Donald Trump's obsession with sharks in Nevada- "Supdity cubed!"

Letter to the editor: We all live with electric submarines, published in the Brunswick Beacon in Shallotte, NC:

Speaking in land-locked Nevada, Donald Trump asked, ‘Would you rather be electrocuted or eaten by a 🦈shark?’

Trump hates sharks. Porn star Stormy Daniels, whose sexcapades with Trump brought him 34 felony convictions, said Trump “made me watch an entire documentary about shark attacks. He is obsessed with sharks…He was like, ‘I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks.’”

Trump unintentionally confirmed Stormy’s account: “I’m not a big fan of sharks. I have people calling me up, ‘Sir, we have a fund to save the shark.’ I say ‘no thank you.’”

Trump told Nevadans that environmentalists are forcing manufacturers to build electric boats. Trump hates them, too. “What would happen if the boat sank from its weight?”, Trump worries. “You’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there? What I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted, I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark!”

Horror novelist Stephen King compared it to “listening to your senile uncle at the dinner table after he has that third drink.”

Trump was once Commander-in-Chief of our military, including the Navy. If Trump’s dinghy hadn’t slipped its mooring, he’d remember that every WWII submarine ran on batteries.

If Trump’s reactor hadn’t melted down, he’d remember that nuclear subs make vast amounts of electricity to power themselves in emergencies.

If Trump’s periscope went all the way to the surface, he’d remember that, while he was president, the Navy awarded its largest shipbuilding contract ever, $22.2-billion for nine attack submarines, to the Electric Boat Company.

No Commander-in-Chief could forget that. Unless, like Trump, you’ve lost the thread so badly you’ve finally jumped the shark.

Michael P. Rush,  Leland, North Carolina

Donald Trump is a convicted felon and obviously not qualified to lead- #DumpTrump

Echo editorial opinion published in The New York Times:

#TrumpIsNotQualified

In a humble courtroom in Lower Manhattan, a former president and current Republican standard-bearer was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The jury’s decision, and the facts presented at the trial, offer yet another reminder — perhaps the starkest to date — of the many reasons Donald Trump is unfit for office.

The guilty verdict in the former president’s hush-money case was reached by a unanimous jury of 12 randomly selected New Yorkers, who found that Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, was guilty of falsifying business records to prevent voters from learning about a sexual encounter that he believed would have been politically damaging.

#TrumptyDumpty

Americans may wonder about the significance of this moment. The Constitution does not prohibit those with a criminal conviction from being elected or serving as commander in chief, even if they are behind bars. The nation’s founders left that decision in the hands of voters. Many experts have also expressed skepticism about the significance of this case and its legal underpinnings, which employed an unusual legal theory to seek a felony charge for what is more commonly a misdemeanor, and Trump will undoubtedly seek an appeal.

Yet the greatest good to come out of this sordid case is the proof that the rule of law binds everyone, even former presidents. Under extraordinary circumstances, the trial was conducted much as any other criminal trial in the city is. That 12 Americans could sit in judgment of the former and potentially future president is a remarkable display of the democratic principles that Americans prize at work.

Justice Juan Merchan, the jury and the New York State legal system delivered speedy justice, providing Americans with vital information about a presidential candidate before voting begins. Multiple polls have shown that a conviction will affect the decisions of many voters.

The verdict itself establishes that Trump committed crimes in hiding pertinent information about himself from the American people for the purpose of influencing the 2016, presidential election. It revealed even more evidence of what Trump is willing to do, including breaking the law and pushing others to break the law, for political gain. That chronic impulse — to override democratic norms and the law to his own ends — is at the heart of two other criminal cases against Trump, for the much more serious charges of spreading lies and participating in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020, election. He is also charged with mishandling highly classified national security documents after leaving office; twice, he showed classified documents to people who were not authorized to see them, according to that indictment. Trump’s lawyers have managed to delay those three trials.

The former president has never shown much moral rectitude, but the facts presented at the New York trial revealed more information that the public should know about the unethical way that Trump conducts his life and his business. Prosecutors laid out the details of the payoff in careful detail: Shortly after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape and less than two weeks before the 2016 election, Michael Cohen, who was then Trump’s lawyer and fixer, paid Stormy Daniels, a porn star, $130,000 to keep quiet about the 2006, sexual encounter she said she had with Trump.

A payoff like this is not illegal by itself. What makes it illegal is doctoring business records to mask its true purpose, which prosecutors said was to hide the story from the American people to help Trump get elected. Prosecutors had to show that this payoff was made at Trump’s behest and that Trump knew the reimbursement to Mr. Cohen for the payoff was falsely categorized as a legal expense to disguise it. The evidence they presented, both direct and circumstantial, showed Mr. Trump’s personal involvement in the scheme, and its motivation.

Justice Merchan was scrupulous in ensuring that Trump received a fair trial. He refused, for example, to allow the jury to hear sensational material, such as audio from the “Access Hollywood” tape or subsequent allegations of sexual assault against Trump, that could have been prejudicial to his rights as a defendant. Yet throughout the trial, the judge was forced to deal with Trump’s attempts to undermine the legal system. To protect its integrity, Justice Merchan put a limit on what Trump could say to prevent him from attacking and threatening jurors, witnesses, court personnel and even the judge’s family. Trump repeatedly flouted that order and was fined $10,000 for contempt of court. Only the threat of a jail sentence finally seemed to keep Trump in line.

