Tag: kimberly guilfoyle
Snark Won't Save Us From Trump And His Grifting Henchmen

Snark Won't Save Us From Trump And His Grifting Henchmen

Put on your slicker and turn up your hood, because I’m about to rain on the commentariat parade that has spent the day stomping on Kimberly Guilfoyle, she of the recent break-up with Donald Trump Jr. and subsequent appointment to be our ambassador to the birthplace of Democracy, the country of Greece. Substack columns and Democratic-leaning blogs have had what we used to call a field day making fun of Guilfoyle herself and the supposition that Don Jr. went to his father and asked him to give her something to do that would take her as far away as possible from Palm Beach and Washington D.C.

“Greece begs Guilfoyle to stay in U.S. We can hear her from here,” Andy Borowitz said on Substack, where he now publishes. “So he breaks up with her and ships her off to Greece? I smell a Hallmark Movie” read one post on X.

It’s hard to resist being snarky about Guilfoyle when Trump’s announcement of her appointment includes absurd praise of her “extensive experience and leadership in law, media, and politics along with her sharp intellect,” when the sum total of her actual experience is having been the host of a Fox News talk show. Guilfoyle expressed her thanks on Instagram say, “As ambassador, I look forward to delivering on the Trump agenda, supporting our Greek allies, and ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity.”

Evan Hurst writing on Wonkette, in a withering take-down of Guilfoyle’s appointment, wrote, “Thank God, our long-running war against Greece is coming to an end!”

I confess that my own tastes in commentary often run to snark and ridicule of political figures with whom I disagree and of whom I am contemptuous. Kimberly Guilfoyle is one such figure. Others have recently included Kash Patel, Matt Gaetz, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell and many, many more. Each are laughable in their own unique ways, and I have launched snarky arrows at each of them repeatedly.

An absurd character such as Guilfoyle is far too easy of a target, but she and others like her are what Donald Trump is giving us.

In the election of Donald Trump to a second term in the White House, we have reached a point where snark and ridicule, while fun, are reaching their limits. Some of Trump’s appointments have indeed been laughable. Others, however, are sinister and represent threats to the way that this country has traditionally been governed: with a seriousness of purpose that measures up to the task at hand, no matter the department of government or the issues faced here and abroad.

Donald Trump was not that kind of president in his first term, and he shows every sign of going even more outside the norms of American governance this time around. In fact, with his appointments of right-wing bomb throwers and business cronies, Trump appears to be systematically forming a government that he will systematically loot for his own monetary advantage. He has appointed billionaires to oversee and regulate industries and sectors of the economy in which they hold major investments. Trump and his sons recently established their own crypto trading firm, World Liberty Financial, in which a Chinese crypto entrepreneur has invested $30 million, of which $20 million is estimated will accrue to Donald Trump personally, given the structure of his ownership in the business. Trump’s other son, Eric, has made no secret of his father’s interest in allowing crypto to be traded virtually without regulation, and plans have even been announced to have the U.S. Treasury create a so-called “strategic reserve” of crypto currencies in the amount of $100 billion or more. Investment by the U.S. government in anything is sure to send its value up, this increasing the value of whatever Trump’s crypto holdings are.

The chances for insider trading are off the charts with Trump’s appointment of Paul Atkins as Securities and Exchange Commissioner. Atkins is the CEO of a consulting business that has large crypto clients and is known to be an advocate for what Trump, in his appointment message, called “digital assets.”

“Digital assets,” for those keeping score, are what you get when you take real dollars that you can deposit in banks and use to buy things like food and cars and houses, and instead you buy a so-called “wallet” which contains nothing more than bits of code that is secret, the access to which is secret, the value of which is secret, and which is valued by a market with few boundaries or rules that protect investors against fraud and abuses like ponzi schemes. This description of what crypto amounts to is snarky, but the potential damage to what crypto can do to our economy and to the people who buy its bits and “wallets” is real.

