slaughter of about 200 innocent schoolchildren in Iran.

Oh, and now Iran officially runs the Strait of Hormuz. So there’s that. Well done, Drunky Kegsbreath and company. A strait that had previously been on nobody’s radar, filled with hundreds of oil tankers every day, has officially been militarized and is now at the mercy of a nasty regime that slaughters its own people for sport.

It’s difficult, at this point, to measure such an amazing accomplishment. Unless you hit the gas station today.

So, the madness of King TrumpEpstein will now direct itself to the next deflection, presumably when the word “Epstein” reaches a certain number on Google search term query counts.

Nobody knows what that number is, except, perhaps, Susie Wiles, who would make the Wicked Witch of the West seem like a professional cuddler if she were around today.

Polymarket, which is about to score $400 million in new funds from tech finance bros,3 is presumably going to lay its money on an attack on Cuba next. Much more money is about to go into the hopper of the Trump mafia family and its cronies.

Warcopters will descend upon Havana. Hardened, tough soldiers with imposing special forces tattoos will slide down ropes looking for their next target. Kushner Estates will plan its million-dollar condominiums on the beaches of Havana.

Maybe Cuba’s leader will get snatched, maybe not. If so, it will be a great victory. If not, it will also be a great victory.

It’s always a great victory. Because 78 million idiots wouldn’t vote for a woman, every day is a great victory in today’s America. Not a victory for you, and not a victory for me. But the crime family will be richer than ever. It will be even richer tomorrow. No matter what the regime does, money will flow into the hands of its wealth-hoarding friends.

Thanks for reading!

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Footnotes

Okay, now to the topic of my ire for today.

Last week, I learned that Bill Cosby wasn’t a lone ranger in the world of drugging, assaulting, and/or raping women.

I learned of a viral news story about “sleep rape” and a website called Motherless. As I understand it, Motherless is sort of a PornHub for incels and other woman haters. It’s one of those things I can’t research, because visiting the site will send my browser tracking into a cesspool frenzy of epic proportions.1

One Reddit description I found by someone who is mostly illiterate says this:2

It's a hardcore fetish site that includes tons of hardcore fetish videos, while it does include staged videos depicting those kind of videos [sleep rape] it holds bdsm, somnophilia or other niche hardcore fetishes.

You can’t pay me enough to look up “somnophilia.” Possible exception: Drop a million dollars into my Ko-Fi account, and I’ll reconsider, but that’s a hard number. One million.

Look it up, Chuck!

If you’re a man, you need to read the CNN article. If you’re a woman, you probably have. The article is here:

Exposing a global ‘online rape academy’ that is teaching men how to abuse women and evade detection

The article describes Motherless, plus a Telegram chat room called Zzz that attracted rapists and, before it was shut down, taught men how to rape their wives while sleeping. Yeah, you may want to read that again. No typos on this one. Their own wives.

The Telegram chat room, from what I can tell, seemed to have been mostly based in Europe, but that’s mostly because Telegram has traditionally been more popular outside the United States.

The Telegram part of the story reminded me of the recent horrific French rape case in which a husband, Dominique Pelicot, was convicted for not only drugging and raping his wife, but also inviting at least 72 others to join in.

This wasn’t some big city thing. It was a small town in Southern France.

Quoting Wikipedia here:

Over a period of nine years, from July 2011 to October 2020, Dominique Pelicot, a man from Mazan in south-eastern France, repeatedly drugged and raped his wife, Gisèle Pelicot, and invited male strangers through the internet to rape her while she was unconscious.

Gisèle, who was unaware of the abuse being perpetrated against her, was raped at least 92 times by 72 different men while her husband filmed and photographed them. The crimes were discovered in September 2020 after Dominique was arrested for taking upskirt photographs of women in a supermarket; the ensuing police investigation uncovered hundreds of images on his computer equipment of men raping his wife.

When I first saw that story, I was freaked out. This wasn’t some big metro area. It all took place in a small village in the South of France called Mazan. These men were mostly local. Still, I wanted to believe it was a one-off.

Mazan, after all, is where the family of the Marquis de Sade maintained a châteaux for years before it became a museum (not the kind of museum I’m interested in visiting, thank you very much).

So, maybe, I hoped, it was a one-off, and it all boiled down to that area of France being the birthplace of sadism.

Oh, Charles, you sweet summer child.

Last week, I saw a number.

62 million.

62 million visitors in one month for Motherless, a website that bills itself as a “morals-free zone,” according to that CNN article I linked to earlier in this post. Most of the web views come from the United States.

CNN reports that one of the sections on the website includes 20,000 videos of so-called sleep rape content uploaded by users, with hundreds of thousands of views.

Keep in mind that this is just one small section of a site that has a reputation as a site for “hardcore” fetishes. I sort of don’t want to know what a hardcore fetish is, but instinct tells me that not much of it is legal. A foot fetish, for example, surely isn’t considered hardcore.

The “Pretty Elbows” website in your Uncle Malcolm’s browser history, though odd, isn’t going to fire off too many alarms aside from whatever else someone who looks at fetish sites will trigger. You may look at him questioningly during breakfast, but you’re not about to call the police.

No, hardcore fetish means that there are probably dozens of other sections on Motherless with deplorable, gross content that I still must, for sanity’s sake, believe most of us would find abhorrent. Or, maybe I’m just getting old.

When someone on Reddit, whose answer implies that he doesn’t seem to disapprove, describes an entire website as full of “hardcore” fetish videos, it’s safe to say that sleep videos are only one component in a wide-ranging spectacle of rape and rape culture on the site involving a host of other disturbing sexual proclivities and violence.

62 million visitors.

In one month.

62 million visits in February alone

The “Not all men” crowd will usually blurt out something like, “62 million views isn’t the same as 62 million men.” I’ve read the interwebs. I’ve seen this “argument.”

And this is where the argument must end.

Because number counting misses the point, especially at these ludicrous numbers.

Remember how we all thought the Bill Cosby thing was gross? Well, Motherless contains 20,000 Bill Cosbys. How many men aren’t taping their rapes and posting them on the internet?

This, my fellow dudes, is a self-policing issue. We men will tell our locker room jokes, talking about how funny things that aren’t funny are funny, while women we care about can’t wear two earbuds when they’re running a trail on a midday run.3

This grand tradition of instilling fear in women is not new.

Consider this Bible passage, which describes Ruth’s relationship with Boaz, a landowner trusted by Ruth’s mother-in-law, Naomi, for Boaz’s rare gift of treating women with respect. In this passage, Naomi tells Ruth that hanging with Boaz will keep her safe from the other barbarians nearby:4

And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, lest in another field you be assaulted.”

Think about that for a moment. You don’t need to be a Bible believer to understand that its stories represented the culture of its day. The rape culture of the day was such that a woman could not pick grapes in a field without worrying about being raped.

Not much has changed since then.

The “Not all men” argument will continue to fail until that day when women can walk to their car without holding the edge side of a key between their fingers or freaking out when they hear footsteps behind them when there are less than fifty people nearby.

It’s all men until we men self-police rape culture out of existence. It is not women’s responsibility to do this.

We don’t get to blame MAGA for this. We don’t get to blame Trump. Rape culture is bipartisan. Epstein has proven this, Eric Swalwell has proven this, as has the choice women have made that they’d rather spend time in a forest with a bear than you.

I don’t know how I’d cope with this if I were young. I don’t know how I’d feel if I knew most women were on the verge of hating us, if not already there. When I was young, rape culture wasn’t a topic of frequent conversation. At the same time, out of every woman who has trusted me well enough over the years to tell me, I can think of only one who wasn’t assaulted.

So the bear, he was always there. And he offered more comfort than you or me, even when his claws were out and even when he wanted all the food in her backpack.

These days, the anger of women is mounting. Statistics bear it out. More women are choosing not to get married, and they’re marrying later when they do.

If men want to regain women’s trust, they’ve got 2,000 years of mistrust to wipe out. That’s a lot. Crying, “it’s not all men,” isn’t going to do the trick, because to women, it sure feels like it’s most men.

Believe it or not, rape culture isn’t defined exclusively by rape. We need to teach our sons respect towards women that includes, among many other things, no catcalls, and rejects the concept of “hitting on women.”

Many men think it’s a game. They’ll “hit” on fifty women, and “score” on one like it’s a sport. Then, they’ll take a victory lap and run through a crowd of their peers, who shoulder clap them while cheering them on to keep up the good work.

Those forty-nine other women, the ones who scoffed at their advances, chose the bear.

We don’t teach our sons the most basic fact of romantic life: That a woman will almost always let you know when she’s interested in you. Instead of learning the art of the subtle hint, we’re taught to hunt. We’re taught that it’s a numbers game. We’re taught that women are objects instead of the ballast of human dignity and grace and life itself.

I suppose you can argue with me about these finer points of male/female relationships, but what we men must not allow to continue is the pervasive rape culture that accepts violence against women.

Whether it’s 62 million men visiting that website, or 62 men a million times, it’s 62 to 62 million too many.

Women have to learn how to survive in a rape culture. We men don’t. Not really. Yes, men rape men. But that’s still male sexual violence. And it doesn’t haunt our every move.

When I was accosted many years ago by a small gang of young punks while walking down Fullerton Avenue one fine Chicago spring day, I wasn’t worried about getting raped by them. I was worried about getting my ass kicked. That’s not good, not fun, but it’s also very different than how I would have felt if I had been a woman in that spot.

Luckily for me, I was walking home from a weight-lifting session, so my adrenaline was still crazy, and I threw one of them against a chain link fence, which surprisingly prompted another to stick his arm out to shake my hand.

If I had been a woman, I probably would not have escaped so easily. The chain link fence guy had grabbed my wrist as they were walking past me from the opposite direction. Even if I had pepper spray, it would have been hard to get to it. I was able to flip my hand over, grab his forearm, and push him (hard) into the fence.

Maybe they thought I was a cop. After they walked past, I heard them hassle a young woman who had been walking on the sidewalk not far behind me. I knew it was a woman because of the way they were harassing her. I turned around and yelled, “Hey!”

The guy who shook my hand yelled out, “It’s cool, bro,” and they walked past her. I wanted to yell out, “No, it’s not,” but I felt like I had pressed my luck enough. I didn’t want to enact Plan B, which would have been to run into the moderately busy street in front of traffic to get away from them.

This story is one of my few “I was in danger” stories. Most women encounter dangerous encounters with men almost every day.

Men need to realize that war stories like the one I just told are nothing compared to what women exeprience. And now, they’re reading about how their own husbands are drugging and raping them. While we men swivel our heads around like birds and say, “Wasn’t me!”

It was us. It is us. It is us until women feel safe. And if women are never going to feel safe, if men can’t reverse our 3,000+ year old history, then it will always be we men, every one of us, that are the reasons why.

Thanks for reading! If you appreciate the content of this article, you can help offset the “unsubscribes” by restacking and sharing.

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Footnotes

First off, I’ll answer the question, “Why am I obsessed with Andrew Tate?”

The answer is simple: He’s a violent incel who provides instructions to millions of young boys, including boys pretending to be men, on how to hurt women. And he’s here. On Substack. A platform I write on.

With a million-plus subscribers. Or, so Substack is telling us. The other day, I wrote this:

The first name on his subscriber list is Karen Attiah, who joined Substack after getting fired by the Washington Post for honest comments immediately following Charlie Kirk’s murder.

Guess what? Her name is gone now.

Perhaps I’m a slow learner, but this tells me that he harvested her email, just like I said he was doing in my article here:

Harvesting emails and subscribing people without their consent is a violation of Substack’s Terms of Service. But, of course, his entire life is anti-consent.

Ms. Attiah must have noticed, muttered an F bomb to herself, and unsubscribed.

Tate is violating Substack’s Terms of Service. Apparently, and for no discernible reason, we need to remind Substack of this fact on a mass basis until they do the right thing and remove the account.

So let’s do that by reporting it.

Here’s how:

Go to the maniac’s profile here:

https://substack.com/@cobratate

Don’t worry. He can’t hurt you. He won’t know you’re there if you don’t message him directly (don’t do that).

You’ll see this (without my instructions label):

Click the ellipsis. You’ll see this:

Click “Report.”

You’ll see this:

Choose “Other.”

He’s violating Substack’s Terms of Service on Two Counts:

The first is this:

https://substack.com/content

Hate

Substack cannot be used to publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes. Offending behavior includes credible threats of physical harm to people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability or medical condition.”

Harmful and illegal activities

We don’t allow content that promotes harmful or illegal activities, including material that advocates, threatens, or shows you causing harm to yourself, other people, or animals. We don’t allow child sexual abuse material or the use of Substack for child sexual exploitation or abuse. We also do not allow non-consensual intimate images — sharing, or threatening to share, sexual images of a person without their consent.

The second is email harvesting:

Spam and phishing

We are vehemently anti-spam and anti-phishing. If you are importing a mailing list from another platform, you are required to ensure it’s made up of people who explicitly opted-in to receive emails from your specific publication. We don’t allow imports of email addresses that were purchased, scraped, or harvested from third party websites. Don’t add people to your mailing list without their consent, and don’t import your contacts list or social graphs.

You can reference any or all of this in your report by simply pasting the relevant Substack’s TOS link into your report:

https://substack.com/content

Tate is also violating European law. Substack is, too, if they continue to allow him on their platform (see the section below, “More on the email harvesting”).

You can also report Tate to Stripe, which is the payment service that manages Substack author payments. The Stripe user guidelines are here:

https://stripe.com/legal/ssa

Their complaint center is here:

https://support.stripe.com/questions/submit-a-complaint

Hit him where it hurts, although understand that he’s already a multimillionaire who has made his cash by promoting violence against women and actually teaching others how to do it. He continues to try to find ways to collect money for legal fees because he knows that ultimately the Brits, where he is wanted on ten charges, including rape, will get him one way or another.

But if he’s kicked off Stripe, it makes it impossible for him to make money here on Substack. And it might impact his other revenue sources.

More on the email harvesting

His email harvest apparently also violates European law. I’ll let someone else explain the European side of this, since it’s way out of my knowledge zone:

https://wildlionessespride.substack.com/p/this-isnt-about-andrew-tate/comment/244809421

Yesterday, I looked again at Tate’s subscriber list. I found a bunch more people who seem very unlikely to subscribe. Lesser known than Ms. Attiah. Unknowns, too. He harvested a million subscribers. Without their consent. I’m hoping that the powers that be at Substack don’t make me take a deeper dive on that, but that’s my next step. I’m not shutting up about this until he’s gone.

Here is how imports have worked for me on Substack

I don’t do much of it. But I have done bulk emails, meaning more than one at a time, on Substack on a few occasions. Usually about a half dozen or so at most.

The emails come from people who opt in by signing up for a free e-book, usually on a site called StoryOrigin. They sign up for the book, they agree to the opt-in, and I wait a bit for a bunch of them to do so. Then I import them into Substack.

I’d bet about half of them unsubscribe as soon as they get their book. Most of the rest unsubscribe as soon as they receive my first political rant. But that’s another topic.

There’s a specific and highly visible warning label in the Substack email import upload area that states: “Only add people who have explicitly opted-in to receiving emails. Do not add people whose information was obtained solely via the exchange of products/services, giveaways, or similar collection methods.”

My imports are both. My potential subscribers receive a book (goods and services), then they opt in to receive the newsletters.

Tate imported his list without the consent of the people on his “million” person subscriber list. Karen Attiah just proved it. Others will unsubscribe, too, but most won’t.

You should check your Substack reading list, too, to see if he added you.

In the meantime, ask yourself: “Have I reported Andrew Tate today?”

Notes

This morning, his profile lists 991K+ subscribers, instead of the million-plus from just yesterday.

More proof that he harvested. Tell Substack. And thanks for your patience with my little obsession.

Thanks for reading!

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To cure this, once in a while, I’ll look for what I call a good, bad movie. I love movies in general, which is why my regular readers see so many satirical movie reviews involving the mad, clownish presidency we are all being subjected to.

But, sometimes, I need that one movie that requires nothing from me. Something I can stare at and just be stupid.

Netflix’s “Thrash” to the rescue.

And sometimes, I’m somehow comforted to realize that there are people in this world who live the good life by making movies like this and piling up some coin doing it.

“Thrash” Director Tommy Wirkola is one such person. Wirkola is behind such Hollywood gems as “Spermageddon” and the somewhat better known “Violent Night,” starring David Harbour as Santa and John Leguizamo as Scrooge.

I don’t know anything about these movies other than the fact that, by some mystery solvable only by those with Hollywood insider knowledge, someone in Hollywood funds them.

When I say that Wirkola lives the good life, I mean it. In “Thrash,” he was able to create a movie that comes off as the ultimate fantasy for some of us poor souls who have been psychologically damaged enough by ten years of Trump to fantasize about a wild-eyed Trump supporter being eaten by sharks.

I doubt that’s how Executive Producer D. Scott Lumpkin pitched the movie to investors. But I also have no doubt director Wirkola was rubbing his hands in glee when he said to his film editor, “No, we keep the scene where the shark bites the MAGAt in the ass.”

The film is set in the fictional small coastal South Carolina town of Annieville, which is about to get violently submerged by climate change’s finest, a Category 5 hurricane.

One character, when asked the name of the hurricane, dismissively says, “Hurricane Henry.”

“What would you call it?” he’s asked.

“Ted Bundy.”

The movie is like that.

The plot revolves mostly around two sets of characters. One set is headed by a teenager, Dakota (Whitney Peak), who is trying to recover from the passing of her perfect mother. Her uncle, Dr. Dale Edwards (Djimon Hounsou), is a marine biologist who has assumed guardianship. He has left Dakota alone in the big house she’s inherited from her deceased parents so he can serve as the film’s resident expert on sharks, which we quickly learn are swarming the town after a storm surge.

Dakota is suffering from a psychotic episode of some sort, where she has become agoraphobic. As the hurricane approaches, she can’t leave the house because she’s too afraid to be exposed to the public.

Her uncle, Dr. Edwards, is one of the heroes of the movie. He hails from Mozambique, so we assume Dakota shares the same ancestral home, since it’s clear he’s her mom’s brother. This also acts as a film device to help illustrate the political divide that “Thrash” sharks use to decide what to eat.1

At this point, however, we still assume that everyone is fair game for Hurricane Ted Bundy and its hungry sharks. Little do we know that director Wirkola is forming two camps: Trumpsters and the resistance, and that nobody in the resistance can be killed. Yay us!

To make a long character story short, Dakota is not the kind of kid who is going to end up in juvie. So she’s the perfect sort to take the helm of Camp Dakota, which, of course, is part of the opposition, if not its very symbol.

So is another camp, which I’ll call “Camp Foster Kids.” This camp consists of three foster kids lorded over by their foster dad, a crazed Trump voter, a perfectly stereotypical South Carolina white dude named Bob Olson (Josh McConville).

We know he’s MAGA because he constantly speaks abusively to his foster kids, the camera likes to cut to the American flag in the front yard of his dilapidated home, and he displays willful ignorance with every sentence that spills out of his angry mouth. If AI created a MAGAt, it would be Bob Olson.

Camp Foster Kids’ oppressor is joined by his submissive wife, Helen (Amy Mathews). As the town becomes submerged by Hurricane Ted Bundy, its waters fill with hungry bull sharks lured to town by a cute movie device, a meat packing truck that splits in half as the driver attempts to flee the storm surge.

Apparently, the meat truck is filled with a blimp-sized water balloon full of blood, because when it splits open, all the surrounding water turns red, which acts as a PA system of sorts that announces to the local bull sharks that there is much fun to be had in Annieville. Chomp chomp.

Numerous people of unknown political persuasions are red-shirted2 during the initial bull shark meetup with Annieville’s townspeople, until, mostly, only our two camps are left surviving: Camp Dakota and Camp Foster Kids.

Camp Dakota is joined early in the movie by a pregnant woman, Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor), from New York. Lisa is stuck in town for some reason and is stalked by a helicopter mom who is always staring at her from a smartphone in Lisa’s car during an always-on video chat. Seriously, they could have just made a horror movie out of that.

Luckily, Lisa loses the video connection thanks to the storm. Less luckily, she subsequently gets trapped by a fallen tree inside her Mini Cooper (the Mini Cooper is our clue that she’s not a Trump supporter). After surviving a shark attack of sorts, Lisa is saved by Dakota, who miraculously overcomes her agoraphobia despite witnessing several red shirt incidents in the surging red waters of Annieville.

After the heroic rescue, they make their way to Dakota’s house, which is beginning to fill up with water. Lisa parks herself on top of a big wooden queen-size bed that, for some reason, seems to be in the living room of the house. Tempted as they are to movie-bicker, the pair quickly realizes they are in this together, and, besides, Lisa’s about to squirt out her new baby. Yikes!

Dakota pulls some curtains off the windows, climbs on top of the roof, and writes out the words, “HELP” with the cloth. In most movies, this kind of thing results in a later event tied to the original, but not in “Thrash.” All we get is a helicopter view (perhaps filmed by Lisa’s helicopter mom) showing the newly made DIY sign, and we never see it again.

Meanwhile, back in Camp Foster Kids, Foster Dad Bundy is treating his foster kids like he bought a hate manual authored by Stephen Miller, dropping more F bombs on them than your favorite angry Substack writers after a rough Trump news day.

Unlike your favorite Substack F bombers, though, he’s with the bad guys, and by this point of the flick, we’re already pretty convinced he’s going to meet a gnarly fate. Those of us who have been suffering MAGA foolishness for ten years are firing up a bucket of Orville Redenbacher’s, eager to witness his unpleasant demise. Hit pause, pop, return.

To be sure we understand the direction of the coming mayhem, director Wirkola cuts to a scene where Ma and Pa MAGA are hiding in the basement from Camp Foster Kids while discussing their new Treasury Department foster kid payout. Secrets are discussed.

