This week a lot of the focus has been on the latest release of the Epstein files:
- Christopher Titus has perhaps the best summary of the disgustingness.
- Seth Meyers has a “Closer Look” segment that covers this as well as a few other tidbits that this tried to push out of the news cycle.
- Even More News covers Elon Musk bragging about how he could be a much better pedophile than Epstein if he wanted to.
- Have I Got News For You explores some of the many names revealed in the files.
- Katie Phang wonders if the reason Paul Weiss was the first big law firm to cave to Trump was because their chairman was in the Epstein files. Seems plausible.
Over in other countries, politicians are being held accountable. Not so much here. Here, Trump says that the 3 million documents released so far totally exonerate him, despite his being mentioned thousands, if not tens of thousands, of times. And his minions wander around saying that he’s answered enough questions about Epstein, while all the answers he gives are just that people need to move on and journalists need to smile more. And I know that many are focussing on the rank misogyny in this comment, and that’s a fair thing to focus on, but I wish more people would ask what kind of psychopath smiles while asking questions about underage victims of rape and abuse?
And there are still 3 million more documents to come.
Other things you need to know this week:
- Stephen Colbert talks to “Melania Trump” about her new movie opening. Laura Benanti’s Melania impression is one of the most brilliant bits of personification I’ve ever seen, and this piece is one of her best. There are at least 3 times during this 7 minutes that I laughed out loud at disturbing volumes. Laura nails the insouciance, the apathy, and the casual disdain for Trump along with the whole rest of the world. Melania is often seen as a somehow sympathetic figure, as if she’s being held hostage or something. But, as Josh Johnson noted this week, she’s a grown-ass woman who both seems to hate Trump as much as we do and also is fully in it for the money just as much as he is ($28 million of the documentary’s $40m price tag went straight into her pocket). Two things can be true.
- Sir Ian McKellen was on Colbert this week, and he did an insanely amazing (and amazingly topical) speech from Shakespeare that somehow captures our current zeitgeist perfectly.
- Why do I keep on pointing you at Adam Kingzinger’s week in review even though he’s a conservative and I disagree with him at least once in every appearance he’s ever done? Because he’s smart and articulate, because knowing that even conservatives are not okay with the current regime helps keep us sane, and because it’s crucial to remember that, no matter how much they try to frame it so, this is not a debate of Democrats vs Republicans. This is Democrats and Republican
s— and independents, and libertarians, and progressive s— vs crazy MAGA rightwing nutjobs.
- I’m surprised we didn’t get more coverage about Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that MAGA was “all a lie.” I suppose that’s Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” strategy showing some successes. But Jane Coaston over on What a Day has you covered.
- The arrest of Don Lemon should also probably not be overlooked. Legal Eagle’s Devin Stone has a pretty great summary.
- Also over on Legal Eagle, chaos lawyer Liz Dye tells us how Project 2026 will be even worse, and then Cristian Farias recaps the story of the 5-year-old kidnapped by ICE.
- Best coverage of Trump’s über-racist tweet was probably from Pod Save America. Although they were much kinder to Tim Scott’s response than fellow Republican Adam Kinzinger was.
- Tired of hearing Trump blather on about the “8 wars” he’s stopped? Strict Scrutiny gets Tommy Vietor to break down the bullshit for you.
- There was a bit of coverage of the regime’s ridiculous “coal mascot”; wanna know why coal is never coming back? Hank Green has you covered in his aptly titled video “Coal Is Extremely Dumb”.
- In today’s “let’s be educated” segment, Pod Save the UK interviews economist Ann Pettifor, and this little old lady spits fire about how the US fixed the world economy in the FDR era and then fucked it all up again in the Nixon era. Well worth watching even if you’re only a casual student of economics.
If you didn’t listen to that Ian McKellen speech I linked above, first of all, what’s wrong with you? It’s a brilliant performance, even impromptu as it was. It’s a speech about “strangers,” which is Elizabethan-speak for foreigner
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an agèd man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.
Or, to sum up: violence breeds violence. What you give out will surely come back to you.
More continues the metaphor. What if you were evicted from your country, and you found yourself in a foreign land, now yourself the stranger, now yourself chased by an angry mob ...
That, breaking out in hideous violence,“Mountainish inhumanity” seems like a pretty good description of the Trump regime. And, you know, when Shakespeare himself is calling you out, using the voice of Gandalf, that might be a pretty convincing sign that you’re on the wrong side of history.
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity.
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