In the end, the jury heard the evidence, deliberated for more than nine hours and came to a decision, which is how the system is designed to work. In the same way, elections allow voters to consider the choices before them with full information, then freely cast their ballots. Trump tried to sabotage elections and the criminal justice system — both of which are fundamental to American democracy — when he thought they might not produce the outcome he wanted. 

So far, they have proved resilient enough to withstand his (unhinged❗) attacks. The jurors delivered their verdict, as the voters will in November. If the Republic is to survive, all of us — including Trump — should abide by both, regardless of the outcome.

Donald Trump chicanery- Republicans fall victim to former guy's fake news and false accusations

 Echo opinion published in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper:

You cannot fool all of the people all of the time by David McGrath: 

Trump trickery!

Reading one of the many postings written by the former guy Donald Trump on his Truth Social network, he had (fakenews❗) seized upon the phrase “lethal force,” commonly used in FBI (agent safety❗) paperwork, authorizing searches, to falsely accuse Joe Biden of sending agents to “assassinate” him at Mar-a-Lago. 

That, of course, is classic Trump chicanery: to dangle an outrageous accusation in a Truth Social post, in order to distract voters from focusing on the alleged possession of classified documents in his Florida home (found hidden in a bathroom).

Likewise, a couple of weeks earlier, he claimed that he was not allowed to testify in his own defense during the Manhattan jury trial, because of the gag order imposed by the judge. 

This, too, is a falsehood, obvious to any fan of the TV show “Law and Order,” but intended by Trump to obscure the fact that he was avoiding the witness stand, and he didn’t want to be perceived as “chickening out” by his supporters. (Stormy Daniels alert: In a tweet perceived to be aimed at former guy Donald Trump, which has since garnered significant attention, Ms. Daniels wrote, 'Real men respond to testimony by being sworn in and taking the stand in court. Oh...wait. Nevermind'."

Stormy Daniels-American pornographic film actress, director and former stripper. She has won many industry awards and is a member of the NightMoves Hall of Fame

Predictably, for the previous six weeks, whenever a court session in his hush money trial was adjourned for the day, Trump walked up to the media microphones to introduce conspiracy theories. He said the judge was a “devil,” his indictment a “sham,” and the trial a “persecution” by President Biden. He wanted to flood the airwaves with baseless accusations, in hopes that voters would forget the signed checks, witness testimony, and audio tapes that manifested his felonious falsification of business transactions.

And while there certainly may have been people in the jury who liked or even voted for the former president, they were intelligent adults, not 11-year-old children. So it did not take long for them to issue 34 guilty verdicts after careful deliberation, while withstanding efforts by Trump’s attorneys to cast doubt on the facts by vilifying and seeming to put Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels on trial, in order to occlude their client’s crimes.

And though the verdict is in, and the sentencing is July 11, the distraction and decoying persists, as Republican leaders, either loyal to Trump or fearful of him, criticize his conviction as “persecution” and a “kangaroo court,” while excusing the crime Trump committed to fool voters into electing him president. Such a level of hypocrisy is astonishing, even for politicians.

In fact, the 12 adult jurors in New York who were not bamboozled have set an example going forward for the rest of the country on how to stand up for truth and the American justice system.

David McGrath is a former English professor at Florida Southwestern State College.

Donald Trump rants about sharks when speaking in Nevada where there is no ocean

Why was Trump talking about sharks at a Nevada campaign event in June, 2024?

Echo report (excerpts) by Philip Bump published in the Washington Post:  The former president’s riff on sea life and electric boats confused a lot of people, speaking in Nevada to a sweltering hot audience because, apparantly, the Trump campaign cannot afford to rent an air conditioned venue for their small donation campaign supporters.

It is possible that the sheer weirdness of this story has already led to your seeing it. Transcripts of Trump's 500-plus-word riff spread over social media, as people tried to parse it like the final exam of a fifth-grade English class. If you didn't see it, allow me to offer an abridged version.

The story began with Trump describing a conversation with a boat manufacturer in South Carolina. (This was the person who purportedly referred to him as “sir.”) Trump offered more familiarity with boats than his audience — again, in the desert city of Las Vegas

I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’” Trump said.

Then Trump went on a tangent about sharks and shark attacks. In the abstract, this was just odd, given that — just as a reminder! — this was Trump trying to convince a lot of Nevadans to vote for him for president. But his aversion to sharks is well-established — and, in fact, overlaps with his recent criminal conviction in Manhattan.

The criminal trial in New York centered on porn actress Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 — he denies they had sex — and the hush money payment made to her by Trump’s attorney before the 2016, election. 

In a 2011,interview with In Touch Weekly that was published after the details of the alleged encounter between Trump and Daniels were made public in 2018, she recounted his disdain for sharks. 

