The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

President Donald Trump on Sunday declared himself the winner of yet another golf tournament held at a facility he owns while also mocking the other participants.

“I won with a score of 70, and am so honored in that, unlike the rest of the field, I’m given very little time to practice, because I’m focused on many other things,” Trump boasted on his Truth Social website. “It’s called TALENT, and I have it, and they don’t!” 

Critics were quick to point out it might be more than “TALENT” at work. Trump has been dogged by allegations of cheating at golf for decades, with many of the accusations coming from those who’ve played with him. Those allegations include a viral video last year that showed what some observers said looked a lot like cheating.

Trump also has a history of winning at courses he owns, and rarely plays elsewhere. When he does, the results look more like they did at a 2006 celebrity tournament in Tahoe, where Trump finished in 62nd place out of 80 people.

Even the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a longtime ally and frequent golf partner before his death last month, seemed to admit when speaking under oath in a 2022 deposition that Trump cheats at golf.

“Some people say you may outdrive him, but you’re not going to outdrive his caddy,” Graham said. “It is what it is.”

That was likely a reference to a tactic others have accused Trump of using: he has a much faster golf cart than everyone else.

Sports writer Rick Reilly, who authored an entire book on how the president cheats, said Trump then moves his ball to better spots and kicks his opponents’ balls into the bunker.

“One time in L.A., he was playing $50 a hole with these three guys, he hits it in the pond. They see the splash,” Reilly said in 2024. “By the time they get there, it’s in the middle of the fairway, and they’re like, ‘What the F, Donald?’ And he goes, ‘It must’ve been the tide.’”

Reilly told The Associated Press in 2019 that there were “dozens and dozens of people” who could verify that Trump cheats...

Ha ha.  Good to know.... OF COURSE HE CHEATS! -- in golf, in politics, on his three wives, in business, in life.  It's always good to remind the over 70 million Americans who voted to return this rotted out piece of shit needy narcissistic sociopath to office in 2024 what they got.  Congratulations, they have a "winner"!  (Not that they care.)

The bad:

Experts sounded the alarm on Sunday after Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed a dubious new scheme to protect some of the people mentioned in the Epstein files.

In a court filing last week, Blanche submitted explanations to Judge Emmet Sullivan about the Department of Justice's process for redacting the Epstein files. That court filing included a new definition of what it means to be a victim in the case, according to Allison Gill, host of "The Breakdown," who discussed the filing with Katie Phang, the journalist who sued the DOJ over its redactions, on a new episode.

The new definition of "victim" in the Epstein case now includes people who "self-identified" as victims, which led Gill to worry that abusers who hung out with Epstein may self-identify and therefore be protected from disclosure.

Phang pointed out that the new definition also carries some stark implications.

"It does two things. One, it creates a very slippery slope in terms of how we are viewing who we are now defining as victims," Phang said. "It's never easy to identify a victim, especially in a trafficking situation. My concern is the expansive nature that Blanche is taking is that he's going to use that as an excuse to not investigate, as an excuse not to prosecute."

"We know that there are people who were brought into the Epstein orbit and were, according to them, groomed and abused by Epstein and Maxwell ... and were tasked to recruit ... almost as if it's a grotesque Ponzi scheme," she added.

Phang noted that her lawsuit is not seeking to "out" anyone who was abused by Epstein, which is explicitly prohibited by the Epstein Files Transparency Act that was signed into law last year.

Even so, Phang argued that Blanche could use the definition to put the case into a "weird position."

"If Todd Blanche allows people who were co-conspirators with Epstein, Maxwell, and others ... to be able to self-identify as victims, and in doing so, protects their names from possible ... pursuit of the truth, we have a problem. We have a serious problem," Phang added.  (our emphasis)

The scurrilous pedophile protector Blanche is now likely to be confirmed as Attorney General (the Republican Party/cult is in the pedophile protection racket, after all).  There is a lot of evidence as to why Blanche should be rejected, mostly showing that he's a lying, ethics-free weasel, and this should be added to that pile.  He's continuing to violate the Epstein Files Transparency Act, trying to get his "client," who's mentioned more than 38,000 times in the files, off scot-free.

The ugly:

Detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement set a monthly record high for the second Trump administration in July, internal agency data obtained by CBS News shows, as ICE widened its crackdown, making arrests at airports, immigration check-in offices and communities across the U.S.

Last month, ICE took into custody more than 46,000 individuals facing deportation because of alleged immigration violations, like entering the U.S. illegally or overstaying their visas, according to preliminary Department of Homeland Security figures. 

The statistics, which have not yet been publicly disclosed by the federal government, show that a summer enforcement surge by ICE continued to intensify in July, as the agency faced pressure from the White House to record 2,000 arrests across the country each day. An average of 1,500 detainees entered ICE custody each day last month, the data indicates, though some of them were first arrested by Customs and Border Protection agents.

The over 46,000 book-ins in July surpassed the roughly 43,000 detentions recorded by ICE in June, at the time the highest tally during President Trump's second term. As of this weekend, ICE was holding 68,000 detainees in its sprawling detention system, approaching a record high of over 70,000 detainees set in January, according to internal agency figures.

The numbers also show the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration has rebounded this summer, following a significant drop in arrests earlier this year after federal agents killed two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during an enforcement blitz in Minneapolis that garnered bipartisan criticism...

This has largely gone under the radar with the firehose of insane, destructive, anti-democratic, and un-American actions taken daily by the Maglignant Fascist and his regime.  But the cruel arrest and deportation policies being implemented by the likes of Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, and their masked thugs have been proceeding apace.