Let us sum up our situation this way: the political and economic and humanitarian life of this nation is already in deep peril, and Donald Trump has not even been inaugurated yet. Snark can help us deal with what we face, but it isn’t going to save us from a man with no morals and criminally defective judgement who will soon have our nuclear codes in the room with him at all times. We can make fun of his hair and makeup, we can speak of the absurdity of his lies, we can point to his conflicts of interest and his obvious greed, we can make a list of the crimes he has already committed and been indicted for and been convicted of, but we must take seriously this man and his array of compatriots and fellow travelers and co-conspirators in the schemes we know he has in mind to carry out over the four years of his presidency. And I will never be able to resist the snark that will flow like the current of the Delaware River every time I consider the fools and knaves who have been thrust upon us.

We will soon live in a time when Donald Trump and his MAGA followers have their hands on the levers of power. We can deploy snark and ridicule to help us untangle ourselves from the dilemma Democracy has given us, but just making ourselves feel good is not enough. Facts leave bite marks. Reason deployed in the service of good has moral and practical power. This is not the end of history. It is the beginning of a profound struggle to ensure that the ideals upon which this country was founded, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, will not perish from this earth.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.

Donald Trump Jr

House Select Committee Interviews Coup Conspirator Donald Trump Jr.

Donald Trump Jr., former President Trump’s eldest son, voluntarily appeared before the House Select Committee, a bipartisan congressional panel investigating the sordid January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to multiple news outlets.

The meeting happened virtually and lasted a few hours, and Trump Jr. answered every question without pleading the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Sources told CNN that interaction between congressional investigators and the former president’s son was "cordial.".

The interview marks the select committee’s investigative foray into Trump’s inner circle of family members and top political advisers. Trump Jr. is the second of Trump’s adult children to testify before the select committee. Ivanka Trump submitted to an 8-hour-long interview with the committee in early April, and her husband and former senior Trump adviser, Jared Kushner, spoke to the select committee for 6 hours and provided, according to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), "useful” testimony.

Last week, the select committee chair, Bennie Thompson, told reporters that Trump Jr. was on the panel’s deposition wishlist, which isn’t a surprise because the former president’s oldest son was a top figure in his father’s 2020 reelection campaign.

Trump Jr. was also one of the most high-profile disseminators of election fraud conspiracies at the center of his father's doomed reelection bid. He was present at the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Eclipse on January 6 with his fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and other members of his family, where his father gave a speech that, investigators believe, incited a pro-Trump mob to attack the Capitol during the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

“These guys better fight for Trump. Because if they’re not, guess what? I’m going to be in your backyard in a couple of months!” Trump Jr. told a crowd of Trump supporters at the January 6 rally, threatening Republican lawmakers thinking of voting to acknowledge Biden’s landslide victory.

Guilfoyle also spoke at the rally in support of Trump’s baseless conspiracies of widespread election fraud, a publicity stunt that garnered the interest of the January 6 congressional investigators. The select committee said it had evidence that Guilfoyle boasted of her role in fundraising for the rally, and that she had told others who Trump would allow to speak at the rally, per CBS News.

Months earlier, Guilfoyle volunteered to testify to the select committee, but her lawyers abruptly ended the interview, which was being done remotely, over a disagreement over ground rules. The select committee later issued a subpoena to Guilfoyle, compelling her to testify for over nine hours.

Last month, CNN published reams of messages between Trump allies before and after the Capitol riot, and among them was a text message Trump Jr. sent to Mark Meadows, then-White House chief of staff, two days after election day; “It’s very simple. We have multiple paths. We control them all,” Trump Jr. told Meadows, referring to a shocking inner-circle effort to declare then-President Trump the victor of the 2020 elections he lost.

In a series of text messages released by the select committee itself, Trump Jr. sang a different tune after the crowd at the January 6 rally stormed the Capitol. “We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand,” Trump Jr. wrote to Meadows.

Trump Jr. is one of 1000 witnesses the select committee has deposed as it seeks to wrap up its far-reaching investigations into one of the worst Capitol attacks in over 200 years.