“Uncle Sam,” says Foster Dad Bundy after his wife proudly displays the Treasury check to him, “he does pay out now and then.”

Mrs. Maga opens the refrigerator door, and the two commiserate over Uncle Sam’s largesse. But then Dee (Alyla Browne), one of the foster kids, descends the stairs (before it floods) into the forbidden basement to announce meekly, “We’re hungry.”

Foster Dad Bundy launches an expletive-filled tirade.

The young girl looks appalled, but not because of the Trumpified treatment. “You have steak?” she asks with wide eyes, observing Ma and Pa MAGA’s open refrigerator, which is filled to the brim with Treasury Department ribeyes.

Foster Dad Bundy launches an expletive-filled tirade.

The film next cuts to a scene where Foster Dad Bundy is seen sleeping on a chair whilst holding a can of beer.

Dee, or maybe one of the other foster kids, or maybe all three, I can’t remember, starts screaming that the storm looks really bad.

Foster Dad Bundy launches an expletive-filled tirade.

He then gets swept out of his chair across the room by a surge of water blasting through the living room window.

Foster Dad Bundy manages to collect himself, and then, for some reason (many unknown reasons in this film), he and his submissive wife decide to step outside and wade through shark-infested surge waters. If I remember correctly, they end up in the garage or something, where Mother Bundy gets eaten. Doesn’t really matter where, truth be told.

After Ma Maga is eaten, Foster Dad Bundy decides to try to escape in his Trumpy pickup, thus leaving the three foster kids to fend for themselves, but he gets bit in the ass by a shark as he’s climbing into the vehicle. The bite forces him to fall backwards into the water. I suppose it hurts, too, but it’s hard to tell because he’s always cussing.

The shark and Foster Dad Bundy perform a bloody water ballet as they twirl each other under the water until Foster Dad appears above the water’s surface, staring at half an arm. And I thought I was a terrible dance partner.

During the back and forth scenes between Camp Dakota and Camp Foster Kids, the film regularly cuts away to Dakota’s uncle, Dr. Edwards, who is studiously (remember, he’s a marine biologist, so he’s always studious) trying to figure out how to get to Annieville, which has been told by authorities to evacuate.

He knows Dakota is still there because she’s agorophobic (and also, because she told him on the phone).

At some point, I can’t remember quite when, one of the researchers Dr. Edwards pals around with notices something on some kind of marine machine with bleepy blips and stuff — you know, the kind of blippy machine you see in movies: “Hey, that’s the great white shark we tagged three years ago!” Bleep, bleep!

“We’ve got to get to Annieville!!!!” someone yells.

“But how? The roads are closed!”

“We’ll take a boat up I-17!!!!!”

It’s a hundred miles away in the middle of a Category 5 hurricane, but these are hardy folk.

Meanwhile, Camp Dakota faces a new crisis. Lisa informs poor agorophobic Dakota that her contractions suggest imminent birth. But, hey, kid, I need you to make sure. I’ll spread my legs, and you have a looksee!

Oh my God, the look on poor Dakota’s face. It looks like Trump himself is offering her a salted caramel he’s holding between two fingers. Alarmed, Dakota asks how she’s supposed to measure the cervix. Her head darts around looking for a measuring tape.

“Just eyeball it!” says a panicked Lisa. You could cut the tension in the air with a shark’s tooth.

Reluctantly, Dakota peers in: “OH MY GOD I CAN SEE THE HEAD!”

Dakota is cured of agoraphobia immediately upon staring at Lisa’s cervix, and declares that she’s going to venture outside and find that boat they saw earlier (long story that involves red shirt mayhem).

My assumption while watching this scene is that she’s going to get on that boat and head to Myrtle Beach, as far away from Lisa as possible, but nope, she braves the hurricane and sharks and heads back to the house.

But not before the house falls on top of Lisa’s head as she is giving birth on the bed she’s claimed.

Dakota rows toward her new New York friend, who emerges from the wreckage holding a baby. (You may remember that I mentioned a scene where she gives birth whilst swimming amongst sharks).

It’s a beautiful, sweet moment that makes even me, who would almost rather live in Trump’s world another 20 years than even contemplate giving birth, long for the bonds of motherhood.

Mixed in with all this are scenes from Camp Foster Kids, who triumph over evil in ways only a foster kid could, by kicking Foster Dad Bundy in the head as he… Okay, I guess I need to backtrack a bit.

The foster kids are buoyed (see what I did there?) by the knowledge that Foster Dad Bundy is dead, so they start sort of singing, “Fuck him, fuck him” when deciding they need to go to the forbidden basement to gather meat.

But then, in Terminator fashion, Foster Dad Bundy ruins the buzz by popping out of the water and dropping F bombs.

So Dee kicks him in the head, he falls back into the waters of the flooded living room, and he is finally, praise the Lord, eaten by sharks. Victory for the resistance!

One of the kids swims into the basement, evading one shark, then another, and returns with the meat and some dynamite. We know that it’s dynamite because the sticks of dynamite look precisely like the kind Wile E. Coyote uses.

They toss the meat into the water, then, as the dumb bull sharks coalesce around the meat, the kids throw the dynamite into the water and blow all the sharks to pieces. I am uncertain how they light the dynamite, but I’m not certain it matters. I may have also missed that part. I was stuffing my face full of popcorn.

Camp Foster Kids wins! If it’s me, I am sticking around to collect shark steaks, but no, not these kids. They pile into Foster Dad Bundy’s truck. One of them, I think the youngest, asks, “Where are we gonna go?”

Another says something like, “Somewhere safe.”

Another says, for realz, “Florida!”

Whew. Those crazy kids.

Anyway, back to Camp Dakota.

Lisa, holding her baby, is in mortal danger from a big school of sharks. So she does what any tough New York City gal does, and declares to her new baby, “Mommy’s gonna fight some fucking sharks.”

I think I might have blacked out at this point (and I don’t even drink!), because the next thing I remember is a great white shark jumping out of the water and snatching a bull shark that’s about to eat mom and baby. In the old days, before AI, we’d look at the scene of the great white shark gracefully leaping through the air like Flipper the dolphin and think, “That’s some fine shark training right there,” or, if we’re a little smarter, “Cool CGI.”

Dakota’s uncle finishes off the sharks by dropping some kind of electrical device in the water. Threat eliminated.

Not one warrior from the resistance was killed!

I actually kind of loved that I knew early into the movie that nobody from our side would die in the mayhem. For that reason, I must award this movie five stars.

Notes

And I can’t sell more than 600 copies of my novels. Sigh. What a world.

Neither Trump nor MAGA is ever mentioned in the movie. They didn’t need to be.

Thanks for reading!

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Footnotes

My first instinct when I saw that Andrew Tate had reached Substack’s “bestseller” list was the same as most of you. So I immediately sent out a missive via a Substack Note declaring that either he goes or I go.

Almost as soon as I sent it, a voice in my head said, “Not again.”

You see, I played that game before. When I learned about the kerfuffle over Substack Nazis, I was just beginning to set up shop here. I only had a few subscribers, so I bailed and set up an account on the Ghost platform.

If I’m being honest, much of that was because a huge crowd of overly sanctimonious gadflies on BlueSky declared that they wouldn’t read anyone who used Substack as their writing platform.

Nobody from BlueSky signed up to my fledgling Ghost account. In general, I found that most of these people are not interested in helping support unestablished writers. They’ll gladly share a post from a star, but that’s about it.

I’m not much of a social media guy, so self-promoting on Ghost was a losing proposition.

I returned to Substack.

I remembered all of this as soon as I posted my missive.

So, no. For now, I stay and fight. I fight racism, misogyny, and hate anyway. I might as well add him to my target list. Assuming that the Substack account in his name actually belongs to him.

About Andrew Tate’s “bestseller” status

Tate is not truly a bestseller here. He made a bestseller list of new Substackers.

According to his profile, he has a million free subscribers in just a few days of being on the platform.

Look. I know there are lots of jackals out there. But there aren’t that many. There aren’t so many that a million of them would jump onto Substack and subscribe to this nut within a few days of setting up an account.

Something is off.

The first name on his subscriber list is Karen Attiah, who joined Substack after getting fired by the Washington Post for honest comments immediately following Charlie Kirk’s murder. The Post fired her for having the audacity of posting things like this:

Tate is a proud incel and accused rapist whose most recent post included these enlightened words:

Women never earned the right to work.
They were tricked into it.
One man’s salary used to feed the whole family.
Now one salary can’t even pay the bills.
She trades her husband’s house for her boss’s office.

Three things are possible here.

1. As an independent journalist, Attiah subscribed to Tate to monitor his hate messages. Or…

2. Tate scraped Substack emails somewhere and added them himself. Or…

3. It’s a fake account that harvested emails.

I can’t know which it is, but I can pretty confidently declare that those million subscribers are suspect. I would argue that Tate (or a spoof account) found a way to harvest Substack subscriber emails and created a CSV file to import them.

It’s easy enough to do, especially if you’re a specialist in the dark arts like Tate or you’re a moderately skilled hacker.

So if you want to get Substack to delete his account, and since Substack’s founders think all messaging is okay, including hate messaging, then maybe the way to approach it is to nail Tate (or the spoofer) on a technicality.

Substack claims they don’t tolerate email harvesting. Looks to me like whoever owns the Tate account harvested emails to build their million-plus subscriber base in record time.

So contact Substack and report the account for suspected email harvesting.

Linda Caroll said it perfectly in a Substack note yesterday when she said (I’m paraphrasing) that she’s not going to let toxic men chase her off platforms.

She didn’t overreact like I did. She said she’s sticking around.

I changed my mind about leaving almost as soon as I sent out the Note. I didn’t delete the Note because the underlying message is true: Substack should delete Tate or his spoofer. Substack’s grandstanding over free speech is bullshit. Freedom of speech doesn’t include hate messaging that inspires young men to hurt women and other targets of their rage. That’s a form of stochastic terrorism that has no place on a platform like this.

Tate incites violence, specifically against women. This is not protected by the First or any other amendment.

The intransigence of the Substack founders is a reminder that writers may need to prepare our exits someday, so I continue to routinely export my stories and subscribers. Just in case.

For now, I’ll close my eyes and pretend Substack is our platform. It isn’t, because it is subject to the whims of tech bros. But I’ll pretend as if, because I like it, and maybe we’ll get lucky, and somebody like ProPublica will make an offer the tech bros can’t refuse.

In the meantime, I’ll remain vigilant and continue to closely monitor the situation.

Notes

The comments on the Note I quoted provide more evidence that his “subscribers” are imported. Nobody comes to his defense under the Note. Commenter Melanie may also have a point:

It’s not even him. This is a fake decoy to cause outrage-interest. Look at all the “subscribers”, yet there are only 19 hearts and this post is 8 hours old.

Save yourself from the rage bait. Block and move on. Tate followers can’t read. Substack is not the money-making platform takeover this violent dolt’s PR team thinks it is

I’ve talked about Substack’s tech bro problem and alternatives to Substack before:

Thanks for reading!

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The reboot will be written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, who called me yesterday to tell me his plans to make it grittier and more realistic: “Think Jesus with F bombs.”

The first season of “The Chosen,” a popular dramatization about the life of Jesus and his apostles, was crowdfunded entirely by voluntary donations from the public. As the show gained popularity, its ending credits became longer because they include the names of all of the show’s donors.

The original show, developed by Dallas Jenkins, is revered in Christian circles for its portrayal of apostolic life and the portrayal of Jesus by actor Jonathan Roumie. It has been viewed by an estimated 280 million people.

Ellison says that the world has changed, and so will the show.

“We have been blessed by a new God,” he said in a statement.

Alleged President Donald Trump congratulated Ellison in a Truth Social post, saying, “The first thing we’ll be doing is removing all the names of the losers who donated to the creation of this show from the show’s ending credits. That part of the show was a disgrace. We’ll replace that sickening part of the show with my many accomplishments from over the last year.

“MAKE GOD GREAT AGAIN! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Ruminato’s crack team of investigative journalists has obtained exclusive first looks at one of the graphics that will be used for the reboot (at the top of this post).

We are also the only publication to have received a sneak peek at part of the script for the season premiere, which a Skydance spokesperson told me they hope to release before the end of the world.

Ready? I didn’t think so. But here it is, anyway:

The Script

TrumpJesus to be played by himself

EXT. A dusty trail somewhere in Texas.

TRUMPJESUS encounters a leper.

TRUMPJESUS: How did this happen to you, my son?

LEPER: No healthcare, amigo.

TRUMPJESUS: What kind of loser has no healthcare? Where the hell is Stephen Miller? Stephen!!! Send this dirtbag across the border!

STEPHEN MILLER: At once, your Lordship.

Twenty armored vehicles appear, then screech to a halt. A cloud of dust billows in front of everyone. GREG BOVINO pops out of one of the vehicles and directs thirty heavily armed border agents to carry the man across the border.

Agent: We have to carry him, sir? We have vehicles.

Bovino: You need the exercise. Now, git!

TRUMPJESUS (looking at STEPHEN MILLER): I thought I fired him.

TRUMPJESUS (punching numbers into his phone): Leo. That you? Yeah, you loser, who did you think it was? Listen, there’s been a regime change in heaven. You’re out as Pope. If you don’t leave the Vatican this instant, I’ll blockade the Vatican and send in my special forces. We are on a mission from God to make the Vatican great again.

Waits A beat.

TRUMPJESUS: Whaddya mean you aren’t afraid of me?

Waits a beat.

TRUMPJESUS: Also, we are rethinking this whole laying on of hands thing. We think the phrase should be used literally. So that’s the new policy. How’s the woman supply there in the Vat? Listen, I have some ideas about nuns. Better clothes, Leo, better clothes. Are you familiar with garter belts? How about thongs? You like thongs, right Leo? Everybody likes thongs. Except maybe the people who wear them. How does anyone wear those things? Miller here, he sticks his fingers in… never mind, Leo, TMI, I think. Anyway, I don’t like foreign objects in my bumski. Get it?

TRUMPJESUS (continuing): We need to discuss the rest of Italy, too. Probably needs regime change. I’ll send in some A-10s and fighter jets and see what we can do, okay? Tell the kids, no school tomorrow! Why do these losers attend school when we are about to launch an amazing air attack? Terrific shows. Have you seen any of our air shows? Hold on, I’ll send you a vid.

TRUMPJESUS (tapping his phone): Did you get it? Incredible, isn’t it? Look at that fireball! Have you ever seen anything like it? What do you mean by that? I’m not the anti-Christ, you weakling. I’m the real deal. Ask anyone. Hold on.

TRUMPJESUS (points phone at STEPHEN MILLER): Stephen, you’ve been with me all these years. Am I the real deal, Stephen?

STEPHEN MILLER hisses and nods.

TRUMPJESUS: See, you heathen? I’m the real deal. Heavenly regime change. We’re making Heaven great again, Leo. Listen, Leo. I like you. I think your journey from Chicago has been terrific. Hard not to like a man who wants to get out of that shithole bad enough he’ll run for the Pope office to do it. Great job there, too. I should borrow some of your election people for when I run again in 2028. It will be a beautiful thing, Leo. How many times have people been able to vote for God as president, Leo? I know you can answer that question. Wait, hold on. Hegseth is here.

PETE HEGSETH appears in the scene, stumbling out of a black van covered with crucifixes. He takes his shirt off and tries to start doing pushups, but collapses into a pool of his own vomit.

TRUMPJESUS: Never mind, Leo, he’s working on something. Anyway, good chat. Find me a good room there, will you? Melania and I will be spending a few nights there soon. I think I’ll put her in charge of nun fashion. What? No, no, she doesn’t hate me. Where did you get that idea? Listen to me, Leo, we are going to pardon everybody. Very soon. We’re looking into it. Bondi, Miller, Bovino, even Kristi, rest her soul. What? No, no, we haven’t shot her yet. Yes, Leo, I agree, that was very funny what her husband did. He’s a hoot.

TRUMPJESUS (after a beat): Wait, what? Oh, the Iran thing. It’s going fine, Leo, stop meddling. We are all making a lot of money. When I rebuild St. Peter’s Basila, you’ll see. I’ll put a lot of the money I made in Iran into redoing that church. Basila is a very Italian name. Great name for a church.

TRUMPJESUS (continuing): My own money, Leo. I’ll use my own money to rebuild it in my image. We need to make that church right, Leo. What? Basilica, you say? St. Peter’s Basilica? Oh, right, yes, that one, too, Leo. We’re going to rebuild it. It’s going to be terrific. Nobody will believe how great it is. We’ll make Vatican tourism great again. Do you need an arch? You probably need an arch somewhere.

TRUMPJESUS (continuing): But first we need to replace you, Leo. You’re not good for the country. We can’t have all these immigrants.

SFX. The leper curses until a volley of bullets dominates the background.

TRUMPJESUS (after waiting a beat): Where did you get that idea? Melania was never an immigrant. I got her from the Epstein list… I mean, Don’t worry about it, Leo, it’s all taken care of. We’re going to fix your little nun problem, okay, Leo? It’s a terrible situation they are in. I’ll put Melania in charge of nun social life. They’ll be very, very happy with the changes. And the new uniforms. What do you think?

TRUMPJESUS (after waiting a beat): Leo, did you just say, “Fuck you?”

Notes

I’m old enough to remember Bob Newhart’s phone bits. I wish he was still around to do something like this.

For one of my more serious assessments of Christianity, take a look at this article I wrote in August 2025:

Thanks for reading!

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My comment area will always remain free, too, unless I can’t manage the trolls. So far, so good. I usually delete their comments before anybody sees them, then they get the banhammer.

I don’t enjoy promoting my work. But I’ve been told by several readers that this newsletter should be enjoying a much larger subscription base, paid or free, than it does. Who am I to argue with that?

There’s a lot of variety here. There’s fiction, satire, rants, deep dives. This isn’t the usual “I hate Trump” newsletter, although I happily engage in a lot of that, too, because, well, I hate him more than all the cancer cells in the world. He is a scourge against humanity. I long for the day when I never write about that dying orange pustule of human waste ever again.

Between rants against him, I try to include periodic heavyweight articles like the one I did yesterday, which I feel is very important. It’s a long read, so it will never gain a lot of traction, but we needed to change the narrative on Iran before the war, and those of us who tried were ignored.

So I did it again with a headline that Trumpers use in their pro-war arguments, then I explain just how full of troll excrement the argument is:

If you haven’t read it yet, I really think you should. Bookmark it, restack it, share it.

It’s a history lesson. MAGA lives in a world of stick figures and crayons, so they’ll never read it, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be putting this stuff out there.

Last night, JD Vance stumbled out of a meeting with Iranian negotiators looking like he had just seen a ghost. Today, the conniving minstrel of malfeasance announced that the U.S. will impose a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. We are living in a nation whose head of state has a broken brain.

The ridiculous timeline of this war is bad enough, but more people will die soon unless the idiot in the oval decides to just declare victory and move on, which is very possible.

But just know that if he does, he’ll create a new crisis that same day.

No matter what his broken brain instructs him to do about Iran, the damage is done. Europe and Canada hate us, and if you think those of us who didn’t vote for him get a pass, well, bless your hearts, but the anger is toward all of us, not just him.

So I agree with readers who say my posts should have a wider audience, but not because I’m trying to grab people’s money. I genuinely think we need to change the narrative that led us to this point.

If funds are tight, then I encourage you to hit the restack button if you like something. Restacking = information dissemination. When you restack a post, that’s almost as good as becoming a paid subscriber.

Restack, restack, restack

Thank you to those who do so regularly. You know who you are. I appreciate it more than I take time to say. The real reason we restack, though, is not to reward a writer. It’s to disseminate information.

Oh, did I show you this? I can’t remember:

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I think I did. Sorry.

If you’re a social media maven, maybe grab a few of your fellow doomscrollers and get an even bigger discount (30%):

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Hate subscriptions? Me, too, to be honest. There’s a solution for that, though:

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Or, just restack until your finger falls off!

Here are a few things that might be worth disseminating.

This post gathered 39 different crimes Trump has committed against the American people in one place, from his rapes to his grift. Check it out. It’s appalling:

Did you miss my Easter vampire short story?

How about this first Ruminato movie production announcement?

Or this reminder that, sorry, folks, climate change is still killing us:

Sometimes I drop an excerpt from works in progress, like this alternative history novel about an African empire rising in Carolina’s Low Country:

I also did a deep dive recently into President Krasnov:

Sometimes I put on the old software engineering hat and try to offer a primer on stuff like AI:

Speaking of AI, I was even a very naughty boy and used it to help me create a song about Trump. I wrote the lyrics, and Suno did the rest.

There’s also occasional bits of humorous fiction, like this:

There’s even an origin story about my little substack hedgehog:

For history buffs, I wrote a guide to U.S. presidents that you probably won’t see Heather Cox Richardson (who I also read every night) post:

Fun for the whole family!

There’s something for everyone. Explore the website if you are feeling adventurous.

And most of all, thank you for reading!

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Hey, did I remember to include this?

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Oh, yeah, I think you did. Have a fantastic Sunday.

I replied that the reply consists of two words and one name:

Mohammed Mossadegh.

To be clear, Iran has not been attacking us for 47 years. The radicalized, fundamentalist, theocratic dictatorship that took over Iran 47 years ago, which calls itself the Islamic Republic of Iran, has been the source of our discontent.

Most of the Iranian people think we’re pretty cool, even though we hired a lunatic to run things again for four years. Many of them have relatives in the U.S. and across Europe. They despise their government as much as we do.

Therefore, to properly frame the debate, we need to do something Republicans hate: revisit history.

Iran’s 2500-year history of monarchy

You’re not going to read it, and I’m not going to write it, but the fact of Iran’s 2500-year history of monarchy is vital to understanding what Iran is as a nation. So I’ll blurb it. Make it short. Digestible.