Daniels explained that one of their encounters overlapped with the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” programming. As the two sat in Trump’s hotel room, he volunteered how much he hated sharks and wished they all would die. That his central concern related to a sinking boat would be sharks certainly bolsters the idea that Daniels was telling the truth.  #StormyDanielsStrong❗

Republicans like Speaker Mike Johnson must be reminded about why Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies i.e. sex cover up

Opinion letter echo: Trump is guilty — period❗ Published in The Columbian.

Trump was found guilty of 34 acts of felony — period! He was convicted of falsification of business records because he paid illegal hush money to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about their sexual encounter. 

What Trump did is a felony in New York. On July 11, Trump will be sentenced. I highly doubt that he will be sent to jail. Probation? Probably.

Now the Republican politicians are doing what I thought they would do — whining and blaming everyone they can think of by making false statements about the prosecution, against Judge Merchan, the jury and even President Joe Biden. 

Republican reality check! President Biden had nothing to do with this case. It is a state prosecution not federal; 12 independent jurors found him guilty. Biden didn’t know them

This all started with Trump cheating on his wife multiple times with a porn star and a Playboy model. Republican politicians won’t mention that.

From Lynn Brown, in Vancouver, British Columbia

Trump supporters must face reality because he is not qualified to be president. He was a disaster the first time.

Echo opinion published by the Los Angeles Times’ editorial board:

The felony conviction of Donald Trump in a Manhattan courtroom Thursday was a momentous event, even if the charges — falsifying business records — are less weighty than others the former president is facing. The prospect of a convicted felon being elected president ought to give pause to voters who haven’t been persuaded to reject him despite his manifest unfitness.

Trump was convicted of all 34 counts in the indictment accusing of him of falsifying business records related to payments to his former lawyer Michael Cohen. Prosecutors argued that the payments were reimbursements for money Cohen provided out of his own pocket to adult film star and director Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual encounter in 2006, with Trump that if made public could have affected the outcome of the 2016, election.

Ordinarily, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor, but the prosecution contended that it rose to the level of a felony because it was done to conceal another crime such as a violation of federal campaign finance law. That layered argument provoked considerable criticism from actual lawyers and the armchair variety, but the jury seems to have grasped its complexity and concluded that Trump was guilty.

The charges of which Trump has been convicted pale in comparison with the other charges he faces connected with his attempt to overturn the 2020, election and his retention of national defense documents after he left the White House. Lamentably, it seems unlikely that he will face trial on those allegations before the November election. To its discredit, the Supreme Court has contributed to the delay of a trial of Trump on federal charges connected to the 2020, election by dithering on Trump’s absurd claim of immunity for “official acts,” defined broadly to cover some of his election-related actions.

Trump’s unfitness for another term as president does not depend on the outcome of any of these prosecutions. Even if he had been an exemplary chief executive — which he wasn’t — he should be disqualified for scheming to overturn the 2020, election, a disgraceful assault on democracy that culminated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Trump’s outrageous attempt to subvert the democratic process isn’t the only reason to oppose his return to the White House. He also should be rejected by voters because of his authoritarian tendencies, his propensity for falsehoods and his volatile temperament. The latter two character flaws were evident in his unhinged attacks on the judge in this case and his incredible claim that his prosecution by the state of New York was instigated by the Biden administration. (After the verdict was announced, Trump also asserted that the trial had been “rigged,” the same absurd accusation he has continued to make about the 2020, election he lost.)

It shouldn’t take a criminal conviction to convince conscientious voters of Trump’s epic unfitness. But those who support him must now reckon with the fact that their candidate of choice is a convicted felon.

Recommended reading for Trump attorney Todd Blanche

File this echo essay under "fun reading".  😂

Published in The New Yorker by Zach Helfand.

Donald Trump's defense attorney Todd Blanche should have taken a tour of the Manhattan court house where he has been couped up with his client while enduring the saga of hearing about the Stormy Daniels sexual encounter, now forever entered into the public record.  

MANHATTAN, NY- Falsifying business records in the first degree is a class-E felony in the State of New York, carrying a possible prison sentence of four years. It’s not often a marquee charge. A few years ago, for instance, a teacher in the Bronx gave her principal a fake vaccination card, in a bid to get a day off to recover from the side effects. Charge: falsifying in the second degree. (She pleaded guilty, and it was knocked down to a violation after she completed community service.) The public, however, has got pretty jazzed about the crime recently. At the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, at 100 Centre Street, people have been standing in line down the block, sometimes a day in advance, for a chance to see a case in person. Some observers have said that the fate of the country hinges on falsifying businessrecords. What’s all the fuss?

The courthouse had two active falsifying cases the other day, before Judges Gregory Carro and Juan Merchan. Carro presided over courtroom 1300, part 32, on the thirteenth floor, off a corridor that looked as if the Penn Station basement had decided it was too bright. A window was open in the back, through which resounded loud hammering from construction next door.

The court was called to order, and defendants began coming forward for pretrial hearings. One looked dazed. One was missing a leg. Someone’s cell phone rang in the gallery. “You gotta silence that phone!” an officer shouted. Every few minutes, a defense attorney, looking confused, walked the aisle yelling a client’s name.

