One Dark Damn Day
We’ve endured some very dark days in Trump II, but yesterday was particularly grim — and a possible taste of what’s to come between now and Election Day.
President Trump launched a race war against Somalians and Somali-Americans in Minnesota.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth exuberantly announced that the holiday season execution by firing squad of former Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan for the Ft. Hood shooting will be live-streamed.
In New York City, an ICE agent shot and wounded a Dominican national who was in his car with his 5-year-old child in the backseat.
In a televised debate in the Michigan Senate race, GOP nominee Mike Rogers used Islamophobic smears to baselessly associate Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed with terrorism — after which President Trump called El-Sayed a “Terrorist Sympathizer” in a social media post.
Somehow, the Michigan Senate debate was worse than the Georgia Senate debate, where GOP nominee Rep. Mike Collins has so many ties to neo-Nazis that it’s hard to keep count, prompting Sen. Jon Ossoff to scoff that Collins had “hired half the Third Reich” in his congressional office.
Against that backdrop, the Trump DOJ is actively seeking to vindictively prosecute former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for allegedly lying to Congress as the star witness in the Jan. 6 committee hearings.
While the chaos of Trump II is often erratic and unpredictable, yesterday’s events are all tied to the upcoming election one way or the other. Even the ICE shooting came only two days after ICE increased its daily quota back to 3,000 arrests a day ahead of the midterms. The collective desperation of Trump and the GOP to avert a disastrous electoral defeat is likely to produce some even darker days over the next three and half weeks.
Reaction of the Day
The Persecution of Cassidy Hutchinson
The vindictive prosecution of Cassidy Hutchinson is being improbably spearheaded by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. It would normally have absolutely no role in pursuing this kind of case, but the division is led by the ambitious Harmeet Dhillon, who is eager to audition for a promotion.
Dhillon’s team began presenting purported evidence against Hutchinson to a D.C. federal grand jury this week. While most of the reports cast it as investigation into whether Hutchison lied to Congress, the Washington Post, citing an unnamed source, suggests there maybe a twist: “[P]rosecutors have been exploring charging Hutchinson with a civil rights violation, potentially bringing a more unusual case than a simple charge of lying to Congress, one of the people familiar said.”
In Other Vindictive Prosecution News …
A federal judge has cleared the way for Kseniia Petrova to conduct discovery into whether she was the victim of vindictive prosecution by the Trump administration. Petrova is the Harvard researcher who was detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport in February 2025 and later charged with smuggling for bringing frog embryo samples into the country for her research.
New Info on Kurt Olsen’s Failed Polygraph
The exact circumstances of the failed polygraph of Trump DOJ official Kurt Olsen keep dribbling out. The latest, from the New York Times (emphasis mine):
It turned out he had failed a polygraph test about his contacts with foreigners, which imperiled his security clearance, according to two people familiar with the matter. Mr. Olsen said he complied with all requirements regarding foreign contacts and had not resigned over his clearance, but declined to say more.
Kimpossibly Dumb
With everything else going on, the Kimberly Guilfoyle scandal is almost a welcome relief — a Molière comedy of the Trump era.
The official responses to the Wall Street Journal blockbuster were quite unimpressive.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio spewed a lot of bluster in refusing to answer any questions about his ambassador to Greece — but he also offered no defense of Kimberly Guilfoyle:
Vice President JD Vance was similarly unenthusiastic about rushing to Guilfoyle’s defense:
Bad News for Kim: Loose Cannon Is Talking
If there’s one thing to know about the latest Guilfoyle scandal, it’s that her accuser doesn’t exactly fit the profile of the most reliable narrator. So the WSJ really had to bring the receipts, as it describes here.
Making matters worse for her is that her accuser seems to love the spotlight and spent the day talking to damn near any TV news outlet that would listen.
ABC:
CBS:
CNN:
MS NOW:
Late Night Fun
With so few Trump scandals truly breaking through into the broader cultural zeitgeist, Guilfoyle’s brazenness, shamelessness, and sloppiness have combined to potentially make her the rare exception.
Kimmel:
The Daily Show:
Have a Good Holiday Weekend
See you back here Tuesday.
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David, thank you. Buckle up, indeed.
I hope there will be coverage of her testimony at the hearings. Heck, I'd love to see the whole hearing again. Looking forward to more of this when Dems win