The Iranian monarchy’s 2500-year history is filled with all kinds of different monarchs. The first monarch to really gain the attention of most modern people is Cyrus II (approximately 530 BC), who defeated the Median empire and built an empire. He’s famous for being the fella who released the Jewish people from the grip of the Babylonians.

From there, it was one kerfuffle after another that resulted in a combination of short, medium, and long dynasties, sometimes foreign, sometimes Islamic or Islamic Lite, others Zoroastrian,2 others more secular.

The string of monarchies came to a screeching halt in 1979.3 That’s when the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown by fundamentalist Islamic clerics taking advantage of a popular revolt against secularism and detribalism, economic decline, and lightspeed integration of American-style capitalism that began with the Shah’s father, Reza Pahlavi.

Currently, Iranians are stuck in the middle of the terrible regime that emerged from that popular revolt. The regime instantly made itself known as a group of thugs who make the Republican scourge in the United States look like a Disney movie. The ayatollahs are a repressive, misogynistic, hateful, ruthlessly repressive bunch.

That said, it’s fair to say that many of the Republicans who will argue for the necessity of bombing the crap out of Iran also admire the fundamentalist theocracy of the regime they profess to hate. The evidence of this is written all over Project 2025.

The ayatollahs have killed tens of thousands of their people, maybe hundreds of thousands, for the simple act of marching against hijabs or protesting a terrible economic situation. Most of us know that this is a Stephen Miller wet dream.

If Iran were a Christian theocratic dictatorship instead of a Muslim one, the current U.S. regime would have an embassy in Tehran the size of Cuba.

But they’re Muslim, so they get the classic Republican double standard treatment.

Americans have never been given an honest reason why the ayatollahs took over Iran in the first place.

You see, the monarchy was actually supposed to have ended long before 1979.

Here’s that story.

Two words, one name: Mohammed Mossadegh

It’s time to meet Mohammed Mossadegh.

He was the Prime Minister of Iran who was overthrown by American and British spy agencies, an event that ultimately ushered forth wild-eyed ayatollahs, “death to America” chants, and the current terrorist Islamic state.4

Elected by the Iranian parliament, known as the Majlis, shortly after World War Two, Mossadegh leaned a bit too hard toward socialism for the taste of American policymakers of the 1950s.

When he proposed nationalizing the oil industry and claiming Iran’s resources as their own, multinational oil companies rallied the troops faster than Trump can rally Klansmen and insider traders.

The alarmed oil peddlers spoke into the ears of a CIA operative named Kermit Roosevelt Jr., Theodore’s grandson. Kermit had mastered the art of spycraft while working for the Office of Strategic Services during World War Two.

After the war, he was recruited by the CIA and joined the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination. He had already impressed his superiors by meddling in Egyptian affairs and creating a general mantra that promoted American influence in several Arabian countries.

Shortly after the war, he joined an organization called the Institute of Arab American Affairs. Around the same time, in 1948, he and about a hundred or so Christian men joined the fight led by the American Council for Judaism to argue against the partition of Palestine that followed World War Two in favor of a nation whose government would be a coalition of Arabs and Jews.5

By the time the Second World War ended, there was an understandable visceral reaction to the plight of Jews seeking refuge in their ancestral homes.

The world was visibly shaken by Hitler’s rampage against Jews. He killed millions of them, often in a grotesque manner. It was one of human history’s ugliest events, if not the ugliest.

Relocation from Europe seemed like a good idea at the time. (See the Footnotes6 for a deeper dive into this)

Kermit wrote a policy paper arguing against Palestinian partition. He was against forming a purely Jewish state and preferred one new state that consisted of a coalition of Jews and Palestinians.7

This was part of a broader philosophy of interest in Arab affairs that helped him make friends in the Arab world and made his activities as an American spy much easier.

In Iran, Kermit helped arrange to remove Mossadegh from power at the behest of the British, who had been vying for control of Iran’s oil fields since World War One. The British talked President Eisenhower into helping depose Mossadegh, and Kermit went to work.

Kermit began a complicated plot that resulted in the legitimately elected prime minister’s overthrow. He hired Iranian mobs to protest8 Mossadegh, launched a massive local media influence campaign that branded Mossadegh a communist, and even tried to talk the Shah into deposing him.

It was a struggle that at first failed. So Kermit pulled on a string that almost always works with humans. He began distributing money. He paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to army officers to stage a military coup. When they did, a two-day assault involving Kermit-aligned Iranian tanks drove Mossadegh out of Tehran and out of power.

In 2000, American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright dropped this confession on behalf of American connivance:

“The coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see why many Iranians continue to resent the intervention by America in their internal affairs.”9

Unlike the target of some American interventions, Mossadegh was not some nasty dictator. He was a reformer and social welfare architect who showed promise of helping transition Iran into a modern economy with the best traits of Scandinavian-style government. He simultaneously maintained a firm respect for mosque country and good relationships with clerics in Qom, the beehive of Iranian Ayatollahs, while massaging the ego of the Shah.

He also didn’t come out of the blue. He was a legislator first. But before that, he was a Qajar.

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Mossadegh the Qajar

Mossadegh began life as a humble servant of the Qajar dynasty, which was the dynasty that founded modernish Iran under Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar in 1779.

Agha did not have a pleasant childhood. He was castrated as a child by another Shah, Adel Shah, for the crime of being the son of an opposing tribal chieftain.

With an understandable fury that never left him, Agha Qajar, after being held prisoner by yet another Shah for sixteen years, fled to northern Iran and rallied locals to his cause.

Eventually, he won the day, sacking Tehran, uniting a fractured country, and founding the Qajar dynasty. It is Agha Qajar’s dynasty by which Mossadegh began his trek through Iranian history.

There’s an important sidebar here. You might think that Vlad Putin’s embrace of the Islamic Republic is out of pure spite towards the U.S. Not so. Iranian allegiances (and often, enmity) with Russia are more than 250 years old. It’s a deep, complicated relationship.

The tribes within the Qajar realm shared allegiances with Russian nobility. Many Russian Qajari held posts in the Russian imperial army, thus beginning a long tradition of shared ancestry with the Russian state.

Mossadegh became the finance minister under the Qajar dynasty, which, by the middle 1900s, was firmly established. He held numerous other positions, as well, before he became a legislator.

His mother’s family history was deeply rooted in the Qajar dynasty. She was Princess Malek Taj Najm-es-Saltaneh, the granddaughter of a Qajari prince named Abbas Mirza, and a great-granddaughter of the second Qajar Shah, Fath-Ali Shah Qajar.

Fath was the loser of the Russo-Persian wars of the early 1800s, which resulted in Persia (Iran) losing territories that now comprise Georgia, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to Russia.

Mosaddegh was respected enough by the Qajar royalty to receive a title of nobility. He was known as Mosaddegh-os-Saltaneh until he died of cancer in 1967 at the age of 84, well after the Qajar dynasty disintegrated.

He was schooled in Europe, earning a PhD in law from the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland.

Mossadegh the politician

Mosaddegh had to tread carefully during his political life. As part of Persian nobility within the Qajar dynasty, he had to walk through the steep, roiling waters of a constitutional revolution that shook Iran from 1905 to 1911 and resulted in the creation of a parliament that is still known to this day as the Majlis.

The Qajar dynasty survived the nation’s transition to a constitutional monarchy, but had to accede to parliamentary approval over who became the Shah.

Today’s Majlis, of course, has been neutered into a rubber stamp legislative body similar to today’s American Congress, minus the memo writers of the opposing party that we in the United States are accustomed to.

But back in those days, the Majlis was a restive place, full of raised fists and lofty pronouncements. And although they had final say in who became the Shah, they didn’t really exercise that authority until the British and Americans bullied them into replacing the Qajar dynasty with the Pahlavi dynasty in the twentieth century.

When the constitutional revolution came to a close, Mosaddegh tried to jump into new opportunities so eagerly that he was told, “No dummy, you’re only 24. You’re not old enough to be in Parliament yet,” after he won election to a seat in Isfahan.

He was still basically a kid when he lodged his first protests against European colonialism.

In 1919, the British imposed something called the Anglo-Persian Agreement, which secured British oil drilling rights in Iran. But it wasn’t an agreement. It was an edict imposed upon Persia by Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary at the time, on the Persian government. This was part of an overall effort by the Brits to fill a void left by the Russians, whose Tsar had exerted significant influence over Persian affairs. The Brits wanted more than oil. They wanted to subject Iran to the full British colonial treatment.

The young Persian parliament, the Majlis, never ratified the Anglo-Persian Agreement, but the British said they did. That one hits close to home these days, doesn’t it? Propaganda 101: Repeat the lie until it becomes true.

Mosaddegh objected strongly to the British decree. He also objected to Britain’s attempt to become Iran’s dominatrix.

He moved to Switzerland for a year, which he used as a base of operations for yelling at Brits and throwing flower pots out of fancy Geneva windows.

This began a chain of animosity that the Brits never relinquished during Mosaddegh’s political career until the fateful day of his overthrow.

Meanwhile, the Qajar somehow hung onto their dynasty.

When he wasn’t ministering over money as Finance minister for the Qajar dynasty, Mosaddegh was a governor for the Qajar Shah, or, more technically, a Vali, first in Azerbaijan Province, and later in Fars. But he also served in a regional parliament for Tehran, Iran’s capital, after the constitutional reforms. The guy got around, slowly but surely building political street cred with Iranian citizens on both sides of the street.

Mossadegh the rebel

In 1921, Iran was a mess. The Russian Revolution of the previous decade had reached its bloody fingers into nearby Iran. Other powers wanted chunks of Iran as Russia looked inward. Britain tried to use Iran as a base of operations to assault the Bolsheviks through the White Russian Army. About the only part of Iran the Iranian government controlled during that time was Tehran.

Meanwhile, a brigadier general for the Persian Cossack Brigade named Reza Khan was making his mark. The Persian Cossacks were modeled after Russian Cossack brigades, and usually included Russian commanders as part of Russia’s deep reach into Iran in those days.

But the Russian revolution ended Russia’s interest, or, more likely, ability, to control much in Iran. Britain filled the gap, eager to slurp up more oil.

Reza Khan’s dad was a Mazandaran Iranian, but his mother was a Georgian. This isn’t unusual for Iran, which is a diverse country that has always attracted immigrants from the region, especially the Caucasus and Arabian lands.

Khan joined the Persian Cossacks between the ages of 14 and 16. I would like to add here that when I was 14, I was trying to find a place to sneak one of my mom’s cigarettes while reading Mad Magazine. This dude was joining the Cossacks.

By the time he reached the lofty position of Brigadier General, Khan had established himself as someone with a keen eye towards Western politics, a growing prerequisite in a world preparing for a second world war.

During his time with the Cossacks, Khan declared that he would henceforth be referred to as Reza Pahlavi.

He became a rising star in Iranian military circles. A large faction in the Majlis wanted him to be Shah, so in 1925, they proposed removing Mosaddegh’s Qajar dynasty and replacing it with a new one led by Pahlavi.

With less than subtle help from the Brits, they won. The Qajar dynasty was deposed. Pahlavi became the new Shah. His son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who would eventually become the last Shah of Iran, was named Crown Prince.

The new dynasty immediately had an important, influential enemy: Mohammad Mosaddegh. But Mosaddegh was not a violent man. He sought solutions politically.

According to Wikipedia, the new Shah embarked on a comprehensive modernization campaign that his son continued:10

During Reza Shah's sixteen years of rule, major developments, such as large road construction projects and the Trans-Iranian Railway were built, modern education was introduced and the University of Tehran, the first Iranian university, was established. The number of modern industrial plants increased 17-fold under Reza Shah (excluding oil installations), and the number of miles of highway increased from 2,000 to 14,000.

Reza Shah asked the League of Nations (a sort of mini-UN set up after World War One) to refer to Persia as Iran. He also created a 100,000 man army. But he also shut down clerical schools and confiscated land, including land in Qom, the clerical center of fundamentalist Islam in Iran. This began a period of conflict with clerics that grew more bitter under his son.

Mosaddegh’s influence in royal circles became more limited. He was not as able to traverse both major factions of Iranian political life. He still had friends in the clerical world as a legislator in the Majlis. But his influence in the Shah’s courts was minimal and often strained for reasons you can imagine.

But he didn’t have the heart for a major battle with a Shah. Rather than fight, Mossadegh retired from politics.

In 1941, the British forced Reza Pahlavi to abdicate, replacing him with his son.

Mossadegh greeted the news by running for parliament again. He won, but this time he branded himself an Iranian purist. No more foreign oil companies, no more foreign intervention, no more Brits. He led the newly formed National Front of Iran in 1949, which he used to direct traffic.

He publicized his goal: Nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC).

Ironically, it was the Qajar dynasty, Mosaddegh’s friends, that enabled foreign powers, mostly Russia and later Britain, to treat Iran as something close to a vassal state.

But I guess he had had enough. He began to incite crowds to throw the bums out.

Mossadegh the prime minister

In 1951, the Majlis elected the increasingly popular Mosaddegh as Prime Minister.

Mosaddegh promoted and introduced important reforms, such as social security. A land reform act passed under his administration imposed a 20% tax on agricultural landholders. He used half those funds to pass some much needed cash to tenants who worked the farms. He used the rest of the proceeds to create a development fund for rural housing.

But he made the tragic mistake (for him) of pursuing his goal of nationalizing the Iranian oil industry, developed by the Brits beginning in 1913 through the auspices of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC), which later became British Petroleum.

The Brits were apoplectic after modest efforts to reach out to Mossadegh, who felt strongly that Iranian oil belonged to Iran. One contemporary British scholar, L.P. Elwell-Sutton, wrote at the time:11

Really, it seemed hardly fair that dignified and correct western statesmanship should be defeated by the antics of incomprehensible orientals.

According to a top secret CIA report that has been released to the public domain:12

Mossadeq found the British evil, not incomprehensible. He and millions of Iranians believed that for centuries Britain had manipulated their country for British ends. Many Iranians seemed convinced that British intrigue was at the root of every domestic misfortune. In 1951 Mossadeq told US Special Envoy W. Averell Harriman, “You do not know how crafty they [the British] are. You do not know how evil they are. You do not know how they sully everything they touch.” Harriman protested that surely the British were like people everywhere; some bad, some good. Mossadeq was not persuaded. “You do not know them,” he insisted. “You do not know them.”

Mossadeq nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in March, 1951. He declared:13

Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries... have yielded no results thus far. With the oil revenues, we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people.

The British moved on from diplomacy to a full economic blockade. More from the CIA report:

In September 1951, Britain placed an embargo on shipments of steel, sugar, iron, and oil—processing equipment shipments to Iran—that is, on almost anything that the Iranians could exchange for dollars.

The AIOC laid off 20,000 oil workers at the port at Abadan and Mossadeq had to put them on the government payroll.

Gradually, the flow of Iranian oil to the rest of the world stopped.

A British airborne brigade arrived in Cyprus and a Royal Navy cruiser and four destroyers exercised near the oil facilities at Abadan. The display of British force did not intimidate Mossadeq; he announced that the first shot would start a world war.

During the long dispute with Britain, Mossadegh resigned from his position as prime minister in a dispute with the Shah. The Shah tried to appoint someone else, but violent street demonstrations forced him to beg Mossadegh to come back, and the Shah formally re-appointed him Prime Minister again in 1952.

Mossadegh said “Thanks” by working to strip the Shah of his formal executive powers, leaving him as a figurehead. Mossadegh began to seek greater authority, and as he did so, his relationship with Iranian clerical allies in Qom weakened, but his popular support did not.

He threw the Brits out of the country and severed diplomatic relations with them when they continued to threaten him with retribution for nationalizing the oil industry.

It was then that Kermit Roosevelt Jr. went to work.

Mossadegh the political prisoner

At first, Kermit’s military coup against Mossadegh looked doomed. The CIA report on the operation confirms it:14

Just before midnight on 15 August, Col. Nassiri set out with two trucks of soldiers to arrest Mossadeq. When Nassiri arrived at Mossadeq’s home to deliver the firmans and arrest the Prime Minister, he found himself surrounded and arrested instead.

Troops loyal to Mossadeq took the other participants into custody by early morning Sunday, 16 August. By 0500, pro-Mossadeq troops and tanks ringed the Prime Minister’s house.

At 0545, Radio Tehran announced that the government had foiled a coup.

The original plan for a military operation had failed abysmally. Upon hearing of Nassiri’s arrest, the principal anti-Mossadeq figures lost their courage. For example, General Batmangelich, who was to have captured Riahi’s headquarters, turned back when he saw the troops surrounding the building. Batmangelich and Col. Akhavi soon found themselves under arrest. The Shah, for his part, left the summer palace in the suburbs of Tehran and flew to Baghdad via Ramsar.

Our friend Kermit didn’t give up, despite this review of the military coup’s progress by the CIA:15

Iranian military leadership had collapsed ignominiously at the first hint of resistance.

But the military, despite some cold feet regarding a fully blown out coup against Mossadegh, was aligned closely with the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. His father was the one who built the professional army, after all. There was a lot of loyalty there, and Kermit knew it.

One of the things I haven’t mentioned is that prior to the coup, Kermit and the CIA used a bit of constitutional trickery to “replace” Mossadegh as prime minister with an army general named Fazlollah Zahedi. This was essentially an action that only took place in imaginations within the halls of Washington and the CIA. The Iranian people were essentially unaware of the trickery, but the CIA managed to convince itself that its manipulations were legitimate.

Kermit went further, and began a propaganda campaign to convince the Iranian people that it was legitimate, too.

Meanwhile, John Foster Dulles, who was Secretary of State under Eisenhower at the time, worked on returning the Shah to the throne.

The CIA’s report on part of the process for reinstalling the Shah is pretty funny. I’ve included it here with some annotations. Note: This is real, not satire, except for my comments in [brackets]. According to the CIA report:

When the Shah arrived in Rome on 18 August, CIA faced a potential disaster. By coincidence, DCI Allen Dulles was there on vacation.

[I don’t know about y’all, but I am fascinated by coincidences. Like that time Japanese planes happened to be doing a little flyover above Pearl Harbor.]

When the Shah checked into the Excelsior Hotel, Dulles was standing next to him trying to do the same thing.

[That’s crazy town! Was Ripley there, too?]

[Anyway, okay, fine, this next part is fun, and almost believable.]

John Waller remembers that he got a call from Frank Wisner between 0200 and 0300. Wisner was agitated. “He ’s gone to Rome, ” Wisner told Waller. “A terrible, terrible coincidence occurred. Can you guess what it is? ”

Waller could not.

“Well,” Wisner continued, “he went to the Excelsior Hotel to book a room with his bride, and the pilot, there were only three of them, and he was crossing the street on his way into the hotel. Guess, . . . can you tell me, I don’t want to say it over the phone, can you imagine what may have happened?Think of the worst thing you can think of that happened. ”

[Lemme guess. He ran into Kermit the Frog before Sesame Street was even invented!]

Waller said, “He was hit by a cab and killed.”

[Okay, that’s almost as funny. I’d like this Waller guy.]

“No, no, no, no, ” Wisner responded impatiently, by this time almost wild with excitement. “Well, John, maybe you don’t know, that Dulles had decided to extend his vacation by going to Rome.

[Just by coincidence, too, right, bud?]

“Now can you imagine what happened? “

[I’m starting to. Go on…]

Waller answered, “Dulles hit him with his car and killed him.”

[Again, I’d like this Waller guy. Dark. Funny. Snarky.]

Wisner did not think it was funny. “They both showed up at the reception desk at the Excelsior at the very same moment.

[!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

[Also:

]

And Dulles had to say, ‘After you, your Majesty.”

[I’d suggest they snuck into a room and did bong hits, but it was still the 50s, not the 70s]

The meeting between Dulles and the Shah was completely fortuitous…

[Absolutely. What else could explain it?]

…but fraught with embarrassment for the US Government and CIA, had the news media learned.

[I doubt the media learned because back then the news media wasn’t full of crack investigative reporters and government watchers like it is now]

They did not, so the incident passed unnoticed.

[Whew! It’s always a relief when government coup plotters can get away with coincidences!]

Shortly after Dulles’ coincidental tourist incident with the Shah, Kermit struck.

His months of propaganda paid off to such an extent that he was able to turn the mullahs and ayatollahs, who have played a critical role in the Iranian power structure for a long time. They became convinced that General Zahedi was the legitimate prime minister of Iran.

The CIA created a large street protest accompanied by pro-Shah army regulars. The protest coalesced into a crowd that descended upon Mossadegh’s residence. Mossadegh hopped over a wall. He wanted outta there.

He was arrested shortly after.

On August 19, 1953, an announcer on Radio Tehran relayed the news to Iranian citizens:

“The people of Tehran have risen today and occupied all the government offices, and I am able to talk to you all through the help of the armed forces. The govemment of Mossadegh is a government of rebellion and has fallen.”16

The return of the Shah

Mossadegh’s de facto replacement, the Shah of Iran, was a popular figure at the time. The new prime minister became a figurehead. The Shah was also pro-American, so it didn’t take long for Western powers to regain control of Iran and its oil fields.

The Shah became increasingly authoritarian, setting up a ruthless secret police service called Savak and pushing a secular civil society onto a deeply religious population.

When I was a university journalism student in the late 1970s, I visited Amnesty International in London as part of a three-week media tour that also became a deep and wonderful exploration of the British pub scene and its bitter beers, which aren’t bitter at all. Ah, but that’s a different tale, my friends.

At that time, Amnesty International (AI!) was a fledgling operation in a disheveled room full of books and pamphlets piled haphazardly on top of each other. It looked like whoever made the piles did so in a hurry, like they had to scramble out of the building because they were being chased by secret police.

The disheveled, thin guy who showed me around, looking like he had just emerged from a forest after seventy years, gave me a pamphlet written by a dissident who lived under the Shah’s regime.