At last, the falsifying case. The defendant was called forward. No one appeared. His attorney, Brian Hutchinson, found Assistant District Attorney Karl Mulloney-Radke in the gallery and whispered to him, “He’s in the bathroom. He’s nervous.” (Hutchinson said later that his client was a model citizen in court: “He’s stayed awake the whole time.”)

The defendant had been a New York City Health & Hospitals officer. According to prosecutors, a different officer had been escorting an inebriated man from Bellevue Hospital after discharge and had stomped on the man, then slammed him to the ground and left him there, apparently unconscious. The defendant was accused of holding the man down during the beating. Charge: official misconduct. Prosecutors said that he later filed paperwork about the incident which failed to mention the use of force. There’s your falsifying rap.

The defendant appeared after a few minutes: skinny, middle-aged, bald, with glasses and a blue mask. He wore jeans and carried a blue plastic shopping bag.

Carro said, “All right. What’s the offer?”

“On this case, the people’s offer is for the defendant to plead to two misdemeanors,” Mulloney-Radke said. The D.A. was seeking two years’ probation, with a ban on employment as a peace officer in New York.

The defendant whispered to Hutchinson, who wore a black pinstripe suit and a purple tie. “He is interested in the offer, Judge,” Hutchinson said.

“The Assistant District Attorney is going to ask you some questions about the incident,” Carro said.

Mulloney-Radke addressed the defendant: “Do you admit that in New York County, on January 8, 2022, that with intent to defraud, you omitted to make a true entry in the business records of Bellevue Hospital, and, specifically, referring to a Health & Hospitals police-response card, you failed to report a use of force by another officer, in violation of your duty to do so? Do you admit that, sir?”

“Yes, sir,” the man said.

“That’s satisfactory to the people. Thank you, Your Honor.”

The man walked with Hutchinson to the elevator bank and left with his shopping bag. Hutchinson stayed behind. What did he make of the falsifying charge? “My opinion is that the paperwork was a lot less egregious than the actions of the other co-defendant,” he said.

The case, which was handled by the D.A.’s police-accountabilit yunit, had taken a long time to complete. “I’ve had one other case with them,” Hutchinson said. “That was related to an escape attempt. My guy”—who’d been arrested, held at Rikers, then hospitalized—“managed to get out of a fifth-floor window.” The man had allegedly shimmied down a makeshift rope he’d fashioned from tied-together sheets, before falling. “Got up and walked away,” Hutchinson added. “Managed to get a taxi.”

Hutchinson said he didn’t know that his case was just one of two falsifying-business-records matters at the courthouse, perhaps because the other one was adjourned for the day. It seemed interesting, though, involving a lot of counts of falsifying—thirty-four in all. Word was, the case was in the middle of testimony from a famous porn star, who’d told the court that she’d used a magazine to spank the defendant, who subsequently told her that she reminded him of his daughter. The defendant, a seventy-seven-year-old man originally from Jamaica Estates, in Queens, has thus far not pursued a plea deal. ♦

Donald Trump is still dealing with the horrible Access Hollywood Tape

Echo opinion letter published in the Citrus County Chronicle, a Crysal River Florida newspaper:

The criminal trial of ex-President Donald Trump says a lot more about his character than his criminal activity. Trump has a low opinion of women, as referenced in the "Access Hollywood tape," and his affair with a porn star while married to Melania. 

According to a new report, Melania remains "angry" at her husband over the alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. The former first lady "wants to ignore" the whole thing and "hopes it will pass," but "doesn’t sympathize with Donald’s plight." Not only that, but the former FLOTUS really wouldn’t be put out if her spouse did time behind bars.

Melania Trump 

Even if Trump is not convicted of campaign finance law violations and cooking the books, he's broken the law 10 times by attacking jurors, judges, and witnesses. Trump knowingly breaks the law, and people are taking notice. It looks like the other criminal cases will be postponed until after the election, with Trump-appointed judge Eileen Cannon blocking or delaying obvious procedural issues. And Trump's Supreme Court is kicking the can down the road on absolute immunity.

The Georgia case is delayed because of a love affair that has nothing to do with the criminal liability of those who were indicted, two pleading guilty. Delay, delay, delay. 😳😠Americans want the truth on these serious matters that affect national security and whether coups are the "new normal" if you don't like the election results. Putting a man in office who can't even obey a judge's gag order 10 times and thinks he's above the law has to be a serious consideration.

Trust is important, ❗and Mr. Trump has a problem with the truth. 

Do you want to be lied to for the next four years? Is that fine with you? With all the crazy things happening around the world, this is terrifying. Trump said he's not going to accept the results of the 2024, election unless he wins, and a bloodbath if he doesn't. We should all bleach our eyes if this turns out to be true. This is not just an election for president; it's about whether we want to live in a democracy or not.

From Ben Benassi, in Inverness, Florida

Donald Trump is not presidential while he wastes time grumbling sitting in a 1941 built criminal court

Echo Opinion by Dana Milbank published in The Washinton Post
Trump might not go to jail, but this trial is a close second.