However, some Trump Administration staff members have refused interviews, including several top Trump allies: Don Scavino, Meadows, Peter Navarro, and Steve Bannon. Congress has held all four in contempt for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas. The Justice Department has already charged Bannon, who, along with the others, claimed to be following Trump’s orders to claim executive privilege.

Ivanka Trump Meets With House Select Committee On Capitol Riot

Ivanka Trump Meets With House Select Committee On Capitol Riot

As a contempt vote in the House looms for Trump White House officials who sidestepped subpoenas from the House Select Committee on January 6, NBC News has reported first that investigators of the attempted overthrow are meeting today with Ivanka Trump, the ex-president’s daughter and onetime adviser.

Ivanka reportedly will appear before the committee Wednesday, on the heels of a private deposition given by her husband and fellow senior adviser to the former president, Jared Kushner. Kushner appeared voluntarily. Ivanka was first asked to appear in January and talks have reportedly been ongoing since then.


The probe is particularly interested in hearing details from Ivanka about her father’s conduct before, during, and after the siege. Former Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser, Keith Kellogg, told the committee he and Ivanka were present when Trump called Pence to pressure him to stop the certification.

As that call ended, Ivanka turned to Kellogg and said of the vice president: “Mike Pence is a good man.”

It is unclear whether Ivanka Trump will appear remotely or in person. A representative for the committee declined to comment to Daily Kos on Wednesday.

If she indeed appears, she will be the second member of the Trump family circle to testify since Kushner went first last week.

Investigators have targeted phone records belonging to Eric Trump, as well as records belonging to Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée. Guilfoyle received a separate subpoena direct from the committee on March 3 following a voluntary appearance that fell apart fast.

The committee has appeared generous with Trump family members thus far, extending opportunities for “friendly” or voluntary meetings and granting time to negotiate appearances.

Guilfoyle was afforded that friendliness, too, but balked on the day of her deposition, when she realized she would have to testify in front of members of the committee as well as House counsel. Her attorney chalked up the opposition to a fear of media leaks.

Guilfoyle’s fundraising efforts around the rally at the Ellipse on January 6 are front and center for the probe. Last year, text messages obtained by ProPublica showed Guilfoyle boasting about raising no less than $3 million for the event. She was also backstage at the rally, seen celebrating with those closest to the president just before his speech to a crowd that would soon descend violently on the U.S. Capitol.

It is unclear whether Guilfoyle has agreed to cooperate since her last botched appearance.

Kushner’s appearance went smoothly, according to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who serves on the committee. Lofgren was mum on details during an appearance on CNN following the meeting but described Kushner as “precise.”

Though she did say Kushner “did not volunteer” anything.

The meeting lasted six hours but Lofgren emphasized that the deposition was not “volatile.”

Fellow January 6 investigator Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) told NPR that Kushner’s testimony was “helpful.”

“I think that the committee really appreciates hearing information directly from people who have relevant facts about January 6, and the fact that Jared Kushner came as a witness is helpful to building the story of our investigation,” the Virginia Democrat said.

Unlike Ivanka, Kushner was not in Washington, D.C., on January 6.

He was heading back to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia while she, according to testimony already provided to the committee, was busy trying to convince her father to say something publicly to soothe the mob attacking the Capitol and threatening to kill Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Pence.

Where Ivanka’s insights into how she soothed her father during the riot are sought by the committee, it’s likely that investigators asked Kushner about the widely reported role he played: telling Trump that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

Luria said that Kushner’s testimony allowed the committee to “substantiate information” while providing “his own take on different reports on the January 6 attack.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Kimberly Guilfoyle

The Flakiest Falsehoods Told At Republican Convention

Republicans told countless lies over the past four days of the 2020 Republican National Convention, speaking as if the pandemic that's killed more than 180,000 people in the United States is over, suggesting Donald Trump oversaw an economic expansion in the middle of the worst recession the country has faced since the Great Depression, and blaming Democrats for violence on Trump's watch.

A handful of those lies were so false and confusing they are worth singling out and debunking.

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