When the dissident wrote the pamphlet, he was a prisoner of Savak, which in 1977 the Washington Post called “A Feared and Pervasive Force.”17

The pamphlet was said to have originally been written in blood on rolls of toilet paper. Even I don’t believe that, but inside the pamphlet were harrowing tales of torture at the hands of sadists.

Savak became famous for this kind of treatment. The Shah, who had started as a popular figure, had become an asshole.

Savak was built by the CIA and Israel’s secret service agency, Mossad. They created the infrastructure that makes it possible for the current Islamic Republic to clamp down on dissent.

Savak, like the current regime’s secret service, became known, in no small part because of revelations by Amnesty International, for extreme brutality and torture, including electric shocks, beatings, and psychological punishments.

It grew into a force of 5,300 full-time agents and countless informers dedicated to protecting the Pahlavi dynasty, monitoring dissidents, and censoring the media.

The Shah put down dissent with ruthless effectiveness. The clerics in Qom hated him for it (and then subscribed to the same methodologies using Savak’s basic infrastructure).

Sure enough, the people revolted.

The Shah’s reign ended with the famous slogan, “I ran, I ran, said the Shah”18 as he fled to Italy, making way for the ayatollahs who are currently running the show there and who, themselves, are now walking on eggshells laid down by a restive population, that, thanks to Trump, have begun to rally around a flag that isn’t even theirs (because the flag of the Islamic Republic has nothing to do with Iran — see the Notes.)

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The argument

The argument right-wingers use to support the war on Iran ignores history. It also ignores the fact that the only way to conquer Iran and pacify its people is to make them happy. It’s a country of nearly 100 million fiercely proud and independent people. Its mountainous terrain makes it impossible for modern armed forces to invade, conquer, and occupy.

It is not possible for a foreign power to rule Iran without winning the people’s hearts and minds. Like it or not, that’s what fundamentalist Muslims did when they took advantage of protests against the Shah.

During recent protests, the people were a lot closer to throwing the bums out than we’ll ever know, despite the horrific atrocities Iranians endured when the Islamic Republic ruthlessly put down the protests.

This wasn’t their first rodeo. Before their most recent protests over economic conditions, there were intense protests against the treatment of women.

Trump 1.0 did nothing to support those protests in 2017-2018. The Islamic regime ruthlessly squashed the uprising.

Still, Iranian women persisted. They took a necessary breather, then led another rebellion last year. It, too, was put down, but a tiny bit of covert help might have helped their cause.

Instead, the Trump regime launched a bunch of bombs at a nuclear facility. Then the people protested again. Trump urged them on through his ridiculous after-hours tweets, then ignored them, and the Iraqi regime killed at least tens of thousands of them because the citizens exposed themselves to slaughter after being emboldened by Trump’s tweets.19

In the end, it’s all about history and understanding what makes Iran tick. Republicans have no idea. They live in a world of crayons and stick figures.

So the next time you get into an argument with one of them, and they ask why we shouldn’t go to war with a country that has been at our throats for 47 years, keep it simple for them. That’s all they can handle. The history here is for you. Don’t threaten your opponents with it. They’ll just call you a communist.

Instead, mention two words and one name, then walk away:

Mohammed Mossadegh

Notes

This was another long one. If you see a mistake or a really stupid grammar boo boo, feel free to let me know in the comments.

Amnesty International has since grown into a powerhouse for the human rights world, which is neat to see. I don’t know what happened to my forest friend. For all I know, he ran the organization for years. He was very committed to the cause. Either way, it seems to me that Amnesty International’s work in Iran during the Shah’s reign developed a lot of credibility for the organization.

About that flag…20

When thinking about the flag of Iran, it helps to think of it as more the flag of an occupied nation than as the flag of the Iranian nation itself. Here’s the Islamic Republic version of the flag:

And here’s the pre-1979 version:

The Islamic Republic replaced the lion symbol with a stylized representation of the Arabic (not Farsi, aka Persian) word for Allah (الله).

The flag is designed in the shape of a tulip, which is a nod to Iranian culture that represents martyrs and those who died for the country.

The rows of glyphs above and below the symbol represent the Arabian phrase “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great). The phrase is written eleven times on the bottom edge of the green stripe and eleven times on the top edge of the red stripe, totaling 22 times.

It is written in a block form of Kufic script, not in the Perso-Arabian script, which is the script most Iranians write with.21

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Footnotes

6

Zionist aspirations in Palestine began long before World War Two. They were accommodated by the Balfour Declaration issued by the British government in 1917. Palestine at that time was a small slice of land (like it is today) just West of Jordan was governed by the Ottoman Empire.

It contained a tiny minority Jewish population, mostly centered in and around Jerusalem. The Balfour Declaration became formal documentation representing official British support for creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

The Ottoman Empire was based in what today is better known as Turkey (Turkiye). When the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War One, the British took over Palestine, thus creating a formal opening for the objectives of the Balfour Declaration.

The formal occupation instrument after the war was called the Mandate for Palestine. The newly occupied territory included surrounding areas, such as Jordan (called Transjordan at the time).

The Mandate included key components of the Balfour declaration, thus beginning the conflict between Zionists and Palestinians.

The Balfour Declaration did not apply to Transjordan, which is why you don’t see major conflict between Israel and the modern nation of Jordan today.

Zionist and Arab nationalism sprouted almost immediately after the Brits established their foothold there.

This led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt and the 1944–1948 Jewish insurgency, which in turn led to the partition destruction of Palestine and the establishment of the Jewish state, as well as the most persistently intractable conflict in the world since World War Two.

Shortly after British Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced that the British Mandate would end in May of 1948, Zionists declared independence through the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Palestinians have been getting forced out of their homes ever since, a process that continues to this day.

Ironically, the Ottomans were reasonably accommodating to different religions. The leadership was Muslim, but it wasn’t a fundamentalist strain of Islam. In an alternative world, there may have been a way for Jews wishing to pursue their ancestral heritage in their ancient lands that didn’t include bullying the Palestinians who lived there.

If we were all in a dystopian movie (we might be!), at about 3 pm yesterday, the director would have cut to children swinging in slow motion on a swing set while ominous music played. Armageddon looms.

Cut to 8:16 pm, when Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announces a ceasefire in Iran and Lebanon.1 The film’s director cuts to five old white guys sitting at a table, cracking jokes about how stupid everyone is. Sharif, who nominated Trumpus Predatus for a Nobel Peace Prize, twice, is on a video screen grinning ear to ear.2

Here’s how the whole thing sort of played out, depending on which news source you read. Let’s look at it from the perspective of a stock or commodities trader:

• 8:28 AM ET: President Trump issues his warning on social media, stating “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran doesn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8:00 PM.

• 9:00 AM ET: Markets react to the mad clown’s crazy “civilization” post: Brent crude jumps overnight to nearly $110/barrel after being as low as $107. Yippeee!

• 12:17 PM ET: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirms military strikes on Iranian bridges and railroads. See? The semi-human in the Oval Office means business! Up go oil futures!

• 3:28 PM ET: Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif publicly requests that Trump extend the deadline by two weeks to allow for “steady” diplomatic progress. Nobody takes that seriously, so…

• 4:07 PM ET: U.S. financial markets close largely flat after earlier steep losses.

• 6:30ish PM ET: Calls are made. And then, Diarrhea Don posts on Truth Social that he has agreed to a two-week suspension of bombing and attacks, contingent on the “COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING” of the Strait of Hormuz. You know, like it was before he bombed the crap out of a bunch of kids in an Iranian schoolhouse. Signal accounts throughout the West Wing light up like a Sydney fireworks show.

• 7:23 PM ET: Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirms Iran will cease “defensive operations” if attacks on the country stop. A few smartphones in the West Wing start smoking from the action.

• 8:16 PM ET: Prime Minister Sharif announces the ceasefire is effective “IMMEDIATELY” and includes Lebanon. (“Wait just a gawl darn second,” screams an alarmed Benji Netanyahoo. “I haven’t finished killing Lebanese kids!!!!!”) ((He announces later that Lebanon genocide will continue))

• 12:01 am April 8 (that’s today, I think): TrumpleSleazeSkin wipes the drool off his lips long enough to post this on his personal nutfarm social media service, True Sociopath:3

A big day for World Peace! Iran wants it to happen, they’ve had enough! Likewise, so has everyone else! The United States of America will be helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz. There will be lots of positive action! Big money will be made. Iran can start the reconstruction process. We’ll be loading up with supplies of all kinds, and just “hangin’ around” in order to make sure that everything goes well.

Whoa there, big orange slimy fella, stop right there. No. Everything you touch turns to shit. Stay far away. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I feel confident that it will. Just like we are experiencing in the U.S., this could be the Golden Age of the Middle East!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP

A special thanks to the lunatic’s peacekeeping buddy, Sharif, for helping us enjoy some Middle Eastern-flavored TACOs and moving from “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” to “The Golden Age of the Middle East” in just a few hours. Zounds! Break out the cardamom!

After yukking it up with some Iranian pals, Pakistan Prime Minister Sharif broke out a “Ten Point Plan” that looks like it came right off an Ayatollah’s laptop.

The Ten Point Plan

Here is the Ten Point Plan that Trumpseth (he and Hegseth seem to have congealed into one entity) has agreed to as something it can work with:4

1. The US must fundamentally commit to guaranteeing non-aggression.

2. Continuation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz.

3. Acceptance that Iran can enrich uranium for its nuclear program

4. Removal of all primary sanctions on Iran.

5. Removal of all secondary sanctions against foreign entities that do business with Iranian institutions).

6. End of all United Security Council resolutions targeting Iran.

7. End of all International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions on Iran’s nuclear program.

8. Compensation payment to Iran for war damage.

9. Withdrawal of US combat forces from the region.

10. Cease-fire on all fronts, including Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

I’d laugh if this were funny.

But Trump family insiders? They’re laughing their asses off. At us.

Stock and commodities traders worldwide who have Signal contacts with the most corrupt regime since that time Attila the Hun set up a chain of laundromats are celebrating in the streets and pimping favors on their yachts in Monaco.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

Stock market adjustments during the most recent TACO event

First came an immediate and dramatic reversal in global markets as the “war premium” on energy prices plummeted.

Oil Prices

Brent Crude (that’s the yummy stuff from the Middle East, much cleaner than Texas and other North American crude): Plunged roughly 14%, dropping to approximately $94.74/barrel. (yippee!)

But have no fear, American oil futures traders, you get to have fun, too!

WTI (U.S. Crude): Down nearly 16% to around $95/barrel. (I hear cowboys laughing all the way to the bank as they buy barrelfuls of the stuff and get their wallets ready for the next ghastly Trumpian threat).

One hour after the announcement, oil prices crashed 16% in just 60 minutes.

The crack investigative team at Ruminato has heard that the scramble for oil futures contracts was so intense that several thousand commodity traders had heart attacks. This is probably a necessary culling.

Stock Market Futures

Dow Jones: Futures surged by over 1,300 points (approx. 2.8%).

Orgasms occurred.

S&P 500: Futures rose 2.7% to 2.9%, reaching approximately 6,824.00.

Ditto.

Nasdaq 100: A very unsurprising 3.5% gain in overnight trading.

Trickster Grift

The next time this maniac tries to scare the pants off you, remember that he’s in it for the cash. Everything is always about the cash. $

He doesn’t want to see all this new family grift money burn up in a nuclear fireball any more than you want to see kids sizzling on a swing set.

The fact that he’s crazier now than a bull stuck in the same pen for thirty years doesn’t change his one true focus: GRIFT.

It’s all about the grift. Grift triggers the one part of his brain that still sort of works. He’s still capable of making phone calls, giving people inside information, and playing the market. You don’t need to be smart or even sane to make a lot of money if you know the right people.

In ten days, a new grift tactic will emerge. Or, more likely, several. The stock and commodities markets will fluctuate like the on/off switch in the mad clown’s TACO brain. More people will be outraged. More people will probably die. More people will get incredibly rich.

The Trump regime is all about knowing the right people. It’s why the Epstein escapade keeps getting buried further into the dirt. There’s just too damn much money to be made for these disgusting, horrible money hoarders to care about what happened to those poor kids in the past, or what might happen to you and your family in the future.

And they sure as shit don’t care what happens to the Iranian people, who are suffering the most from all this.

Thanks for reading!

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Update

As expected, the “peace plan” has already fallen apart. His dementia and madness got in the way. As reported by Meidas at noonish today:

• Israel has launched over 100 airstrikes on Lebanon in ten minutes, hitting Beirut, South Lebanon, and the Bekaa Valley simultaneously — at least 300 killed from what we are hearing now, hundreds more wounded

• Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz again in response to the Israeli strikes

• An oil refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island was attacked; Iran retaliated by striking Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline and hitting Kuwait’s water desalination and power plants

• Pakistan’s Prime Minister, the ceasefire mediator, says Lebanon was absolutely included in the deal; Trump now says it wasn’t

• Trump is claiming a joint U.S.-Iran venture to charge tolls on Strait of Hormuz shipping. He seems to be the only person to know about this

More money shall flow, along with more blood.

Footnotes

Let us waste no more time. Let the proceedings begin. This post includes a comprehensive list of 39 separate crimes against the people of the United States. There are more, either not appearing here or not yet uncovered.

Defendant: Donald John Trump.

Charges: High crimes and treason. Nary a misdemeanor to be found because they’re all felonies. Felonious like a mafia boss, with loads of Diddy thrown in for extra effect. The worst human in the public realm.

Jury: The jury is you.

The judge in this case: Whoever happens to be wearing a nice, black, terry cloth bathroom robe while reading this.

The Prosecution’s Case

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, although I am not a lawyer by trade, I might be if I could ever remember anything.

However, I declare to you today that we’ve thrown hundreds of lawyers and prosecutors at the defendant in question and have gotten nowhere. Therefore, I’m taking over the case with my new friend, Claude AI. We have compiled a comprehensive list of crimes and accusations against the defendant, Donald J. Trump, that go back before 1990.

We will demonstrate that the defendant has committed enough crimes against the United States and its people that he should be removed from office and sent to a federal penitentiary for the rest of his days.

His many minions and enablers are also due for a reckoning, but this case will focus on the ringleader of the Trump crime family.

We have sorted his many crimes by category for the jury’s convenience. I have numbered them as evidentiary items in sequential, not chronological, order.

Virtual bailiff, please provide copious amounts of coffee or tea for our beleaguered jury. Y’all are gonna need it. That, and maybe a stiff drink or ten.

Accusations, charges, and convictions against Donald Trump since 1990

Note: Some of the reference sources are paywalled.

⚖️ CRIMINAL CONVICTION

Exhibit 1. Trump was convicted in 2024 of 34 counts of falsifying business records. A Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on all 34 New York State felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. The trial lasted April 15 to May 30, 2024, and resulted in a conviction on all 34 charges. However, on January 10, 2025, the judge in the case issued an unconditional discharge.

His lead attorney in this case was acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has helped turn the Department of Justice (DOJ) into Trump’s personal law firm, which the prosecution argues also violates ethical standards and practices.
📰 Wikipedia, PBS Frontline — Guide to the Criminal Cases

🔴 CRIMINAL INDICTMENTS

Exhibit 2. In 2024, Trump was indicted by the federal government on 40 counts involving the improper use and handling of classified documents. This included 32 counts of willfully and illegally retaining national defense information, 5 counts of obstruction of justice, 1 count of interfering with a federal investigation, and 4 counts of making false statements.

However, on July 15, 2024, Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee and stooge, dismissed the federal indictment by issuing a bizarre ruling that Special Counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed. Most legal beagles have dismissed the legal basis of her ruling as ridiculous. Most likely, it was an attempt by Cannon to gain a future appointment to the Supreme Court under Trump.

His lead attorney in this case was acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
📰 Lawfare — The Trump Trials

Exhibit 3. On January 6, 2023, Trump was indicted by the federal government on four counts of election subversion. Trump was indicted on onecount of corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, one count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, and one count of conspiracy against rights (18 U.S.C. § 241).

The indictment accused Trump and co-conspirators of spreading “lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” according to the original indictment.

The lies led to the January 6, 2021, insurrection based on Capitol grounds, during which insurrectionists sought to hang Vice President Mike Pence. The insurrection resulted in seven deaths, including several police officers.

1,270 people were convicted or pleaded guilty to various crimes related to the most serious insurrection since the Civil War. Most of them were later pardoned by Trump and now roam freely to stalk Americans. Several have returned to prison after committing subsequent crimes.

The case was dismissed in December 2024 after Trump won the 2024 presidential election, in no small part because the John Roberts Supreme Court of Grift declared that actions carried out by a president while carrying out the duties of his office are immune from federal prosecution.

Further reference for members of the jury interested in learning more about the corruption of the Supreme Court:

Attention Clarence Thomas: It’s Time for Your Judicial Review
It’s a big fail that only impeachment can fix (🎁 Ruminato Gift Link 🎁)

His lead attorney in this case was acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
📰 Lawfare, CBS News — Trump’s 4 Indictments in Detail

Exhibit 4. In 2023, Trump was indicted by the state of Georgia on 13 counts of election interference. 18 codefendants were charged with election interference under Georgia RICO laws.

Trump and his codefendants were accused of coordinating an effort to thwart the certification of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results. The charges were tied to Trump’s infamous recorded call pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”

His codefendants included:
Rudy Giuliani; John Eastman; Mark Meadows; Kenneth Chesebro; Jeffrey Clark, Jenna Ellis; Ray Smith; Robert Cheeley; Michael Roman; David Shafer; Shawn Still; Stephen Lee; Willie Floyd; Trevian Kutti; Sidney Powell; Cathleen Latham; Scott Hall; Misty Hampton.

Several of his codefendants pleaded guilty.

In addition, there were 30 unnamed co-conspirators.
📰 CBS News

A Fulton County judge threw out three charges on March 13, 2024. This ruling resulted in the following remaining charges:

• 2 counts of conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree

• 2 counts of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings

• 2 counts of false statements and writings

• Violation of the Georgia RICO Act, which is an act in Georgia that mimics federal RICO laws that treat defendants as members of a mafia or other organized gang engaging in conspiracy and racketeering. Members of the jury, I suggest to you that you don’t need to know what racketeering is to know that it sounds really bad, and it is.

• Conspiracy to impersonate a public officer

Georgia Republicans conspired with Trump’s lead attorneys to refocus attention away from the case’s evidence to an affair between Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and one of her assistants. The ploy was successful, even though the affair had nothing to do with the charges presented to the jury, and even though the assistant recused himself from the case.

In November 2025, a new prosecutor, under direction and pressure from Georgia Republicans, dropped the charges against all defendants, thus ending the case, using Willis’ affair as the excuse.
📰 Wikipedia, CNN — Tracking Trump’s Indictments

🟡 CIVIL LIABILITY (Civil Court or Jury Verdicts Against Trump)

Civil juries of his peers found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation of character.

Exhibit 5. In May 2023, a civil jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. The jury ordered him to pay $5 million in damages. He tried to stage an unsuccessful counterclaim but lost his initial appeal in December 2024.
📰 Wikipedia

The judge in the case, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, went so far as to clarify for the record that what Trump did to Carroll must be considered rape as a matter of law.
📰 PBS NewsHour — Carroll Verdict, The Washington Post

Exhibit 6. A second jury in January 2024 awarded E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in a defamation claim against Trump. The jury awarded Carroll the additional money for defamatory statements Trump made about her while he was president in 2019. Most of the award, $65 million, was for punitive damages.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution would like to take this moment to point out that much of the daily grift you saw by the Trump crime family shortly after stealing office again in 2026 was designed to cover the costs of this and other civil and liabilities imposed by the courts against Trump in this case.

We will be reviewing some of this grift in later exhibits.
📰 WBUR — The $83 Million Verdict

Exhibit 7. In 2024, a New York judge found Trump liable for general business Fraud and financial statement inflation. The case involved a scheme spanning several years to dupe banks and others with financial statements that inflated his wealth. The judge ordered him to pay $355 million in penalties (it would have risen to over $450 million with interest if not for an appeals court). The judge for the case wrote that “the frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience.”
📰 Fortune

In 2025, an appeals court upheld the liability verdict but voided the monetary penalty as excessive.

The prosecution contends that voiding the penalty was a mistake.
📰 NPR — Civil Fraud Penalty

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🔵 Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report documented multiple instances of potentially criminal conduct but did not formally charge Trump

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report documented multiple instances of potentially criminal conduct but did not formally charge Trump, citing DOJ policy against indicting a sitting president. The special counsel’s office found substantial evidence of obstruction of justice in several instances.

Specifically…

Exhibit 8. Mueller found “substantial evidence” that Trump committed obstruction of justice when he fired FBI Director James Comey. Trump tried to use Comey’s “unwillingness to publicly state that the President was not personally under investigation” as a reason for firing him, even though Trump was, in fact, under investigation.
📰 Lawfare — Obstruction Heat Map

Exhibit 9. Mueller found “substantial evidence” that Trump committed obstruction of justice when he directed White House counsel Don McGahn to Fire Mueller. The Mueller report found substantial evidence that Trump asked White House Counsel McGahn to fire Mueller and create false documents to cover up the request.

McGahn said he was prepared to resign rather than comply.
📰 Time — Mueller Report Myths

Exhibit 10. Mueller found evidence of obstruction of justice when Trump directed Corey Lewandowski to limit the Mueller investigation. Trump directed former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to instruct the Attorney General to limit Mueller’s investigation, a step Mueller asserted “was intended to prevent further investigative scrutiny of the President’s and his campaign’s conduct.”
📰 ACS Law — Key Findings of the Mueller Report

Exhibit 11. Mueller found evidence of obstruction of justice when Trump pressured Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “Un-recuse” himself. Mueller revealed that Trump repeatedly asked the Attorney General to “un-recuse” himself from the Mueller inquiry. Mueller’s report concluded that “a reasonable inference” could be made that “the President believed that an unrecused Attorney General would play a protective role.”