People wait to enter the courtroom after the lunch break in former president Donald Trump's hush money trial in New York on Tuesday. (Mary Altaffer/AP)

“Yes, your honor,” Defense Attorney Blanche replied.😊😁

NEW YORK (Manhattan)— My friend and former colleague Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare, has provided indispensable legal analysis during Donald Trump’s hush money trial. But his most important insight into the trial is the need for cushioning.

When I arrived at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse early Monday morning for a few days of Trump trial tourism, I found Wittes in line holding not one but two pillows: an orthopedic doughnut to sit on and a padded, wraparound lap desk. If I didn’t do the same, he warned, “you’ll come away with injuries.”

He was vindicated within an hour of my arrival in the courthouse.

The courthouse, completed in 1941, apparently has not been updated much since then, nor even maintained. Its seats are hard, wooden pews with curved backs that accentuate the customary journalist slouch as we hunch over our laptops.

Posters warning of asbestos abatement 😵😲😱hang in the lobby. The bathrooms have malfunctioning taps, missing toilet paper holders and what looks like years of grime on the floor. The courtrooms have almost no electrical power or internet connectivity, forcing those covering the Trump trial to lug backpacks full of enormous batteries, cables and hotspots. Temperatures fluctuate madly (a source of much irritation to the defendant). The hallways are dark and green, and the fluorescent-lit courtrooms have names such as “Part 59” and “Part 75.” The elevators groan and creak; on the 15th floor, where the Trump trial is held, two of us had to manually push an elevator’s doors closed to get the carriage moving down to the lobby.

Mar-a-Lago it isn’t. This place, built on the site of a 19th-century prison and gallows complex called “the Tombs,” may be as close as Trump gets to prison — and it’s a reasonable facsimile. Attendees get colored “hall passes” that allow them to go to the restroom. Dozens of police guards bark orders (“We’re locking it down!”) and impose byzantine rules: No eating in the rooms, and no loitering in the halls unless you are eating. Multiple layers of security make it so difficult to reenter the building that reporters pack their lunches and eat on benches, or any other space they can claim, on unused floors of the building.

Those wishing to attend the proceedings start to line up around 6 a.m. for the 9:30 a.m. trial, in the middle of a media bivouac of satellite trucks, stand-up platforms and acres of police barriers. 

Those admitted to the courtroom (one reporter per outlet) and the overflow room (where video and audio are piped in) can’t watch Trump’s rants in the hallway, just steps away, and those in the “pool” to watch Trump’s rants can’t watch the trial.

Still, there are small pleasures: On the TV screens in the overflow room, right under the video feed of Trump at the defense table, is a chyron displaying the words “New York County Supreme Criminal.”

I expected to spend much of my year covering Trump this way, watching his trials in New York, D.C., Georgia and Florida. But suddenly, this trial — the least important of the four — looks like it will be the only one to get underway before the election.

Meanwhile in Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee and a thorough Trump partisan, postponed indefinitely his trial in the classified documents case. In Georgia on Wednesday, an appeals court agreed to hear an appeal from Trump that will almost certainly block the racketeering trial there from occurring this year. 

A Trump-friendly majority on the Supreme Court signaled that it would handle Trump’s sweeping immunity claims in such a way that will likely postpone his trial i

In the January 6, 2021, case until after the election.

For a candidate who moans nonstop about a “rigged” justice system, it looks more as though the deck is stacked in his favor. 

Yet, Trump may be sorry when his time in court comes to an end in a couple of weeks. He will no longer be able to claim that his obligations in court keep him from the campaign trail (he tends to play golf on his days away from the trial anyway), and he won’t be able to complain about how he’s being persecuted by prosecutors and judges.

In the hush money trial, he’s practically begging to be jailed for contempt of court. Justice Juan Merchan, finding Trump in contempt for a 10th time on Monday for violating a gag order preventing Trump from attacking witnesses, pleaded: “Mr. Trump, it’s important to understand that the last thing I want to do is to put you in jail. You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president, as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me.”

Yet 48 hours later, before Stormy Daniels’s testimony, Trump toyed with the judge some more. He posted and then deleted a message on his Truth Social platform about the “CROOKED” judge “threatening me with JAIL,” while also claiming the judge left “no time for lawyers to prepare” for Daniels. (Her name had been on the witness list for months❗)

I came to New York expecting to see Trump doze off during his trial. Instead, I was struggling to stay awake myself.

Prosecutors don’t announce the order of witnesses, as a precaution to keep Trump from attacking them. 

So after waiting for three hours Monday morning to secure a seat, I learned that I was in for a day of accounting testimony — important to the case, but deadly tedious.

• “Is this another MDS voucher?”
• “What’s the voucher number?”
• “What account is this coming from?”
• “And the invoice amount?”
• “Is there a check number on the stub?”
• “What is it?”

Over, and over, and over again. The only relief Monday was provided by Trump’s lawyers, who complained about everything, no matter how picayune, and without regard to whether their complaint had any truth. Trump lawyer Todd Blanche complained at length that the defense had not been provided with the name of one of the witnesses; her name was on the list of witnesses publicly disclosed during jury selection. Blanche argued that having the witness recalled to provide additional testimony would prejudice the jury against the defense. The testimony in question? The witness was going to read three of Trump’s tweets.