Sessions was a close Trump ally when he recused himself from the inquiry.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, I present to you former Attorney General in Thief, Pam Bondi, and her Epstein redaction extravaganza as evidence that Trump was correct about a friendly Attorney General’s protective role.
📰 ACS Law, NPR — Mueller Report Summary

Exhibit 12. Mueller found evidence of obstruction of justice when he found that Trump may have been involved with witness tampering through the use of his pardon powers. The Mueller report raised questions about whether Trump, by and through his private attorneys, offered pardons for the purpose of influencing the cooperation of Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and an unnamed person.
📰 ACS Law, Harvard Kennedy School — Summary of the Mueller Report

Exhibit 13. Mueller found evidence of obstruction of justice when Trump pressured FBI Director Comey to drop the Flynn investigation. Mueller found that Trump asked for Comey’s loyalty and pressured him to “let this go” regarding the FBI investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and investigated whether those statements “had the tendency to impede the administration of justice.”

Per Wikipedia:

Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Flynn’s alleged false statements involve conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when Flynn was incoming National Security Advisor to President-elect Trump, and Flynn agreed to cooperate with the Special Counsel investigation as part of a plea deal.

📰 Lawfare, PBS NewsHour — Mueller Report Major Findings. Wikipedia]

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the people would like to submit as additional evidence Exhibit 13a, a report on the individual some of us refer to as President Krasnov, a Russian agent:

The prosecution believes that Trump has a long association with Russian agents, the details of which are provided in Exhibit 13a. These actions expose the defendant to charges of treason.

On April 1, 2026, he threatened again to withdraw the United States from NATO, the main bulwark against Russian aggression. The prosecution contends that if withdrawal from NATO did not require an act of Congress, he would have done so by now. This statement is supported by numerous publicly available social media posts he has made.

🟠 Jack Smith Report (2025)

The prosecution now turns the jury’s attention to Special Counsel Jack Smith, who uncovered a trove of possible crimes that Smith said would have likely resulted in a series of convictions had Trump not “won” stolen the presidency.

Specifically…

Exhibit 14. Smith discovered a conspiracy to defraud the United States and commit acts of election subversion.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Smith’s words were damning. His final report concluded that “the throughline of all of Mr. Trump’s criminal efforts was deceit — knowingly false claims of election fraud,” and that Trump would have been convicted had he not won the 2024 election.
📰 ABC News — Jack Smith Final Report

Exhibit 15. Smith concluded that Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct the electoral count. Smith’s report cited Pence’s handwritten notes demonstrating that “in repeated conversations, day after day, Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Pence to use his ministerial position as President of the Senate to change the election outcome.”
📰 ABC News, NPR — Jack Smith’s Election Report

Exhibit 16. Smith’s report found that Trump organized a false slate of electors. Smith’s report detailed evidence that Trump supported the organization of a false slate of electors, then allegedly told his acting attorney general to “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican” lawmakers.
📰 CBS News — Smith Final Report

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🟣 Sexual misconduct allegations

At least 27 women have publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct since the 1980s. Most of the material presented here does not include evidence in the highly redacted Epstein Files, which are still awaiting further discovery, but have been illegally withheld from the public by former U.S. Attorney General in Thief Pam Bondi in violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R. 4405).

Her dismissal, but the subsequent refusal of the DOJ to release the files in compliance with statutory requirements, is also evidence that Trump is giving the orders to violate the statute requiring their release.

This law he is violating mandates the disclosure of flight logs, internal DOJ communications, and, with specific privacy exceptions involving victims, files naming government officials and associates. The law imposed a deadline, which was never met.

The prosecution submits that Trump ordered the Department of Justice to refuse to comply with this law (even though he signed it), and that former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and his personal attorney and now acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche have acceded to his order.

The following events involving sexual assault fall within or near a 1990–present time period. They do not include every allegation against him:

Exhibit 17. Wife Ivana Trump — Alleged Sexual Assault (1989, came to public light in the early 1990s)

Not to be mistaken for his daughter, Ivanka, who the prosecution would also like to call for testimony, Ivana was his first wife.

During their divorce deposition, his wife at the time charged that Trump “violated their bond of love” in a 1989 incident.

She later stated her use of the word “rape” was not meant in the “criminal sense.”

The prosecution maintains that she was silenced by intimidation.
📰 PBS NewsHour — Assault Allegations Recapped

Exhibit 18. Jill Harth — Groping and Attempted Rape (1992–1993) Harth filed a lawsuit in 1997 in which she accused Trump of attempted rape, alleging he “forcibly prevented plaintiff from leaving and forcibly removed plaintiff to a bedroom” at Mar-a-Lago. She further charged that Trump tried to use her as a sex slave, similar to accusations found in the Epstein Files.

According to the New York Daily News, the matter was “settled” out of court:

The case was due to go to trial on July 17 in Manhattan Federal Court, but yesterday sources familiar with the deal said Trump had agreed to a six-figure payout.

The prosecution would like to note that the referenced article from the fact-checker Snopes specifically points out that Trump was subject to several sexual assault allegations before the 2016 election, which demonstrates that they were not made to discredit his presidential campaign, since there was not yet any presidential campaign to discredit.
📰 Snopes — Trump Sexual Assault Allegations Prior to 2016

Exhibit 19. Kristin Anderson — Groping at a Manhattan Nightclub (early 1990s) Kristin Anderson told the Washington Post in October 2016 that Trump touched her through her underwear at a Manhattan nightclub in the early 1990s.
📰 Axios — Trump Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Exhibit 20. Stacey Williams — Groping in the Presence of Jeffrey Epstein (1993) In October 2024, former Sports Illustrated model Stacey Williams alleged that Trump groped her in 1993 while Jeffrey Epstein looked on, becoming the 27th person to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct.

The prosecution would like to remind the court that the Epstein Files contain significant evidence of similar episodes involving Trump.
📰 Wikipedia, Women’s Agenda — 27 Accusers]

Exhibit 21. E. Jean Carroll — Sexual Assault / Rape (1995–96) This is the case that triggered the defamation civil trials won by Carroll as outlined in Exhibits 5 and 6. The original case stems from an assault on Carroll by Trump in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room.

Corroborating testimony played a key role in all of E. Jean Carroll’s cases. For example, Lisa Birnbach, a writer and friend of Carroll’s, testified that Carroll called her the evening of the attack and provided graphic details about the assault that went far beyond what Trump was finally found liable for.

Another journalist and friend, Carol Martin, testified that Carroll told her something similar the next day.

Another witness, Jessica Leeds, a retired businesswoman, testified that she had also been attacked by Trump on an airplane.

Another, People Magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff, testified that she had been assaulted by Trump in 2005 while covering his first wedding anniversary with Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
📰 Al Jazeera — Carroll Appeal Ruling, Politico

Exhibit 22. Lisa Boyne — Forced Table-Walking and Upskirting at Dinner (Summer 1996) Boyne alleged that at a group dinner, Trump and other men forced several women to walk on top of a table, and that Trump looked up the women’s skirts and commented on their underwear and genitalia. No charges are known to have been filed.
📰 PBS NewsHour — Assault Allegations Recapped

Exhibit 23. Amy Dorris — Forced Kissing and Groping at the U.S. Open (1997) Amy Dorris alleged that Trump forcibly kissed and groped her at the 1997 U.S. Open in New York, telling The Guardian, “he just shoved his tongue down my throat.” No charges are known to have been filed.
📰 HuffPost — Running List of Accusers, The 19th News

Exhibit 24. Miss Teen USA Contestants — Dressing Room Intrusion (1997) The prosecution would like to remind the court that this incident will be familiar to anyone paying attention to the Epstein Files.

Five former Miss Teen USA contestants told BuzzFeed News in 2016 that Trump allegedly walked into the dressing room when they were changing in 1997; one claimed Trump said: “Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before.”
📰 Axios — Trump Misconduct Allegations

Exhibit 25. Natasha Stoynoff — Forced Kissing at Mar-a-Lago (2005) As outlined in Exhibit 21, Natasha Stoynoff described an incident with Trump during which she says he forced her against a wall and tried to kiss her during an interview. She wrote a first-person account for People in October 2016.

As the court knows, this “October surprise” was ignored by voters, who were more concerned with Hillary’s emails. And possibly her laugh.
📰 ABC News — List of Trump Accusers

Exhibit 26. Jessica Drake — Unwanted Kissing and Groping (2006) Jessica Drake accused Trump during a 2016 news conference of grabbing and kissing her without consent, then offering her $10,000 to come to his penthouse hotel room in 2006.
📰 The 19th — Trump Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Exhibit 27. Summer Zervos — Sexual Assault (2007) Summer Zervos was a contestant on “The Apprentice” in 2007. At a 2016 news conference, she said Trump sexually assaulted her on two separate occasions during her time with the show. The assaults included grabbing her shoulder, kissing her aggressively, placing his hand on her breast, and thrusting himself on her.
📰 The 19th News, Time — Donald Trump Accusers

Exhibit 28. “Jane Doe” (pseudonym) — Alleged Rape at Age 13 at Epstein Party (1994) This, for now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is considered one of the most awful events to ever occur between a would-be president and a child, assuming it is true.

In 2016, an anonymous woman filed a lawsuit accusing both Trump and Jeffrey Epstein of raping her when she was 13 years old at underage sex parties at Epstein’s Manhattan residence in 1994.

The lawsuit was refiled several times but ultimately withdrawn before trial, after the plaintiff cited repeated threats.

The Epstein Files recently revealed that the victim was interviewed four times by the FBI. The prosecution would like to remind the court that the FBI does not interview victims four times if they don’t believe there is a legitimate accusation.

This case was made famous when it was revealed that the FBI reports in the Epstein Files indicated that the survivor testified to the FBI that she bit Trump’s penis in a bid to escape, and was hit in the head in response.

The prosecution also reminds the court that the Epstein Files are currently and actively being covered up by Trump’s personal attorney, Todd Blanche, and his former boss, Pam Bondi. This is also a crime, but the people are unable to present further evidence because the criminals involved now control the levers of justice.
📰 Wikipedia — Trump Sexual Misconduct Allegations, Department of Justice

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💰Civil lawsuits over nonpayment

Your honor and members of our esteemed jury: Trump’s long journey of crime includes a persistent refusal to pay people for services and supplies.

The prosecution maintains that the pattern and scope of deceit, demonstrated by dozens of lawsuits and liens, reveal a pattern that forms into formal criminal behavior.

For example:

Exhibit 28. At least 60 lawsuits were filed against Trump and his businesses by workers and contractors alleging nonpayment, along with hundreds of liens and judgments.

The list includes everyone from restaurant and club workers to lawyers.
📰 USA Today

Exhibit 29. Since 2005, Trump businesses have also racked up at least 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act for failing to pay minimum wage or overtime.
📰 The Hill

Exhibit 30. More than 200 liens have been filed against Trump or his businesses by contractors and employees dating back to the 1980s, with claimants including dishwashers, curtain makers, chandelier shops, cabinet makers, and even Trump’s own lawyers.
📰 USA Today

Exhibit 31. During the construction of the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in 1990, Trump failed to pay at least 253 subcontractors in full or on time.
📰 USA Today

Exhibit 32. Trump allegedly bankrupted multiple contractors and suppliers because he wouldn’t pay them for services. Former New Jersey casino regulator Steven Perskie told the New York Times that Trump “put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them.”
📰 New York Times

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🔥 War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

During his second term in office, Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined by international law and the Geneva Convention.

Exhibit 33. Trump has ordered the Pentagon and Pete Hegseth to murder at least 163 people in attacks on boats in the Caribbean and northern South America coastal waters. International law experts generally agree that the killings, with no judge, no jury, and no trial of any kind, not even a military trial, are illegal.

The prosecution submits that these are war crimes. As such, the United States must join the International Criminal Court in an official capacity and refer Trump’s war crimes to the Hague.
📰 The Guardian

Exhibit 34. Trump and Heseth kidnapped a foreign head of state. In an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, Trump ordered the kidnapping of a head of state, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Since that time, Trump has seized Venezuela’s oil production with the aim of consumption within the United States and profiteering by business associates of the Trump family.

Maduro is currently being held in a detention center in New York State.
📰 Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman

Exhibit 35. Trump cut off Cuba’s energy supply. Trump plunged Cuba into long periods of darkness by cutting off energy and food supplies with an inexplicable full boycott, including oil.

On February 12, the United Nations called the cutoff a violation of international law:

“It is an extreme form of unilateral economic coercion with extraterritorial effects, through which the United States seeks to exert coercion on the sovereign state of Cuba and compel other sovereign third States to alter their lawful commercial relations, under threat of punitive trade measures.”

Journalists at Decolonized Journalism note that, among other immediate health issues triggered by the oil cutoff, “32,000 pregnant women face increased risks in priority maternal care” and “Over 61,000 children under the age of one who require specialized care are expected to be significantly impacted.”

Cuba is already suffering long blackouts. Anyone who has experienced an electricity blackout in the United States can appreciate the problems that arise when that happens. Now, imagine them happening for 7–8 hours every day in a hot tropical island nation.

Trump is letting a Russian oil tanker dock in a Cuban port as this is being written, which will give the Cubans about a ten-day reprieve.
📰 United Nations UNHR, Decolonized Journalism

Exhibit 36. Trump launched an unconstitutional war on a major regional power, Iran. The constitutional approach to dealing with a reprehensible regime like Iran’s would be request Congress to authorize military action. Instead, Trump put American troops throughout the Middle East at risk by unilaterally bombing the country with Israel.

Further, Trump ordered a bombing attack that led to the killing of as many as 200 school children and has threatened to destroy the energy and water infrastructure of Iran.

He launched a separate attack on Iranian volleyball players, young girls, while testing a new weapon.

Destroying energy and water infrastructure is a war crime, as outlined by the Geneva Convention and international law. So is killing little girls.
📰 New York Times, Amnesty International, CBS News

Refer a friend

💸 Grift

The primary accomplishment of both Trump’s first and second terms has been to accumulate family wealth, often at taxpayer expense. Unlike the more obvious patterns in the prosecution’s other exhibits, most of these exhibits do not yet include any specific criminal or civil charges, because none have been brought forward.

These exhibits rely mostly on circumstantial evidence.

Exhibit 37. Trump has used the war to engage in insider trading. 6,000 oil futures contracts worth $580 million were traded in a massive spike in trading on March 23rd related to Trump’s threat to “obliterate” Iranian energy infrastructure if Iran didn’t open the Strait of Hormuz.

The spike occurred at 6:49 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, shortly before Trump posted an announcement on his personal Twitter machine, Truth Social, also known in some quarters as True Sociopath, that he had changed his mind.

According to the Financial Times, a similar spike took place on the S. & P. 500 stock index.

At 7 am, Trump posted in all caps that negotiations were underway for a “COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST.”

He then stated he was instructing the armed forces to halt all strikes for five days. They did not do so. But that didn’t stop the price of Brent Crude, the primary Middle Eastern oil flavor, from dropping ten percent, or from stock futures from jumping 2.5 percent.

The prosecution argues before the court that this is now a standard practice, previously used with the better-known TACO Tariffs, and part of an assisted living program for a few lucky traders with access to Trump’s inner circle.

[The prosecution formally requests testimony from Jared Kushner.]

Note: His behavior on tariffs also should be entered into evidence, but the behavior is so erratic that it would require several pages of further documentation.
📰 Financial Times, BBC News, The Times

Exhibit 38: The Qatari “Flying Palace” Grift

The oil kingdom of Qatar offered, and Trump accepted, a $400 million Boeing 747–8 as a gift to the U.S. government, which Trump said would serve as Air Force One. Critics and lawmakers raised concerns that the deal was a “personal trophy” and violated the Foreign Emoluments Clause, which prohibits federal officials from receiving gifts from foreign states.

It also raised concerns about the possibility of Trojan horse surveillance technology installed on the aircraft by a foreign nation.

The gift coincided with the Trump Organization announcing a $5.5 billion golf course deal in Qatar.
📰 NPR, CNBC, The Guardian, Barron’s

Exhibit 39: During his first term, the watchdog group Citizens for Ethics (CREW) tracked more than 3,000 conflicts of interest involving Trump’s first term in office, including (quoting CREW directly):

• During the impeachment proceedings against President Trump, 55 members of Congress made a combined 78 visits to Trump properties.

• President Trump has made 267 visits to the golf courses he owns and profits from.

• Cabinet members have patronized Trump properties and attended events with special interests or wealthy political donors no fewer than 30 times.

• Special interest groups, many that have business with the Trump administration, have hosted or sponsored 117 events at Trump properties since he took office. Political groups have held another 78 events at Trump properties.

• Foreign government-tied entities have held 13 events at Trump properties, and at least 134 foreign officials have visited one of Trump’s properties.

• Foreign governments have granted President Trump’s businesses 65 trademarks while he’s been in office.

The prosecution maintains that you can now add the Trump family’s involvement in cryptocurrency, such as World Liberty Financial and $TRUMP “meme coins,” to this list.

CREW says it defines conflict of interest as “ any interaction between the Trump Organization and the federal government, U.S. state governments, and foreign governments, as well as interactions between the Trump Organization and special interests that try to influence the federal government.”
📰 Citizens for Ethics

Closing Statement

The prosecution will rest its case by asking the jury one simple question: Given that the prosecution has presented 39 exhibits of evidence to prove the people’s case, what is the likelihood that none of these accusations are true?

We already know that Trump has been convicted of crimes. We know he’s been found liable in a New York civil court for rape. We know that his name appears in the Epstein files anywhere from 6,000 times to as many as a million, depending on the level of redaction in the files.

The prosecution contends that you must convict, so that he is sent to prison for the rest of his days.

Please deliver your verdict to the comment area.

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Notes

Special thanks to D. Denise Dianaty for editorial help, plus fact/resource checking and verification.

This article first appeared in the Medium pub, “This America.” It has been updated.

Note that he’ll commit another crime before the end of the day. It is impossible for any human to track all of Trump’s crimes. Therefore, consider this a reasonable summary, with the understanding that there are more crimes either not appearing here or not yet documented.

Bookmark this page for your social media arguments. It’s reliable, fact-checked, and is full of sources and links that are unlikely to disappear soon.

The website “Just Security” maintains a litigation tracker of lawsuits against the Trump regime. There are currently 734 cases being tracked by the organization.

Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions
Track legal challenges to Trump administration executive actions with Just Security’s up-to-date litigation…www.justsecurity.org

Many of my regular readers know I’m not a fan of AI in the writing domain. I made an exception. I didn’t see how it was possible to research this story without it. Claude AI, the AI I chose to do my research for me, apparently agreed. When it answered my prompt asking for information on Trump’s crimes, it began with a warning:

This is a comprehensive topic. Here is a detailed list organized by category.

I fact-checked every item and source. This was a laborious process because I don’t trust AI. I rewrote the summaries AI tried to write. AI has a weird style of writing anyway, and I like to own my writing.

The topic of Trump’s crimes is comprehensive enough that AI needs to warn me to buckle up? What’s wrong with a nation that allows this to continue?

Thanks for reading!

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Atticus hated the dust in this place. In this part of the world, the dry air was softened only by the ocean salt, but that wasn’t reaching him here. He longed for the humid air of Thessaloniki.

But Atticus was an adventurer. He didn’t come here to be coddled by gentle winds. Whenever he heard of an uproar visiting a land he was unfamiliar with, he rushed to it with the gait of a bull charging a Celtiberian matador.

Rushing to a place of interest, though, often meant hating the place. This was never truer than here. Atticus had met a man who called himself a shepherd. Then they killed him.

The way local clerics murdered his new friend in this foreign land made him want to rampage with a bloodletting that would be etched onto the dry stones of their buildings until some merciful soul buried their unholy city in salt.

He couldn’t help but witness the murder because they made such a spectacle of it that avoidance was impossible. Every citizen from miles around witnessed it. Atticus couldn’t imagine what foul barbarians could invent the cruelty bestowed upon his friend, but worse, in his mind, was the fanatical gathering that cheered it on.

Yet his new friend withstood it with the strength of a dying gladiator. Stoic, like the greatest Greek philosophers, he asked only once for mercy from whoever oversaw both human and vampire existence.

The shepherd knew who or what that was, it seemed. His familiarity with that unseen universe was his superpower. Atticus had heard stories that the shepherd wasn’t afraid to flaunt his knowledge, but that was not the man he remembered.

The man he knew told him that all power rested only in the truth of love. Atticus had known powerful love at times throughout his life, but he assumed the passion of vampire love far outshone anything humans could experience or even conceive.

But his new friend was a human who understood love better than Atticus or any other vampire he knew.

He first met the shepherd on an empty road in stifling heat. Atticus was bent over three dead human bodies, his first kills in this land. They were random choices, a trio of bandits waiting for passing travelers. In the wrong place at the wrong time.

When the shepherd saw him, blood covered Atticus’s lips and chin. He knew he was wearing a stupid grin.

He looked at the man approaching and wondered if he should take on one more feed. His body had probably reached its limit, but the man’s peaceful gaze tempted him like it was a fat cow luring the butcher’s knife.

Atticus hissed to reveal sharp canines still dripping with the blood of his victims.

“You may drink my blood, vampire,” said the robed man calmly as he neared. “If you do, you shall be cleansed.”

Atticus lunged at the man’s neck, determined to empty every last drop of his blood. But as he fed, the man stood firm, then gently embraced Atticus. By the time Atticus felt finished, it was he who felt drained.

The man released his embrace. “How do you feel now, vampire? Fulfilled?”

For once in his life, Atticus was without words. He stammered a little, but said nothing. Finally, after a few quiet moments of a man and a vampire staring into each other’s eyes, Atticus found the only words that made sense. “Who are you?”

“You may call me the shepherd, my friend. I am your servant.”

“My servant? I have servants in my home. I don’t need any more.”