In the courtroom that morning, Trump’s lawyers tried to delay the day’s proceedings so they could raise more objections to the judge; outside the courtroom in the afternoon, Trump complained that the trial was taking too long.

But Tuesday brought blessed relief from the tedium. A witness from the publisher of “Trump: How to Get Rich” testified.

• “What’s depicted in the cover photo?”
• Donald J. Trump.”
• “And what’s the largest word on the cover?”
• “And what percentage of the cover is the word ‘Trump’?”
• “It looks about roughly 30 percent to me.”
• The prosecutor then had the witness read passages from the book, such as: “For many years I’ve said that if someone screws you, screw them back. When somebody hurts you, just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can.”
• In cross examination, Blanche tried to suggest Trump’s “ghostwriter” was behind such sentiments — and moments later denied to the judge that he had done any such thing.

Then came the storm.

The content of Daniels’s testimony wasn’t new — she had written or said most of it before — but hearing the prurient account in open court, with Trump at the defense table, was still stunning. It stunned Trump, for the judge had to admonish him, through his lawyers, for “cursing audibly.”

• “Mr. Blanche, did you speak to your client?” Judge Merchan asked after a break?
• “Yes, your honor,” Blanche replied.

After watching Daniels testify on Tuesday, I abandoned my trial tourism. When Daniels returned to the stand for continued cross-examination Thursday morning, I “watched” it through the eyes of my Post colleagues (who report the action in live updates) and those of Lawfare’s Tyler McBrien (who live-tweets so fast it’s like a transcript). The attacks on the adult-film star were ferocious, but Daniels didn’t lose her poise.

Trump lawyer Susan Necheles invoked Daniels’s 2018 “Make America Horny Again” tour, and she displayed the products Daniels has sold, including a “Stormy, Saint of Indictments” candle. “That was you selling your merchandise, right?” Necheles asked.

“That is me doing my job,” answered Daniels, who noted that her own crass commercializing was “not unlike Mr. Trump.”

Necheles, who asserted that Daniels has “a lot of experience making phony stories about sex appear to be real,” asked her: “And now you have a story you have been telling about having sex with President Trump; right?”

Replied Daniels: “And if that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better.”

Necheles was skeptical that Daniels, after acting in “over 200 porn movies,” would really become lightheaded, as Daniels claimed, after seeing Trump on a bed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts.

“Yes,” Daniels rejoined. “When you are not expecting a man twice your age to be in their underwear.”

The Trump lawyer asked Daniels if she knew what was in the indictment against Trump.

“There was a lot of indictments,” Daniels responded, to laughter.

Necheles mentioned a Daniels tweet saying she was “the best person to flush the orange turd down,” then asked: “You said you were going to ‘flush’ President Trump?”

“I didn’t say ‘President Trump,’” Daniels shot back. “It says ‘orange turd.’ So, if that’s what’s interpreted by you …”

There was more laughter in the courtroom. Or so I’m told. By this time, I was sitting at home in an ergonomic office chair with plenty of memory foam.

Maine Writer: And the moral of this echo essay is this.....the former guy in boxer shorty is a creepy old man. Ugh!😝

Donald Trump needs an Evangelical reality test: Philander, racist, sexual abuser and Bible heretic

How can evangelicals like Mike Johnson tolerate Trump?
Echo opinion by LZ Granderson published in the Lost Angeles Times newspaper:

At the 2016, Republican National Convention, when I told Donald Trump’s “God whisperer” 😟Paula White that he referred to her as his pastor, she said she was his spiritual advisor — as if that were some sort of “get out of jail free” card for her.

And yet White worked hard in our conversation to convince me that the foul-mouthed person on the campaign trail was godly.
Then came her turn to speak at the convention. Most of the seats were empty when White took the stage, which says a lot about the interest attendees had in the words of Trump’s spiritual advisor.

It was as if their minds were already made up.

This was after Trump referred to a book of the Bible as “Two Corinthians” in a speech at Liberty University, the private Christian college where Jerry Falwell Jr. was president, before a sex scandal forced him to resign later that year. 

This was after Trump mocked a journalist’s disability. This was after he came down the escalator at Trump Tower and kicked off his campaign by bashing Mexico and Latinos before offering “and some, I assume, are good people.” Trump had shown what kind of person he was, and somehow still had evangelical Christians’ support.

But, he must have feared there would be some limit to their capacity for cognitive dissonance, because he did not want evangelical voters to find out about his 2006, affair with Stormy Daniels. 

In fact, Trump paid her money to stay quiet days before the election. I don’t know if that’s what White spiritually advised him to do, but she went on to serve Trump at the White House, so she must have made peace with the deceit.

The reason Trump is on trial in New York isn’t because of President Biden or Democrats. It’s because he wanted to deceive a crucial bloc of voters and in doing so is accused of falsely claiming the hush payment as legal services on business documents. And he is accused of falsifying documents in connection with other crimes.

In other words, it’s not a witch hunt. It’s repercussions.

Now, it appears, it’s House Speaker Mike Johnson’s turn to find some sort of balance between his personal faith and his professional interest. The joint news conference between Trump and Johnson at Mar-A-Lago, will most likely help Johnson keep his job — which was murky after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called his leadership into question — but it does nothing to erase the fact he’s aligned with a thrice-married adulterer who mocked Jimmy Carter the day after Rosalynn Carter, his wife of 77 years, entered hospice.