“You have no true servants,” replied the shepherd. “The salt from the seas that join with Thessaloniki could all dissolve upon your shores and sprout more of what you call servants, and still, you would have none.”

“Well, then…” It didn’t even occur to him to ask the shepherd how he knew of his ties to Thessaloniki.

The shepherd put his index finger against Atticus’ lips. “I am your only servant, and the only one you will ever need.”

It seemed to Atticus that many of their conversations after that day went like that. The shepherd was a man of riddles, and a riddle himself. But full of grace in a way Atticus had never experienced.

And then the shepherd was slaughtered like an animal.

A woman Atticus had noticed as the shepherd’s frequent companion washed the shepherd’s feet as he languished in the baking sun. Atticus walked up beside her. She nodded at the water from a clay bowl. Atticus scooped some with his palms and also washed the shepherd’s feet.

“You’ll come with me, then, to his tomb,” she said to Atticus after the shepherd’s last words. It was an order, not a question. She was too full of grace for Atticus to resist or question. He merely nodded. She took his hand and kissed his fingers gently, then said, “Thank you” as she walked away.

“But how will I find you?” he asked her silhouette as it drifted off. She said nothing, just continued on her way, doing nothing more than throwing a hood over her head.

“Wait!” he yelled. The skies went dark, and she disappeared into an alley that seemed made from black ink.

The woman was not there. A large boulder straddled the cave that held the tomb.

Atticus entered the cave. The echo of his voice bounced along the stone walls: “Where are you, shepherd?”

There was nothing. No sign of life. No sign of death. Just cold stone.

Atticus walked out of the tomb, stricken by unbearable sadness. What was the point of all of that? All of the shepherd’s words seemed now in vain, meant for someone else, not a soul like his, not for someone like Atticus, a soul chained to an endless life of parasitic fury.

He walked the lonely road back to town, fantasizing about a murder spree that would last as long as his never-ending wretched life.

Then he knelt on one knee, looked up at the sky, and asked one more time, “Where are you, shepherd?”

A small hand touched his shoulder. It was that of a child. A bald girl wearing a thick white robe. No more than ten.

“He left me these words,” she said.

“I’m sorry? What?”

“Listen, she said. “These are now your words, to say for all time.” And she sang in a beautiful choir of voices, thousands of children at once:

Lord, enter not into judgment with thy servant;
for no human or vampire living is righteous before thee.

For the enemy pursues me;
Tries to crush my life to the ground;
he has made me sit in darkness like those long dead.

Therefore my spirit faints within me;
my heart within me is appalled.

I remember the days of old,I meditate on all that thou hast done;
I muse on what thy hands have wrought.

I stretch out my hands to thee;
While I crave the blood of your children,
my soul thirsts for thee like a parched land.
Make haste to answer me, O Lord!
My spirit fails!
Hide not thy face from me,
lest I be like those who go down to the pit.

Notes

The song is essentially Psalm 143. Altered a bit.

Keen observers will wonder: “From miles around?” In Roman times?

“Miles” is derived from the Roman “millie passus”, which meant a thousand paces.

This is a short story adjacent to the main character of my novel, Psalm of Vampires, Jade Mourning, whose real name is Atticus of the Argeadai House of vampires.

There’s a scene in Chapter 8 where his foil/nemesis and later ally/friend, vampire hunter and Atlanta Detective Standmoore Owens, rolls his eyes after Atticus tells him his uncle is Alexander the Great. Owens then says, ”Next thing I know, you’ll tell me how you met Jesus or something.”

To which Atticus responds…

“Actually…”

Much vampire “canon” is wrong. For example: As you can tell by this story, vampires are not harmed by sunlight. That is an old myth created by humans long ago, when vampires were more plentiful and filled everyone with fear. Humans thought they needed something to fight back with. All they had was mythology.

Thanks for reading!

I hope you’ll check out Psalm of Vampires. It’s free if you have Kindle Unlimited.

I posted a sample chapter yesterday:

Kirkus Reviews says, “Get it!” I’ve received a few reports from readers that they have tried to post reviews, but they aren’t getting posted. If that happens to you, let me know in the comments or send me a DM. Thanks!

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The Mouras Encantada is a house of Vampires based in Goa, India. This vampire house abandoned the concept of procreation long ago and is thus guaranteed to die out. When one speaks, the group she is with typically speaks in one voice simultaneously with her.

They are also encountered in this Psalm of Vampires-adjacent short story:

Owens is an Atlanta detective and vampire hunter who has developed a reluctant alliance with the narrator, Jade Mourning, to deal with a common threat. Jade is a Bible-thumping vampire and influencer with a big streaming empire.

Flashing is something vampires do in this novel that allows them to travel immediately from one spot to another, but they must have been in that spot at some point in their lives to utilize this form of transport.

Brilexus is sort of the leader of the Mouras Encantada. In a previous chapter, they were given a bad dose of DNA. Long story. You’ll have to read the whole thing to get at it.

Trigger Warnings: Violence, gore, language.

Coming tomorrow: A Psalm of Vampires Easter story

Check out the Notes for some background music. If you want to.

Chapter 24: Hunger Pangs

After Philip’s CRISPR injection, Brilexus flashed to Goa and back to Singapore without incident. Like me, it took a few tries, but she got the hang of it quickly. The other four quickly demanded the same capabilities. Philip nervously accommodated the intimidating Goa vamps.

Before I had a chance to warn them about exhaustion, the five vampires were flashing back and forth, looking greatly amused. They must have done it a hundred times, grinning ear to ear like kids stumbling into a pile of unexpected Christmas presents. How they had the stamina for that, I had no idea. I was lucky to do it three or four times without feeling exhausted. Once, when they came back, they said in their common voice, “We do love Singapore. It has always been a delightful city for us.” Then, they flashed as one unit out of the lab. They appeared a few minutes later, looking pleased. This scene was repeated a dozen more times in the span of an hour.

If you’re thinking that there must be a catch, or that something was sure to go wrong, you’re right. The Goa vampires stopped returning from their flashes.

My phone started blowing up with local news reports of thirty or forty vampire attacks. Then fifty. Then sixty. These weren’t doubtful stories from disbelieving witnesses. These were attacks in broad daylight, including one at a soccer stadium full of cheering fans. Everything was on video. Enormously tall female vampires with fangs dripping blood looked at camera phones as if they were posing for grisly selfies. Human necks spewing geysers of blood were caught on video as their loosely attached bodies spasmed themselves into their final moments.

Multiple emergency vehicles blared their sirens outside the lab while people ran through the halls. Outside the building, people wandered around the surrounding campus looking at their phones, their eyes darting about like they were being circled by flocks of flying predators.

Owens was on a flight to Singapore from Atlanta, so I’d be spared his reaction for at least a brief time. Before I could even think about a course of action, more local news reports rolled in. One of the most disturbing involved a shopping center with hundreds of fatalities involving at least twenty vampires, all, according to the reports, looking precisely the same.

TikTok wasn’t just trending vampire. It was consumed by their attacks. Moreland was freaking out, texting close friends like Stormcycle and Morgenthau, who promised to send help, but since they didn’t know how to flash, may as well have said that they’d see us next Tuesday.

Bennie and Philip wondered how they’d survive the onslaught when it appeared that the rest of Singapore wouldn’t. It wasn’t like I could tell them not to worry.

It became apparent that the Mouras Encantadas were finding the time to flash to Goa to recruit more from their clan. I thought, shit, they may be biting their fellow Mouras Encantadas to inject Bennie’s DNA hack. Then I thought, shit, their initial flashes were biting jaunts to Goa. The number of reports involving attacks multiplied exponentially, all within a matter of minutes.

Moreland, who had been wearing her usual light, translucent robe, changed into her warrior outfit and pulled me by my arm, asking if I had my karambit. I told her I always have my karambit, but that if she thought we’d be able to take on a hundred Mouras Encantadas, she was crazy. “We gotta try to stop the slaughter,” she said, pulling me out of the lab, through a hallway, and out of the building. She brandished her sword.

“What about the brothers?” I said, thinking of Philip and Bennie.

“I think they’ll be okay,” she said. Exasperated, she added, “I dunno, Jade.”

“I gotta stay here,” I said. “I gotta protect those kids.”

An ambulance screeched past us, then another, then several police cars. People were screaming across the street in what appeared to be a shoe store. A cloud of shoes broke through a shattered window as if someone had found a way to spray them out of a huge hose. We ran to the store and saw six or seven Encantadas feasting on the store’s employees. The shoes that hadn’t been blown out the window were off the shelves and scattered across the carpet, which was soaked in blood.

The Encantadas looked completely out of control, like in one of those apocalyptic zombie movies where the creatures relentlessly attack with oblivious ferocity. The Encantadas weren’t just feeding. They were consuming. If they saw a piece of body that didn’t look appetizing, such as a foot, they hurled it against the wall or across the store, and, looking insanely famished, tore into another piece of flesh or organ.

While they were ravaging their victims, a beautifully eerie chorus filled the store with a song in the same key sung by several voices. A couple of the Encantadas looked up from their ravaging, but ignored us, returning to the feast as if we had merely interrupted dinner. Their eyes were wide and beady, nearly popping out of their sockets. All the comely vampires were soaked in blood. A military vehicle pulled up and emptied, but the troops were quickly overwhelmed by vampires charging through the same door of the shoe store, followed by the same eerie chorus. The soldiers were torn to shreds faster than you can tie a shoe, despite a hail of bullets that should have had at least some effect.

“What the hell is happening, Moreland?” I asked. “This isn’t exactly in the Encantada Chronicles.” I was referencing an old written history of Goa vampires that few, including Moreland, had probably heard of.

“The DNA thing that Bennie did?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Can’t be that. All their friends? The ones they’re bringing from Goa?”

“Oh, yeah. Well, what then?”

“I dunno, but there’s something wrong. They don’t look normal.” Then I changed my mind. I told her about my theory that they bit their fellow vampire brethren when they returned to Goa.

“Or they’re being controlled like I was,” said Moreland. I doubted that, but we had to consider everything.

“We gotta kill one and bring her back to the lab for Bennie to check out,” I said.

“No, we have to kill six,” said Moreland. “To guarantee that at least one of them isn’t one of the five that he gene edited. Since they all look the fucking same.”

The first one was the hardest, and it was pretty easy. Moreland entered what was left of the shoe store and took a swing at one of the Goa vampires with her sword as the rapacious vampire stooped over the remains of one of her victims. The vampire didn’t fight back but instead kept trying to feed. Moreland sliced the head off, then threw it onto the sidewalk outside as I jumped onto another and slit her throat. After I hacked off her hand, I aimed it perfectly toward the head Moreland hacked off. The hand bounced off the head, then down onto the pavement. I didn’t need her to die. I just needed her hand. Four more.

The rest were just as easy. No resistance. Their only focus was on the feeding rampage that seemed to guide their bodies. The police and military discovered that if they didn’t try to interrupt attempts to feed, they could blast them with bullets for hours. But the problem, as it always is with vampires, was that the bullets were ineffective. It was also almost impossible for law enforcement to shoot at vampires without killing victims. The situation was a mess.

Against that backdrop, we chopped at Goa vampires and hauled pieces of their bodies to the two terrified brothers, who urgently needed syringes of Valium for their anxiety. But the brothers braved through it. Bennie acted quickly to examine the DNA. Meanwhile, Philip got a desperate call from Leia Tan, who was stuck in an elevator on her college campus. Philip told her she was the luckiest person in Singapore, and to sit tight. That was probably good advice, but I told him I could try to fetch her.

It didn’t take long for Bennie to conclude that the blood of all the Goa vampires was the same. They all had his DNA hack. To say that this sent Bennie spiraling into a sudden fit of extreme depression wouldn’t come close to doing justice to his reaction.

“It’s all my fault,” he began to repeat. “If I hadn’t played God, none of this would be happening.” He couldn’t break out of this kind of conversation no matter how much consoling we did or how many times we reminded him that it wasn’t his fault that circumstances led to the use of CRISPR. We couldn’t really say it wasn’t his idea because it was, but we reminded him how we had to talk him into its execution. We reminded him how nervous he had been to try it. It didn’t matter to him. He had held the knife, so to speak.

Speaking of knives, when was the last time I didn’t keep my karambit in its sheath? Of course, you don’t have an answer for that. Neither do I, but it doesn’t happen often. Leaving it on the table next to Bennie was a supremely bad idea. I realized this as soon as I saw his hand reach for it and begin the knife’s short journey to his throat.

Moreland’s arm became a whip as she ran three or four steps toward him to snap the knife out of his hands. Then, she bit hard into his neck. Bennie’s body quickly turned yellowish white, like death, as Moreland’s eyes lit up. A strong scarlet eggshell glow surrounded her body. I could see an expression of pure enjoyment consume her through the glow’s translucence as her jaws dug deeper. Philip screamed like he had just lost his dear brother, which, in a way, he just had. The scarlet glow deepened, absorbing her body and Bennie. Bennie’s body shuddered violently as Moreland’s jaw remained firmly engaged with his neck. I could barely see Bennie and Moreland through the glow as voices in an African dialect filled the air around them.

The glow subsided. Bennie’s head spilled backward like his neck had been broken. The pupils of his eyes rolled into white. Philip was pounding on Moreland with his fists, but she ignored him. She picked Bennie up, laid him on one of the lab tables, and softly said to him, “Rest, my friend. Your days of rash self-judgment are over.”

She looked at Philip. “Sorry. We seriously do not have time for this shit. He’ll be fine in a couple of days.”

“You killed him,” Philip said through sobs as he ran to Bennie and kissed his forehead. “Bennie!”

“He almost killed himself. Or did you not see him take Jade’s knife?” said Moreland. “Now, he lives. And will live. He will live on far beyond this day of self-immolation.”

“Days? Talk about no time. We’ll all be dead by then.” Through tears, Philip was still reacting to the first thing Moreland said to him.

“Yeah, Moreland, how the hell are we going to deal with the genetics angle now?” I asked.

Author’s note: In the novel, Bennie is established as a DNA expert our heroes need to help win the day.

“I think we’ve proven that we are in over our heads in that regard, don’t you, Jade?” she replied. “Philip has everything we need.” She put her hands on Philip’s shoulders as he continued bending toward his brother. “You won’t see anything different about your brother. Nothing about his personality will change. But he won’t try to kill himself again, either.”

Philip shook his head and sat down on a chair next to Bennie. “Oh, Bennie, I’m so sorry,” he said, clasping one limp hand. He looked at Moreland. “So, you’ve turned him into one of you?”

She nodded. “He is now the origin father of the House of Chua. All his heirs are answerable to him.”

“Can you turn me, too?” asked a despondent Philip.

“I can. But we must complete our mission first. Can you?” she asked.

Philip took a rag from the table and wiped his face, which had been moistened by cascading tears. “I think so,” he said.

“I know so,” Moreland replied.

I didn’t know how I felt about Moreland’s latest rash, uncounseled decision. Turning him wasn’t necessary to save Bennie’s life. She had already achieved that by snatching the knife from his hand. But she also eliminated the possibility that he could die at his own hands during another attempt. One of the universe’s most improbable events is vampire suicide. Not because we don’t want to do it. The thought has crossed my mind a hundred times. It’s just very difficult to accomplish. Bennie would have to learn to live with his decision to alter the Goa DNA. I was determined to help him do that.

The Mouras Encantadas raged on. It occurred to me that the onslaught on Singapore would attract Longtooth’s attention. I didn’t know how he’d react, but there was no reason to think it would be for the better. I sat next to Philip. “I need you,” I said quietly.

He looked at me with glazed, puffy eyes and said, “For?”

“Longtooth. He’ll be on the move. He’ll be trying to take advantage of this situation.”

“Of course he will,” said Philip. He sighed, shook his head, stood up, and lumbered slowly to his laptop.

“Hey,” I said.

Philip turned around to look at me as he was about to sit down.

“Thank you,” I said.

He nodded, sat down, tapped the keyboard, and slid the screen my way. “Maybe it’s all wrong, Jade. Maybe I’m wrong, like Bennie was.”

“Bennie wasn’t wrong,” I replied. Moreland came up behind me.

“We all were,” said Moreland. “That was a team effort.”

Philip nodded again. “Well, you say Longtooth will move. He isn’t moving. Makes sense he’d move. Like you said. Take advantage. But according to this, he hasn’t moved.”

“He’s still in San Francisco,” I said.

“According to the beacon. Which is why I wonder if I’m wrong.”

“Unlikely you’re wrong. But strange.”

“I’m worried about Leia,” said Philip. “We’re not dating or anything. I mean, not yet. A guy can hope, though, right?”

I smiled. “Yeah. It’s good to dream. It’s good to hope, even when the world collapses around you. Or maybe especially then. You know the building she’s stuck in?”

He did. The building was near enough that I was able to retrieve her without incident. The Mouras Encantadas were too occupied with their uncontrolled feeding to notice me as I walked to and through the building’s entrance. There were two other humans in the elevator with her. I grabbed them, too, flashing them all one by one to the lab.

“Oh, fabulous,” complained Moreland when I brought the elevator occupants to the lab. “One of these days, you should set up a human petting zoo, Jade.” She stomped out of the lab to who knows where, mostly just to make a point. She didn’t want to have to think about protecting more humans.

Philip looked exhausted. He was wearing a white oxford shirt and a pair of black suit trousers with red tennis shoes. I had noticed before that his red tennis shoes seemed permanently affixed. I didn’t ask him why he was wearing the dress shirt. Whatever event he had planned to attend was canceled by the Mouras Encantadas, so it didn’t matter. The shirt was soaked through with sweat, and his normally coiffed short black hair was mussed. This should have been my clue that enough time had passed that Owens and Garrison should be arriving soon. It wasn’t though, so Owen’s text alerting me of his arrival surprised me.

After I acknowledged his text, he called my cell. “There’s a problem. The airport is on lockdown. I can’t get out of here. They’re not letting any flights out, and mine was the last one in. But I’m told they’ve sealed off the roads. I’m not going anywhere. What the hell is going on, Mourning?”

“Your worst nightmare,” I said, “Times a hundred or so.”

“You’ve been cloned into a swarm?” Still time for punches. Unbelievable.

“We’re gonna need to pull you out of there,” I said. “Garrison can lose a lung if he has to.”

I told him to meet us at his arrival gate. Moreland and I would have to flash to a place we’d both been at the airport, which left us with one choice, a small ride share area outside one of the terminals. Then we’d have to navigate through an airport stuffed with angry Singapore law enforcement officers on the hunt for people who looked a lot like us. The attackers’ profile was so ridiculously specific, though, that we thought we had a chance to get to Owens and Garrison without too much trouble.

“My hair’s not even black,” said Moreland. “And I’m not eight feet tall.”

“Don’t you have a more human looking outfit, at least?” I asked. She didn’t fit in on the best of days.

“This is totally human,” she answered, rubbing her hand across the tight spandex. “Hecho en Nicaragua,” she said in perfect Spanish.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said. “And leave your sword here, for God’s sake.”

We flashed to the Singapore Changi Airport’s ride share area, which was empty. There were no cars anywhere. The usual bustle of harried passengers around terminals was gone. We ran to a set of large electronic doors, then past security personnel and a few passengers. Airport security had managed to get almost all the passengers out of the terminal areas, but I couldn’t imagine where they were shipping them off to.

We found out soon enough. Hundreds of people were milling about a place on the huge airport’s grounds called the Rain Vortex, which was like an indoor jungle with a forty-foot manmade waterfall colored with spectacular blue lighting. The waterfall normally poured out of a glorious façade roof shaped like a funnel made from steel and glass held up by a huge round beam that made up the edge of the roof. The roof was composed of thousands of glass panels held by a twisting steel lattice framework that soared overhead.

The reason Moreland and I discovered all the people at the vortex was because we were chased there by three security officers, who couldn’t keep up with us as we raced toward the place in hopes of losing them in the small manmade jungle. Instead, we found ourselves dodging confused, frightened passengers as we darted around them. We scaled the terraced, plant-covered slopes that overlooked the round concrete drop point for the waterfall, which wasn’t in operation. No human could have made the climb as easily as we could.

While we were surveying the area below trying to figure out how to get to Owens’ gate, I got a text from Owens: “In big ass indoor jungle. Got herded there by local PD. Not sure what they call the place.” That meant he was below us somewhere in the crowd of passengers.

“We’re above you in the jungle wall,” I texted back.

“You are kidding me, right?” he texted back.

“Nope,” I replied.

Moreland began to glow. Sometimes, that glow served a damned good purpose.

“Well I can’t get up there, you idiot,” wrote Owens. “But I do see your ass. Me and everyone around me.”

One part of the crowd seemed to point up to us in unison.

“Well, wave or something, dipshit,” I texted.

A minute later, I saw a commotion below. A circle was forming around a man lying on the ground where the pointing people were. It looked like he was kicking his legs in the air and screaming. Owens. Moreland and I leaped down the jungle wall toward the circle forming around Owens. When we arrived, Garrison was laughing. Owens, his back on the ground, looked at me and yelled, “Get me out of here, will you?” Unable to contain my desire to torture him, I fell on top of him and pressed my body hard against his. I assumed Moreland was smart enough to grab Garrison, so I flashed.

Owens and I arrived on the floor of the lab. “Shit, get off me, you mother fucking goon,” he said.

“Nice to see you, too, darling,” I replied, standing up. I offered my hand, but he refused it and cursed something about my long-dead mother while he stood up. I looked to my left to see Moreland’s arm in the crook of Garrison’s elbow.

“Now, that’s nice, civil vampire travel,” said Owens as he looked at them.

“Always gotta make things difficult, don’t you, Owens,” I said.

“Shit,” he said. “What you got for me? You said you know how to take these bad boys out? And what the hell is going on here in Singapore?”

We sat down at a lab table where Philip was doing his computer thing. Moreland and I filled Owens in on everything we knew.

“How many automatic weapons we got here?” asked Owens when we were finished.