The image of Johnson standing at the lectern — as Trump stood behind him like a jack-o’-lantern the day after Halloween — was frightening. Unnerving. It was not a show of strength; it was another sign of how far some white evangelicals are willing to drag their faith through the mud just to be next to power.

Christians believe in a thing called grace, and Lord knows I’ve benefited from a lot of it in life. But, Trump doesn’t express remorse for his affair with Daniels or the hush money spent to trick his Christian supporters. He has been found liable for sexual abuse. He’s bragged about grabbing women by their private parts and kissing them without consent.

The fact that Trump could be forgiven is irrelevant if he hasn’t changed or stopped his abuses or given any indication of regret. What we have in Trump is not a story of redemption but a clear account of who he really is and always has been.

In February during a rally, he said this about his opponent Nikki Haley: “Where’s your husband? Oh, he’s away. He’s away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone!”

It was no secret: Haley’s husband was deployed overseas with the South Carolina National Guard, something she discussed openly at campaign events. Trump knew “what happened to her husband.” But he just gambled that some in his audience didn’t know and that he could score cheap political points by smearing a service member.

You don’t have to act surprised. That’s the kind of person Trump has always been, regardless of whether he had a “God whisperer” on staff. This is the kind of person Johnson cozied up to  in a desperate grab at keeping his job. (Maine Writer IMO- Speaker Johnson was no guest at Mar-A-Lago.  Betcha' he paid his own way including getting an invoice for his meals. Wanna' bet?)

I’m not sure what the former president’s current spiritual advisor is whispering in his ear these days, but by now it’s clear he doesn’t need to listen to get reelected.

(P.S. Maine Writer- Hypocricy on steroids!)

Donald Trump is finally on trial in Manhattan!

Echo essay published in Trump On Trial, in Intelligencer by Margaret Hartmann:

April 15, 2024, courtroom photo in Manhattan

“Sleepy Joe” was always a low-energy Trump nickname. Donald Trump’s derisive name for Joe Biden never had the zing of “Crooked Hillary” or “Liddle Marco,” and it was too similar to other Trump nicknames like “Sleepin’ Bob” Casey and “Sleepy Eyes” Chuck Todd. Now there’s a new problem with it that no one anticipated: It’s easy to turn it back on “Sleepy Don” when he nods off — repeatedly! — during a criminal trial over hush-money payments he allegedly made to cover up an affair with a porn star.

In an interview during a break, journalist Maggie Haberman told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump looked sleepy during previous court appearances but this incident was worse:

During day one of Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan — which will determine whether he broke the law by paying off Stormy Daniels just before the 2016, election, then disguising the payments — the former president reportedly fell asleep in the courtroom. Maggie Haberman wrote on the New York Times’ trial liveblog on April 16:

• Trump appeared to be sleeping. His head kept dropping down and his mouth went slack.
• Haberman said Trump was roused a short time later:
• Trump was apparently jolted back awake, noticing the notes his lawyer passed him several minutes ago.

Stewart Bishop, a reporter for Law360 who was in the courtroom, made the same observation: "It very much looks like Trump is dozing off right now." Perhaps Trump was embarrassed — but incredibly, it wasn’t enough to keep him from dozing off again during the proceedings again, the next morning.

Donald Trump a convicted sex offender and Jeffrey Epstein friend who visited Epstein's island 7 times

Greatfeful for E. Jean Carroll for finally revealling the former guy Donald Trump as a convicted sex offender.

Echo opinion letter published in Village-News, in Florida:

Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in August that the jury verdict showed Carroll's rape allegation was "substantially true" and dismissed the counterclaim. In May, Carroll was awarded a combined $5 million for sexual abuse and for a 2022 denial by Trump that the jury concluded defamed Carroll.

To the editor:  Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in August that the jury verdict showed Carroll's rape allegation was "substantially true". In May, Carroll was awarded a combined $5 million for sexual abuse and for a 2022, denial by Trump that the jury concluded defamed Carroll.

Donald Trump took at least seven trips on Epstein’s private plane to Epstein’s private island where he hosted parties with hundreds of underage girls. Many of these woman have filed sexual assault charges against these men over the decades that have been hidden and stalled in the United State’s court system due to powerful natural of the men involved. All this evidence is becoming unsealed. Now.

Donald Trump has said Epstein was a “terrific guy”, adding details about their shared interest in “beautiful women.”

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told in the New Yorker magazine: “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Trump already has a rape conviction of E.J. Carroll, in New York city, with his second defamation federal case starting on January 16th surrounding Ms. Carroll. His affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDongal while he was married to his third wife, who he also cheated with, all indicate he is untrustworthy con-artist, and sexual predator who is unfit to hold any public office.

Ralph Bennett Village in Osceola Hills, in Florida

Donald Trump has no respect for the law and he must never be elected to any political position

Opinion echo letter published in the Dallas Morning News by Cecil Larry Pool, from Midlothian, Texas. 

Trump took boxes of secret documents and tried to hide them!

Why?

Will the Trump supporters ever see? Hello? 37 felonies! More than 100 secret documents and he hid them in Mar-A-Lago. 

Re: “Trump indicted on 7 counts — Retention of top secrets, obstruction, conspiracy alleged,” Friday news story.

The indictment of Donald Trump on federal charges over his mishandling of classified documents gives mixed emotions. 

On one hand I am overjoyed that a man who for decades has assumed he was above the law is being held accountable. On the other hand, I am saddened that a man with no respect for the law and with no sense of compassion or empathy for others was ever elected president.

It grieves me that the vast majority of the GOP cult, despite the sexual abuse indictment and the one about paying hush money to adult porn star Stormy Daniels, in New York, still support him. 

But most heartbreaking of all is that the vast majority of white evangelical Christians so strongly support him. If he is convicted in this case, my prayer is that my friends and family in that religious group will at long last no longer support a man who does not deserve their devotion.

Cecil Larry Pool, Midlothian, Texas

Donald Trump learns how the rules of law will finally will apply to him

Echo editorial published in The New York Times:

For the first time in American history, a grand jury has indicted a former president of the United States, The Times reported on Thursday. Donald Trump spent years as a candidate, in office and out of office, ignoring democratic and legal norms and precedents, trying to bend the Justice Department and the judiciary to his whims and behaving as if rules didn’t apply to him.

The former president was charged with 34 felonies in Manhattan, NYC, for his role in falsifying business records in order to conceal an illegal conspiracy to undermine an election. He pleaded not guilty.

As the news of the indictment shows, they do.
A pattern of disregard for the law often leads to a criminal indictment, and that is the outcome Mr. Trump now faces. Federal and state prosecutors were right to set aside concerns about political fallout, or reverence for the presidency, and initiate thorough criminal investigations of Mr. Trump’s conduct in at least four instances. The investigation by the Manhattan district attorney is the first known to result in an indictment.

Mr. Trump completely transformed the relationship between the presidency and the rule of law, often asserting that a president was above the law. 

So it is appropriate that his actions as president and as a candidate should now be formally weighed by judges and juries, with the possibility of criminal penalties on the line. Mr. Trump badly damaged America’s political and legal institutions and threatened them again with calls for widespread protests once he is indicted. But those institutions have proved to be strong enough to hold him accountable for that harm.

A healthy respect for the legal system also requires Americans to set aside their politics when forming judgments on these cases. While Mr. Trump routinely called for his enemies to be investigated by the F.B.I., to be indicted or to face the death penalty, his indifference to due process for others shouldn’t deny him the system’s benefits, including a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. At the same time, no jury should extend to him any special privileges as a former president.

Trump will finally have to follow the same procedures as any other citizen.

Alvin Bragg, the district attorney, has been pursuing a case of possible fraud and campaign finance violations by Mr. Trump for concealing payments he made to the porn-film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016, election. His actions — using money to silence critics and hide politically damaging information — were wrong. The question that will face a jury is whether that behavior meets the threshold for conviction as a felony.

If those are the charges, conviction will hinge on proving that Mr. Trump participated in falsifying business records while violating campaign finance law, a somewhat novel legal strategy. Falsifying records can be charged as a misdemeanor in New York; to make it a more serious felony requires proof that he combined it with a second crime, in this case, a potential campaign finance violation. The former president, who is seeking a second term in 2024, has denied the allegations and has said that the case against him brought by Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, is politically motivated.

While some legal experts have questioned the theory behind Mr. Bragg’s case, there is no basis for the accusation that it is politically motivated — a claim that Mr. Trump has made, for many years, about every investigation into his conduct. Just as jurors are routinely instructed to ignore evidence that is improperly introduced in a trial, they will also have to ignore the unsubstantiated implications raised by Trump supporters and attorneys in these cases and judge them strictly on the merits.

Among the most egregious are the accusations against him in Georgia. The Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, is weighing criminal charges against several people, including Mr. Trump, for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in that state, which President Biden won by 11,779 votes. Mr. Trump repeatedly pressured Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” additional votes that would change the results of the state’s election, part of a scheme to undermine the will of the voters.

A special grand jury impaneled by Ms. Willis recommended in February that charges be brought in the case; it’s not yet known which people or allegations were included in the grand jury’s recommendations or whom, if anyone, Ms. Willis may seek to indict.

A federal Justice Department inquiry led by a special counsel, Jack Smith, could also result in charges against Mr. Trump. Mr. Smith is investigating the former president’s efforts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021, when Mr. Trump roused an armed mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol, threatening lawmakers who were gathered to certify the results of the presidential election. A bipartisan Senate report last year found that seven deaths were related to the attack.

Mr. Smith’s team is also investigating the former president over his mishandling of classified documents that were removed from the White House and taken to Mar-a-Lago, his private residence in Florida. Some 300 classified documents have been recovered in the case. Prosecutors are also examining whether Mr. Trump, his attorneys or staff members misled government officials seeking the return of the documents.

Three of the other investigations that may result in indictments are more serious, because they involve allegations not just that Mr. Trump violated the law but also that he abused his presidential office.