“Just a few. Not enough to arm the local police with meteor-bullet weapons,” I replied.

“You shoulda been taking out as many of these mother fuckers as you could instead of getting my ass out of there. What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked. He seemed pretty angry. I understood his anger. What was happening in Singapore was the exact opposite of what he could have ever hoped for as the climax to his years of battling vampires.

“We’ve been doing what we can,” I said. “It only took us a few minutes to get your skinny ass out of there, and now we need you to help deal with Longtooth.”

“But you don’t need me, Mourning.” I couldn’t explain why I did. Because I didn’t know. For his mind? His guts? Both? I tried to explain. Then I looked at Garrison. “This guy’s no idiot, either. Look, man, I just need you guys, okay?”

“Alright,” said Owens. “But let’s make this the last fight with this prick. I ain’t leaving his hovel until one of us is dead. He’s in San Francisco? You know, I really hate this flashing shit almost as much as my partner here does.”

“Stop complaining for fuck’s sake,” I replied. “Dr. Chua is dead, half of Singapore’s been slaughtered. You’re doing okay here.”

“Remember how well the last injection worked out?” asked Philip sarcastically in reference to the Goa CRISPR disaster. Everyone was mad. Stressed out. Nobody said anything, so he continued. “Well, I think I’ve got a modification to these nanobots that’s worth trying.”

“At this point, we don’t have much to lose,” I said.

“I think I’ve established a response protocol,” said Philip. “I’m testing it now.” He was furiously typing on his laptop keyboard. “If I’m right, in about thirty seconds, Miss Moreland will be singing America the Beautiful.” Everyone not named Moreland looked at each other like Philip was asking us to eat a ball made of sewing needles. “And… go!”

On cue, Moreland sang:

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

She had an amazingly beautiful voice. I had always found her high pitched shrill annoying, but when she sang, it became a gorgeous soprano.

“And… stop!” Philip hit a key on the laptop.

“You little fuck,” said Moreland. “I should feed your head to your brother when he wakes up. I just might.” Like I said, sewing needles.

“Sorry,” said Philip unconvincingly. If I could see he was withholding a smile, I’m pretty sure Moreland could, too. “Before you get too mad at me, you should know that you’ll be able to use your phone to send commands when you get to Longtooth. I don’t know if these Wurdulacs can sing but it won’t matter because you’ll command them to do something else. Anything you want, actually.” He smiled innocently at her. “I could have made you dance instead. This microcircuitry is hard-wired to convert English to command inputs. There’s another language in there, too. Must be what the Wurdulacs speak.”

“I’ve never heard a Wurdulac speak,” I said.

Philip shrugged. “The processor accepts the commands in English, then sends out translations. And then, somehow, in a way I don’t understand yet, gets the body that is receiving the command through the nanobot to respond to the command. It is crazy sophisticated. My uncle figured most of this out,” he added when I looked impressed. “It has taken me this long to parse what he has done and his instructions.”

“So, the foundation for you to work with was better than he said,” I said.

“He made the tape first. But added it last. I think,” said Philip.

“The amazing Dr. Chou. Someone should make a movie out of this guy,” said Owens.

“Miss Moreland,” said Philip. “I can disable your nanobots before your arrival.”

“Mmm,” she grunted.

“Then, I’ll use them to send the signals to you. But you’ll just be a communications hub. You use the app I install on your phones to pick up the signal from the nanobots in your body. Then you send the instructions out to whatever has nanobots inside of it in Longtooth’s place.”

“Sounds complicated,” said Moreland.

“No, all you need to remember is to send the command when the phone sends you an alert that you’ve got your signal,” said Philip. “And don’t lose your phones.”

“I sure hope he’s got cell service near that building he’s in,” I said.

Owens and Garrison looked at me like I was crazy.

“It’s San Francisco,” said Owens.

“He’s bouncing these signals off satellites somewhere. Not a cell tower,” said Philip. “Some unused frequency in the five-point-nine gigahertz band.”

“Oh, that. Of course!” I exclaimed sarcastically. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“There won’t be a problem,” continued Philip. “I hacked the sim cards to your phones.”

“Of course you did,” I said.

“I feel like I’m in a Tom Clancy novel,” said Garrison.

“A what?” asked Owens.

“You know, Jack Ryan. He’s always got some brilliant computer hacker around while he’s singlehandedly smoking the Russkies.”

“Anybody seen Charly and Daphne around?” I asked rhetorically as I looked at my phone.

Moreland approached me, put her hand on my shoulder, and asked softly, “Do you really think for one second that Charly is going to let anything happen to her? She’s okay, Jade. So is he.” She wanted me to stay focused, but I had been having trouble keeping my mind off her well-being since the moment she left with Charly. Since the moment she turned, if indeed she had. I shook my head. I was frustrated.

But we had another problem. And this was one of the reasons I was desperate for Charly’s return. We couldn’t leave Philip, Leia Tan, and her elevator companions alone while the rampage was continuing outside the building. The area surrounding us had settled into an eerie quiet. But the news reports described a worsening situation.

“Everyone is probably in a bomb shelter,” Philip said when I brought it up. “Little known fact you Americans probably do not know. Every newly constructed living space in Singapore must have a bomb shelter.”

“No way,” I said.

“Way,” he said, imitating a movie comedy character. “Since the 1990s. There is one here, too. In the basement of the building next door. They are blast-proof. Maybe vampire proof. I hope so!”

“Why are there bomb shelters in residences?” asked Owens.

“Our brothers to the north,” said Philip. “Boom!” He motioned an explosion with his hands. “Another little known fact…” He leaned in closer to Owens, who was sitting across from him. “…Everyone who has one in their apartment uses them as closets!” He laughed. “True story!” I had a vision of people scrambling to pull stuff out of their bomb shelter closets so they could crawl inside and hide.

We decided that even if the Mouras Encantadas could break through a bomb shelter, they probably wouldn’t try if there was easier prey available.

So, we helped Philip gather all his equipment. Moreland gathered Bennie. Leia Tan gathered her new friends from the elevator. And we moved everything to the building that had the bomb shelter. Once there, Moreland and I found a small gathering of students huddling with their phones. After we left Leia Tan and Bennie, we fed on a couple of stragglers because we both desperately needed it. A couple of passersby were in such a state of shock they barely noticed.

Then, we gathered some weapons.

“Everyone ready?” I asked. It was time for our final meetup with Longtooth.

“Please don’t lay on top of me,” said Owens.

“Take my arm, you pansy,” I said.

Owens did so. Garrison did the same with Moreland. And it was off to San Francisco.

Notes

Some background music:

Psalm of Vampires does not adhere closely to vampire canon. I did what I wanted to.

Thanks for reading!

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A paperback or hardback version of the novel is also available.

It’s impossible to capture everything, but here are some of the things that got my attention this week in the midst of the horror show that is the United States these days.

Pam Bondi sent to Florida

You just knew the women would be first to go, right? Following in the legendary footsteps of DHS head Kristi Noem and her fetishy husband is Pam Bondi, who did such a poor job redacting documents that school children the world over now know that a little girl tried to bite off the Predator in Chief’s elusive manhood.

“What did you learn in school today, hun?”

“That we’ll need years of psychotherapy after reading our history lessons. Duh! Can I have some ice cream?”

This proved to be too much for the orange malevolence, so he fired Bondi for letting the truth out by mistake.

When he told everyone on Wednesday that Bondi was doing a great job, you can be pretty sure she started packing her bags for Florida that night. Sure enough, she was gone on Thursday. Poof!

Who knows what kind of fresh hell she’ll conjure in Florida, but hopefully she’ll take a few weeks off before infesting the local political scene there. Personally, I’d like to see how that dyed hair looks after a swim in Florida’s red algae swamps along the coast.

Meanwhile, the Epstein survivors continue to wonder when they will ever see justice. How many are there? Thousands? Where are their voices?

I won’t rehash all the awful things she’s done, so I’ll just finish this Bondi update (BondiDate?) with a bulleted list of her accomplishments:

So, who is Lee Zeldin, her likely replacement?

He’s now running what is left of the EPA after dismantling most of it. As a congress critter, he voted against certifying Biden’s election victory. He suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome more than most, which is scary given all we now know about the world’s most famous sexual predator and how crazy his remaining protectors are.

Needless to say, the DOJ is still in the hands of the enemy. Until Zeldin’s inevitable confirmation by the government branch we used to call Congress but now is just another part of the Epstein sex trafficking ring, the DOJ is being run by the grifter in chief’s personal attorney, Todd Blanche.

If you don’t know who Blanche is, he’s featured prominently in this article I wrote for the Medium platform this week (free link, no paywall or sign-up required):

Ruminato GIFT LINK 🎁 The People vs. Donald J. Trump 🎁

As Tiny Tim might say, “God bless help us all.”

Or did he say, “Tip-toe through the tulips?” I’m going crazy here and can’t keep anything straight anymore. How are you doing?

Laura Loomer nails an Army general

No, she didn’t nail him that way. Y’all are so naughty. No, instead, she and KegsBreath plotted to remove one of the nation’s most highly respected generals, a guy named Randy George, the Army’s Chief of Staff. So they did.

If you’re wondering if I’m just crazy when I say that Laura Loomer really has influence over who runs the Armed Forces, I respectfully submit you haven’t been following the events of the Iran War very closely. This is not a bad thing. You’ve got things to do.

But word in D.C. is that she’s as close to an unpaid advisor to the White House and KegsBreath as you can be (although you can be sure she’s taking plenty of money under the various Trump family grifter tables).

The New York Times is reporting that Keggsy dumped the respected general after a kerfuffle over KegsBreath’s removal of four qualified personnel from a promotions list that would have turned them into generals.

Two were Black, and two were women.1 So, empowered by some new liquids that make his nazi tattoos glow in the dark, KegsBreath did something that no other Defense secretary has done before, and overruled Army protocol (and generals) by striking their names from the promotions list.

General George asked for a little chit chat over the matter because they were, in his expert opinion, highly qualified and deserving of their promotions. KegsBreath belched out, “No way, Jose” in his best DTF St. Louis imitation, then made a beeline for the bar.

Laura Loomer said, “Fire his ass,” and boom, out General George went.

General George was also pushing for a more thorough build-out of drones and other mobile weaponry, but the heavy-drinking Hegseth likes big guns that blow things up, like a lot of children do. The new $1.5 trillion defense budget the regime is asking for reflects this.

Much of the mad respect George has in the Army is said to be related to a high level of competence and a successful recruiting effort that helped rebuild the Army’s ranks.

No doubt his replacement will be a Christo-nationalist, bomb loving lunatic, as former Fox News host Hegseth continues to transform the Army into a Bible-thumping loony farm.

Trump’s embarrassment in Iran is also our embarrassment

78 million people voted for this clown. 78 million.

We own it, whether we like it or not.

Here are a few of this week’s Iran lowlights from the stooge in chief.

Iranian’s state media is claiming that they’ve captured U.S. fighter pilots

The Tasnim News Agency, which is the official government press agency, is making the claim. No jokes here. We can only hope at this point that it’s not true.

[UPDATE] The New York Times is reporting that one pilot has been rescued. You can track the situation here (no paywall):

🎁 Ruminato GIFT Link Iran War Live Updates 🎁

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The Butcher of Saudi Arabia becomes an ass kisser

has an interesting report about the mad clown’s bizarre love affair with the Butcher of Saudi Arabia, sheikh in chief Mohammed bin Salman (known affectionately by the oil-loving mainstream media as MBS):2

On March 27, 2026, Donald Trump stood at a podium in Miami — at a conference bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, in front of 1,500 of the kingdom’s investors and partners — and announced to the room that Mohammed bin Salman was “kissing my ass.”

In a room full of MBS’s allies and friends, the maniac called him an ass kisser.

In case you’ve forgotten, MBS is the Saudi prince (and now supreme leader) who, in 2018, got away with butchering a Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkiye, and chopping him up into little bitty pieces with a bone saw.3 Then he saw to it that his body bits were deposited into trash bags covered with big letters saying, “Not for human consumption” in case RFK Jr., Kristi Noem, or one of their ilk happened to be lurking nearby.

Anyhoo, like it or not, the U.S. has had a nifty security deal with the Saudis since the FDR days. They sell us oil at whatever price they can gouge us with, and we protect them for the right to do so.

But TrumpleSleazeSkin must be a climate change activist in disguise, because he shot that 80-year agreement to pieces with three words. MBS quickly pivoted to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who excitedly agreed to help protect Saudi skies from Iranian drones.

Zelenskyy, of course, needs all the friends he can get, so I don’t blame him. He finagled a multi-million dollar protection deal out of MBS, in MBS’s first move to end the “special relationship” with the United States.

Want to insure a Strait of Hormuz oil tanker?

My readers are the smartest readers on Substack (according to my sources), so of course you don’t.

Fancy insurance company Lloyds of London isn’t eager to, either, even though they love to make high-priced insurance gambles. These guys would probably insure Tiger Woods’ Ferrari collection. They’d insure Kristi Noem’s next dog or JD Vance’s twelve-million-dollar silk-upholstered couch. You get the idea.

Welp, they’ve jacked up the price for insuring an oil tanker that wants to squeeze through the 25-mile-wide strait that 20% of the world’s oil ships through when blusterfuck presidents are bombing the snot out of randomly targeted dots on the Middle East map.

Before the war, an insurance contract cost 0.25% of an oil tanker’s value. Now, it’s up to six percent of a ship’s value. To put this in real dollars, a tanker that was costing $250,000 to insure now costs $10 million.4

Guess who pays? Hey, what’s in your wallet?

Additional indicators point to higher fuel prices soon, including a simple one: The number of oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, a number that is critically low.

Nakul Sarda, Founder & Partner of ProfitGate Capital Services LLP, has built a Hormuz tracker for his clients so they can see how bad things are in real time:

https://hormuzdash-hlu8cshd.manus.space/

It’s all bad.

Before the war, for example, more than 100 ships were chugging through the strait every day. Now it’s between six and twelve.

All because the madman had an itch to scratch. Or, more likely, insider trades to make.

The price of gas is going to seriously outmatch the egg price debacle that took down Biden, who was accused of having more dementia through a childhood stammer than the man who told us to inject Lysol into our arms to fight Covid and said Haitians were eating our pets.

Here’s the thing. The egg price spikes were caused by a natural, probably unavoidable chicken plague that required a mass culling.

The oil and gas spikes are manufactured crises that 30% of the U.S. is still cheering on with a positive approval rating for the man who creates a new crisis every morning.

Lots of drama queens in America, eh?

Mike Johnson puts up the “Congress is NOT in" sign again.

Speaking of drama queens, the New York Times reported that it took Mike Johnson two minutes to decide to do nothing:5 I know. Nothing new here:

The Senate on Thursday sent a bipartisan funding deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security back to the House, which convened for a two-minute session and took no action to pass it.

Johnson had previously agreed to send a new bill that funded the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for everything, including TSA, except for ICE and other immigration enforcement goons.

But the usual crowd of anti-immigrant Christo-fascists that Johnson is beholden to, when he’s not cleaning the bottom of the mad clown’s Florsheims with his tongue, threw a hissy fit, so he chickened out and sent everyone home for two weeks.

Mike says: “Enjoy your Easter travels, suckers!”

You can be sure that Republicans will spend their Holy Week doing Republican family values stuff, such as dressing up like inflatable dolls and skanking around on weird fetish websites like Kristi Noem’s hubby.6

Not that I’m judging! Every man should be able to dress up like an inflatable doll if they want to. Doing it while wagging the Jesus finger at everyone else, though, exposes you (no pun intended) to mockery.

Captain StinkyPants asks for $1.5 trillion in defense spending

The New York Times is reporting that this is a forty percent increase. That doesn’t seem right, but it’s still a cray-cray amount.

Fun fact: You can buy 33 million Teslas for $1.5 trillion. That’s close to enough for everyone who wants one.

The Trump regime will instead use it to buy more destructive toys and replenish its bomb and missile supply in the wake of its absurd war of choice against Iran.7

Most of that $1.5 trillion will be put on the government credit card, which, combined with the Big Barf Bill of 2024 that ripped away government spending from Americans needing medical care and other life-affirming help, will add trillions to the deficit.

He’s also asking for still MORE money for border and immigration enforcement.

To offset some of that, the regime has helpfully suggested that more domestic spending be axed. The regime has targeted even more climate, housing, and education programs for additional ruin.

I’ve asked before. I’ll ask it again: Is President Krasnov trying to destroy the United States?

The little tech bro tractor that couldn’t

It’s bad enough that War Daddy TrumpIckStein is blocking fertilizer sales to farmers through his aerial bombardment of Iranian schools and young female volleyball teams.8

Now, a tech bro tractor company has stalled out because it burned through $240 million in startup funds in less than three years.9

Whew wee. I’m in the wrong business. Turns out, so are American farmers.

The tech bro tractor company, called Monarch, is calling it quits after generating a lot of tech bro buzz for a self-driving tractor with supposedly mad AI skills.

SFGATE has the story:

Monarch Tractor raised over $240 million for its self-driving, electric tractors guided by artificial intelligence that debuted in 2023. That year, Time called the vehicle one of the year’s greatest inventions, and Forbes predicted that the company would become the world’s next billion-dollar startup. The company was later valued at $518 million. Now, the company has abandoned its Livermore headquarters after laying off its entire staff last year and warning it may “shut down.”

The idea was to hit a button on your phone and send the driverless tractor off to do its thing. Instead, as one customer described it, “It totally failed.”

The duped customer tried to use it for three years, so it’s not like he played around with it a few times and threw up his hands the first time he ran into a glitch. Nope, our intrepid wine farmer said that the machine couldn’t do anything at all and that it tore up his grapevines when he tried to run it, even when he drove the thing.

“I wouldn’t let anyone else around it.”

You can be sure that the tech bros behind the project found a way to pocket a sizable sum before they fired everyone and shuttered the company. Like I said. I’m in the wrong business.

Iranian crypto bros are cryptoless

One of the biggest challenges the Islamic government in Iran has faced throughout its 47 years of existence has been how to cope with U.S. sanctions that have pretty much cut the nation off from the international banking system.

So when cryptocurrency began to find its way into the virtual wallets of millions of people, Iran began using it in earnest, too. It’s a tough way to run things when your government relies on the whims of a lot of dark money with no backing other than the word of questionable underworld figures, but that’s life when your government is also run like one big terrorist cell.

But the crypto bros who have emerged in Iran to try to hustle for crypto cash found themselves in a bit of a crypto pickle when the Iranian government shut down the internet to punish its citizens for protesting insane inflation. Iranians had to deal with a currency, the Iranian Rial, which had fallen to 1.3 million Iranian rial for every dollar.10

Many Iranians consider that kind of exchange rate rather worthless. Of course, it might help if the face on their currency didn’t look like he wanted to smack you in the head with a massive bamboo cane.

Imagine going to the grocery store and the clerk asking, “Can you use Telegram to pay me in crypto?” It would be like going on an online catfish date. But now the people who live there can’t even do that.

Because of the war, the mullahs have kept the internet switch in the off position, making it almost impossible to do any kind of business.

I wouldn’t put it past the Trumpanzees to trash the U.S. economy to that extent. All they really need is time.

Cool family watches Artemis II

This is probably the only time you’ll see me post something from Apartheid Twitter, but it’s must-see TV from the coolest family in Florida. I snagged the video for you so you don’t have to give Apartheid Elon clicks. Watch this video past the part where they dash away from the TV set when they realize the rocket will be visible from their yard:11

Don’t you just love it when people look happy? And how about the added musical score? These people deserve an Oscar for best short film.

I might be unsure about the necessity of another moonshot, but happy is happy, so I’ll take it during these dark times.

If we find out the video was made by AI (the airplane is a hint), well, I still kind of like it.

Who wants to wash some feet?

One of the consistent truths about most migrants from south of the border is that they’re usually religious. This is because of the massive Roman Catholic influence in Mexico and Central and South America.

Many people have asked, “Why on earth did so many Latinos vote for Donald 666?” The main reason is that the twisted minds of many religious leaders led them there.

But not the faith leaders in Chicago who washed the feet of 14 prisoners of war in the Chicago area’s Broadview ICE facility on Thursday.

The Chicago Tribune reports:12

Amid an ongoing court battle over clergy access to the west suburban ICE facility, Catholic ministers entered the building and, in the traditional Holy Thursday ritual, washed the feet of 14 detainees. The access comes after a federal judge earlier this week allowed clergy members from the Chicago area to minister to migrants in the facility during Holy Week and Easter.

“This was a moment of light in a time of so much darkness,” the Rev. David Inczauskis, a priest with the Society of Jesus at Loyola University Chicago and one of the four ministers who provided pastoral care to detainees on Thursday, said to reporters after entering the facility.

For those not in the know, this tradition stems from an episode when Jesus washed the feet of his startled disciples, including Trump Judas Iscariot, the dude who reported Jesus to the authorities for some coin. Mary of Bethany also washed Jesus’s feet with her tears, according to Biblical legend.

My friend did a nice story on the (painfully) slow transition of the Catholic church towards immigration after years of its political focus being almost exclusively on abortion. Read it here.

In Chicago and many other sanctuary cities, this activism has been very strong. These folks are proving it with the kind of love that is unknown to the people who are ruining the country in Jesus’s name.

Jasmine Crockett discovers her long-lost ancestor: Davy Crockett

Sometimes, we learn things about our family lineage from the strangest places. Yesterday, Jasmine Crockett, one of our liveliest Congress Critters and generally a thorn in the side of Herr TrumpEpshTeen, discovered she’s related to Davy Crockett through a True Sociopath post from America’s most hated criminal. Yes, he really did write this:13

“Davy Crockett, obviously a distant relative of Jasmine Crockett, and a very High IQ Frontiersman, would be proud of the legacy that he began long ago, and especially Jasmine’s Great Success as a Politician from the Great State of Texas! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

For those of you building a 25th Amendment case, file that one away.

Jasmine was amused, but went easy on the poor guy. When they are in their final stages of dementia, sometimes kindness is the way to go. This helps them transition to the other side, which, in his case, is probably an eternal walk amongst the lava flows of Hades.

Report your stolen Kit Kat Bar

Was your Kit Kat bar stolen in the recent European Kit Kat heist of the century?

If so, Nestlé, which produces the product in Europe, has created a website where you can track your candy bar to see if it was part of the heist:

https://nestletest.qualifioapp.com/quiz/1776232_2455/CDCG-KITKAT-STOLEN-FORM.html

As you can imagine, I have a theory. My guess, based on reports from Ruminato’s crack team of journalists on the Italian crime beat, is that the thieves who broke into the Magnani-Rocca museum outside Parma, Italy and stole Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse paintings in what has to be a record three minutes, also snagged twelve tons of Kit Kat bars on their way home.14

It all tracks.

Word is, the thieves stole the Kit Kat bars from a truck as it left an Italian distribution center.

Interestingly, the Hershey Company, not Nestlé, is licensed to manufacture Kit Kat in the United States. How does this impact any of this?

Nobody knows.

Let’s finish with a song…

Notes

Apologies for typos or grammatical snafus. This is a long one, and my editor is a figment of my active imagination. Besides, he’s an unreliable vampire.

Thanks for reading!

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Footnotes

2

Dean Blundell

BREAKING: TRUMP JUST LOST SAUDI ARABIA

Donald Trump has no friends…

Read more

a month ago · 769 likes · 48 comments · Dean Blundell

With a drooling, near-dead president looking on, Solicitor General D. John Sauer today tried to extinguish the citizenship of millions of Americans in a poser’s minefield of bizarre arguments to the Supreme Court.

The case in front of the Supreme Court centered around one of Trump’s hairbrained executive orders, Executive Order 14160, which tried to alter the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states:1

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Trump, or more likely one of his Project 2025 legal writers from the Heritage Foundation, tried to redefine what the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means.

Rather than the meaning accepted since the Amendment was ratified in 1868, that it simply refers to people who live in the U.S. and are subject to its laws (as opposed to, for example, embassy personnel, who are not), the regime tried some pretzel logic:

But the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

Like they usually do when they want to do something either inane or just mean, they made stuff up and wrote this into the Executive Order:

Among the categories of individuals born in the United States and not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States:

(1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or

(2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary (such as, but not limited to, visiting the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program or visiting on a student, work, or tourist visa) and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.

This pile of made-up nonsense was important enough to the barely mobile Trump that he managed to show up in person at the Supreme Court to listen to his man make up more stuff. This was the first time in history an American president showed up to a Supreme Court hearing to cheer his lawyers on.

Although, to be fair, reporters at the scene noted that he spent most of his time with one hand clasped over the other, damaged hand, listening in silence.

Sauer complained to the justices that current interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment “demeans the priceless and profound gift of American citizenship.”

Worse, Oh my God! It “operates as a powerful pull factor for illegal immigration.”

Worse, Oh my God! It “has spawned a sprawling industry of birth tourism, as uncounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations have flocked to give birth in the United States.”

Birth tourism! That justices didn’t all break out into simultaneous laughter is a tribute to just how staid one must become to sit in those seats.

Chief Justice John Roberts, on his way to the kill shot without yet realizing it, asked Sauer if birth tourism is a real problem. Sauer pointed to an estimate, probably made up by Stephen Miller, that China has left one and a half million birth tourist babies in its wake, somehow. Hey, at least they weren’t aborted.

The Roberts kill shot was waiting for Sauer when Sauer next said, “We’re in a new world now where eight billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.” 2 Yikes! I’m not ready for eight billion neighbors, either. I barely get along with the one I know.

Roberts went in for the kill: “Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”

Boom! Case closed.

TrumpleSleazeSkin left in a huff shortly after that to prepare for his big prime time speech about Iran and get himself injected with whatever chemicals his team of taxidermists uses to keep him upright.

TrumpleSleazeSkin’s Big Prime Time Speech

In a clear crime against humanity, President Trump Krasnov demanded, and received, network airtime tonight in a bizarre bid to get people to listen to him talk. A few did, but he didn’t say anything new.

He said the Strait of Hormuz, where 20 percent of the world’s oil supply passes when idiot presidents aren’t bombing Iran, would “open naturally,” like it’s a mouth to feed.

Iran, for its part, said before the speech that it held no enmity towards the American people. Whether that’s true or not, that’s the impression their Lego movies are presenting, too. It’s clear they think the enemy is Trump.

On that, my misogynist, authoritarian friends who slaughter protesters for sport, we are in agreement.

NASA’s Artemis II Mission Heads to the Moon

Whatever alien race sent Trump to us must be alarmed at the news that we silly humans seem to be venturing out again. Today, NASA’s Artemis II rocket lifted off with three Americans and one brave Canadian (!). Elbows 🇨🇦 Up!

Wait. Aren’t we at war with Canada? As Tucker Carlson (SNL version) would say, “What’s going on here?”

The mission should be considered a failure in advance since Trump is not on the craft as payload to be dumped off on the far side of the moon on the mission’s return trip.

From NASA:

Let’s close with some music:

Footnotes

2

Liptak, Adam, Ann E Marimow, Miriam Jordan, Zach Montague, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Amy Qin, Aishvarya Kavi, et al. “Supreme Court Updates: Key Justices Appear Skeptical of Limiting Birthright Citizenship.” Nytimes.com. The New York Times, April 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/01/us/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship

‌

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What grew out of that assassination by a fundamentalist is an Israeli government that uses a combination of genocide and apartheid as formal government policy. Its most recent display of fundamentalist violence is tens of thousands of dead civilians in Gaza, and an American/Israeli axis that has promised to clear out the survivors to make way for beachfront resorts.

In 2016, American Christian fundamentalists played the primary role in electing Donald Trump and creating a bloody gash in American society that continues to fester. During the 2016 election, fundamentalist priests extolled the virtues of Trump at their pulpits. Even today, many of them say that his depravity is all part of the plan, part of the Rapture that will bring Christ back to Earth.

What grew out of that was no rapture. What emerged was a rupture in American society, a soft civil war that has divided Americans into two camps. Christian fundamentalism has led to an absurdly incompetent American government that has started a reckless war in Iran with no plan. American armed forces officers were even caught elevating U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Christo-fascist messaging to their enlisted officers and troops.

The U.S. regime has also attempted to formally institutionalize racism, destroy efforts to address climate change, and threaten democracy. Racism has been normalized. Angry young men with guns routinely slaughter the objects of their wrath in public spaces. I could devote ten more minutes of reading time to continue listing symptoms of the disease that has gripped America, but the world already knows them well.

In 1979, a revolution in Iran led by radical Shi’ite Muslims overthrew the Iranian monarchy of Reza Pahlavi. The revolution was led mostly by non-Iranians who took advantage of discontent over the Pahlavi monarchy, which was essentially installed by the American and British spy agencies, the CIA and MI6, when they overthrew Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh had the temerity to nationalize the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which sealed his fate.

Misogynistic religious fundamentalists seized the country and have established a vicious theocratic dictatorship that has become a model for others, such as Afghanistan’s Taliban government.

What grew out of the takeover was a brutal, authoritarian, theocratic dictatorship that uses government policy to trample on women’s rights and individual freedom, especially among women. In the months leading up to the Trump regime’s Iran War, the fundamentalist regime killed tens of thousands of its own people in a cruel response to protests. Some estimates of the death toll run as high as 100,000 or more. It’s impossible to establish a correct number because the government has had nearly a half-century to master the art of repression.

Islamic fundamentalism also convinces children exposed to terrorist cells to cover themselves in explosives and kill people, and themselves, in the name of Allah.

Misogyny is a common thread in fundamentalism across all three Abrahamic religions. The squashing of women’s rights and access to education is a sacred tenet to them.

So is violence.

Just this Friday, March 27, the Jewish Defense League, a fundamentalist terror organization, targeted Palestinian American activist Nerdeen Kiswani. Luckily, the attack was thwarted by law enforcement.

Much of the worst violence in Africa is caused by fundamentalist Christians and Muslims seeking hegemony for their religion.

The stories are endless. Religious leaders know them all, but don’t seem willing to address the elephant in their rooms.

Fundamentalism doesn’t ask us to choose a religion. It tells us to choose sides. It tells its adherents to follow dogmatic philosophies that leave no room for open debate. Open debate itself is discouraged, often ruthlessly.

Those of us who quietly practice our religion are tired of the violence, hatred, and patriarchy that form the basis of fundamentalism.

It is time for religious leaders of, at the very least, the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, to put an end to the scourge of fundamentalism. While they’re at it, perhaps each segment and denomination can review its own doctrines to better understand what they’re doing to contribute to the growth of fundamentalism.

It’s time for difficult conversations and debate among the leaders of these religions. Symposiums, workshops, and high-level meetings should all eventually be part of it. Think Davos aimed exclusively against fundamentalism.

The first step in doing so is to establish a yearly summit, similar to climate change summits, but without corporate poison. My first thought would be to focus on the three Abrahamic religions because they seem to be causing the most destruction. But all religions that want to share the conversations should be welcome.

Ideas like this are easy to dismiss. Nobody will be interested, nobody will show up. Organized religion itself is the root of evil. This, however, dismisses the daily spiritual practice of billions of people who quietly worship without throwing things or shooting people.

It only takes three. Three leaders, one from each religion, are enough to begin the summit process. It will grow from there. Before you know it, it will be full of hundreds of clerics each year.

Interfaith summits already exist. What I’m suggesting here is a yearly summit focused exclusively on eradicating fundamentalism. That is its only agenda. And make it loud, so that the world’s press promotes it every year.

Religious leaders love to remind their constituents that we all must be accountable for our actions.

So step up, followers of Abraham. Be accountable for yours.

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Update

Pope Leo, in his Palm Sunday address:

“Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” the pope said. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

Notes

1. I don’t quite have the audience of Meidas or Heather Cox Richardson, so this is probably a waste of valuable cyberbits, but I needed to put it out there for my own sanity, because this has been on my mind for a long time. Restacking it might help it fall on the right pair of eyes, so please restack it if you like the idea. Miracles are sometimes human creations.

2. I’m not dismissing fundamentalism in religions outside of the Abrahamic domain. But this is the part I know most about. Much of the world’s other religious and sectarian violence, such as what routinely takes place on the Indian subcontinent, is triggered by fundamentalists, too.

3. A summit like this doesn’t need to become political. It just needs to begin with the premise that religious extremism, in other words, fundamentalism, is a worldwide plague. How to specifically define fundamentalism will be one of the first, most interesting tasks, but for me, it’s easily identified as a misinterpretation of scripture that promotes violence, misogyny, and hatred of any kind, for any reason.

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Whoever, being an officer of the Army or Navy, or other person in the civil, military, or naval service of the United States, orders, brings, keeps, or has under his authority or control any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held, unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both; and be disqualified from holding any office of honor, profit, or trust under the United States.

This section shall not prevent any officer or member of the armed forces of the United States from exercising the right of suffrage in any election district to which he may belong, if otherwise qualified according to the laws of the State in which he offers to vote.

Welcome to 18 U.S. Code § 592 - Troops at polls.1

On Thursday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the grifter in chief’s personal attorney who currently represents him in the Department Formerly Known as Justice, loosened his belt in front of fellow child predator protectors at the Conservative Political Action Conference and wistfully asked, presumably whilst unzipping his pants, “Why is there an objection to sending ICE to polling stations?”

The answer, of course, appears at the top of this page.

He knows it. We all know it. He’s bluffing, but many Americans who will be inclined to vote against Trump will not know it, and that’s the point.

The Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, for those of you blissfully not aware, has been one of the most mendacious yearly gatherings known to humanity for years.2

By the time Blanche was done speaking, he was probably presenting the full monty to his captive but eagerly receptive audience. After all, this is a group of Americans who are activists in the name of protecting a billion dollar child trafficking empire. Imagine that for a moment. Imagine being an activist for such a thing.

Imagine knowing that is the main agenda of the confab you’re attending as you walk into the hotel and begin your “business trip.”

“Dad, can you tell me more about the business trip you’re missing my soccer game for?”

“Well, sweet cakes, I am on the front lines in the battle for the rights of Americans to have sex with your friends. It’s an important strategy session.”

“Does mom know?”

“Of course, honey bunch. She’s a Republican Trad Wife.”

Yes, I digress, but it’s important that we always talk about those who continue to enable the predator in chief from the perspective that matters most, out of many awful ones. We can’t allow anything they do to help them escape this scrutiny.

I sometimes wonder if their initial blitzkrieg, when Musk arrived at the Oval Office with a chainsaw and a weird kid on top of his shoulders who dropped F bombs and said the orange sack of slime isn’t the real president, wasn’t part of a plan to deflect from the Epstein files from the beginning.

They hit us from all sides. Every day. Usually several times a day. They still do, of course, but the initial onslaught was truly shock and awful.

Much of what they do revolves around bullying and intimidation.

And that’s what this is. Blanche knows all about 18 U.S. Code § 592. He’s been involved in more federal lawsuits than Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has bar fights (a lot, methinks).

Unlike many U.S. statutes, this one doesn’t lack clarity. It requires no interpretation or reading between the lines. It says, quite clearly, that no armed federal personnel are allowed at polling places. Not even the John Roberts Supreme Court can look at the sentence fragment that states, “unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States” and conclude that such a condition exists.

So if you’re part of the resistance, part of the great hope of America trying to end this regime, please, for the sake of protecting your kids, for the sake of everything you care about, do not spread the bullying propaganda Blanche wants you to repeat.

Do the opposite instead. Help your neighbor register if they’re disabled, infirm, or otherwise facing difficulty having their voice heard. Do whatever you can to help get out the vote. Even if you think Democrats are crooks or corporate panderers, too. We’ll deal with that later.

Be loud tomorrow at your local No Kings demonstration.

Maybe even draw up a sign that loudly states that you will vote.

I’m not sure we can wait until the midterms to end this regime, but I know, also, that time flies. Before we know it, the midterms will be upon us.

Be ready. Don’t let these nutwings push you around. Believe it or not, there’s a small chance to pull off a 2/3 majority in the House of Representatives.

The only requirement to make that happen is getting enough people to VOTE.

And that’s what they’re afraid of.

Thanks for reading!

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Notes

h/t and special thanks to Cinda Williams Chima on Jay Kuo’s Subtack comment area for pointing me to this statute.

If you check out the top photo, you’ll see “TRUMP” emblazoned on the ICE goon’s uniform. This is in recognition of the simple fact that if the Grifter in Chief can add his pubey signature to American currency, he should add his name to ICE uniforms too. It only makes sense.

Footnotes

“If we’re shooting down a $50,000 one‑way drone with a $3 million missile, that’s not a good cost equation,”

— Bill LaPlante, Pentagon chief weapons buyer, May 2024

The Strait of Hormuz is about 25 miles wide at its narrowest point. As I mentioned in a prior post, one of the most absurd fundamentals of the mad clown’s war against 90 million Iranians is that nothing I say about the strategic arguments against a major war is news.

As you can see by the quote at the top of this post by Pentagon arms buyer Bill LaPlante, who testified about the challenges faced by modern armed forces against nations equipped with jillions of cheap drones, we’ve known since the Ukraine War (at least) that lumbering sea tanks, also known as U.S. naval vessels, are rendered nearly useless by drones in a 25-mile-wide strait.

Huge naval vessels in a narrow strait are not much more than targets.

I call them sea tanks because tank warfare was made obsolete by the Ukraine War when Ukraine knocked out Russian tanks with cheap suicide drones and ended any hopes Putin had of a quick blitzkrieg.

It’s been more than four years since Putin launched his attack on Ukraine, thinking he’d take the capital, Kyiv, within a few weeks.1 Instead, his massive tank assault got bogged down by $50,000 drones2 and light arms fire from angry Ukrainians firing portable anti-tank grenades from their shoulders.

Russian tanks were defenseless against cheap drones because tanks move so slowly that they may as well be stationary when a drone pilot, who guides the drone from miles away, is viewing it from the drone’s camera.

One of the poorest countries on Planet Earth, Yemen, is home to a band of impoverished and perpetually angry desert insurgents called the Houthis. Even they can afford $50,000 drones. They buy a lot of them. Then they fire them at ships trying to traverse the waters along the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, the same place oil masterminds want to build a $100 billion oil canal.

Reuters describes the U.S. response to the Houthis’ low budget attacks:3

Since late 2023, the U.S. Navy has expended around $1 billion or more in munitions defending ships in the Red Sea from low‑cost Houthi drones and missiles, according to U.S. officials and defense analysts.

The missile price is only part of the cost. Each interception also depends on the presence of warships and their escorts, fuel and maintenance, trained crews, intelligence and surveillance assets, and command‑and‑control networks needed to detect and defeat incoming threats.

The Arleigh Burke class destroyer, USS Preble, could conceivably deal with drones cheaply with its onboard laser weapons system, but it’s in Japan right now.4

The Preble is currently the only U.S. Naval vessel equipped with a laser system, called HELIOS, which is a high-energy laser weapon platform designed to combat drones and the types of swarming speed boats that military analysts expect Iran to eventually deploy in larger numbers than they have so far.5 But it’s still not truly been battle-tested. The potential exists for its deployment to result in a sunken destroyer, which is probably why it’s hanging out just outside Yokosuka, Japan.

Ever since Operation Epstein Fury began, the mad clown has been yammering about escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz in response to Iran’s declaration that the strait is closed for business.

It’s very possible he doesn’t know better, but his admirals and generals do. They’ve proven this by staying away from the coast of Yemen since the Houthis started lobbing drones at ships several years ago, choosing instead to hit the Houthis with long range missiles. If they have any sense, they’ll continue to steer clear of the Strait of Hormuz, too.

What are the alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz?

The alternatives to container ships trying to haul vats of oil from the Middle East to Europe and the United States are costly:

• Send container ships around the Cape of Good Hope, in other words, around the bottom tip of South Africa. Very costly and time intensive.

• Use an existing pipeline like the Saudi East-West crude oil pipeline, which will reach its 5 million barrels per day capacity moments after the first oil transit begins.6

• Build a massive new canal. Lindsey Graham, whose mind is smaller than that little white mark you sometimes see on your fingernail, proposed using nukes to create one. Such a good timeline this is, no? More serious proposals do exist, but the estimated costs run to about $100 billion for a canal through Oman, which is on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula. And, as I mentioned, that is within range of Houthis, who like to blow things up.

I have an idea, oil drug pushers. Give me just one of those billion dollars. That way, I can purchase two million laptops7 and never have to worry about one breaking down again.

Alternatively, I could purchase 20,000 Iranian Shahed 136 drones.

So can Iran, of course. You can be certain that they have.

None of this information is new. It has been at the fingertips of every war planner in the U.S., including, and especially, Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, for a long time. Yet they forged ahead with their wild, unplanned plans.

Some reports in the mainstream media have tried to claim that Caine warned the mad clown about the folly of a war with Iran. If he did, he sure has gone gung-ho on it since.

This is a man who loves his military toys. He’s sending massive naval vessels, including the mini-aircraft carrier USS Boxer, into the war zone to expose young American armed services personnel to extreme danger for only one reason I can think of: To help prop up an aging pedophile wannabe dictator whose popularity is dropping faster than Pee Wee Herman’s did after he got caught with his pants down in an adult movie theater. What a patriot.

He’s also sending 2,000 paratroopers from the elite 82nd Airborne. This is in addition to (we think) about 4,500 marines who are already on their way.

Caine will belong in the same court dockets as Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, Dan Bovino, and others like them when this is all over, and the 2027 Trump Crime Commission is convened by a new, Democratic Congress.

What’s next?

Military bloggers are climbing over each other’s massive computer monitors trying to forecast where the troops are going.

There are several guesses floating around:

• Tehran, to take out the leaders. This ties in with unverified reports that mobile strike teams like Navy Seals and Army Rangers have access to a new sonic weapon that renders opponents helpless and does nasty things like make them bleed from their eyeballs. Those rumors flew after the Venezuelan presidential kidnapping. If a similar operation succeeds in Tehran, what seems crazy now may end up being true, because it is the only way American troops will be able to engage the Iranian military in Tehran and win.

• Kharg Island, to take the oil depots there. That seems pointless to me, since Iran could simply blow them up before or after, and turn off the spigot that feeds them, but who knows? It’s Pete Hegseth’s war, too, and he drinks a lot.

• The Iranian naval and oil port of Bandar Abbas, where Israelis killed Iran’s Revolutionary Guards navy commander Alireza Tangsiri in a bombing run yesterday. Bandar Abbas also sits along the Iranian coast right at that narrowest width of the Strait of Hormuz I mentioned earlier.

• All three simultaneously (that would have been my choice when I was a teenager playing wargames with nerdy friends).8

None of these will swing Operation Epstein Fury in Trump and Hegseth’s favor. The best-case scenario is that Iran is on its heels for a few days as it scrambles to recover. Israel killed the leader of the Iranian Navy, but he’ll be replaced in a day or two. Iran can play the attrition game better than almost any nation on earth.

In a best case scenario, holding onto any of these positions will be incredibly difficult.

The worst-case scenario envisions massive U.S. losses as Iranians respond with a counterattack involving thousands of troops and swarms of small boats and drones. For our young enlisted personnel’s sake, we need to hope and pray against that. They don’t deserve to die for the lurid purpose of deflecting against Trump’s legal problems.

Hegseth, as stupid as he is, isn’t blind to the potential of a worst case scenario. Today, he raised the Army’s draft eligibility and maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42.

Thanks for reading!

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Footnotes

8

I was really good at playing Avalon Hill (now Noble Night) wargames when I was a teenager, so I know what I’m talking about!