This entry is dated January 6, 2009, and it’s about the actress Kelly Preston. It’s pretty pathetic on its face, but after you read it, I’ll tell you why I think that this—by itself—makes Trump ineligible to be taken seriously by any woman, let alone voted for by one.
I have always respected people who were loyal and faithful—which brings to mind Kelly Preston. A long time ago, before I was married, I met Kelly Preston at a club and worked like hell to try and pick her up. She was beautiful, personable, and definitely had allure. At the time I had no idea she was married to John Travolta.
In any event, my track record on this subject has always been outstanding, but Kelly wouldn’t give me the time of day. She was very nice, very elegant, but I didn’t have a chance with her, and that was that.
When I later found out she was married to John, I liked and respected her even more. Some people have values that matter to them, and she is one of them. Her loyalty was unwavering and I have always remembered that about her.
Being true to someone is very close to being true to yourself. That’s a valuable attribute in today’s world.
Why on earth was he blogging about the time, years before, when he struck out with Kelly Preston? What does the arrogance of the phrase “My track record on this subject has always been outstanding” have to do with her?
This was a blog post . . . about Kelly Preston’s . . . son dying.
Jett Travolta. Sixteen. A seizure, while on a family vacation.
This self-absorbed boasting about his brilliance at picking up women . . . is his idea of a condolence note for the devastating death of a sixteen-year-old boy . . . a subject he finally gets around to in the last of the twelve sentences he wrote:
“I’m sure she was a wonderful mother to Jett and my thoughts are with her and her family after their terrible loss.”
No, they weren’t!
His thoughts were about . . . himself.
His thoughts are always about . . . himself.
*
If you can still vote for a man like this, explain your reasons to your maker, not to me.
TRUMP PRAISES ANOTHER DICTATOR
Post date • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27
So, Donald Trump, you have now sided with another dictator, against the United States.
And people probably didn’t hear about it because (1) for sixteen months you have generated a dozen stories a day that would’ve caused any other candidate to withdraw and flee to the Caymans, and (2) you have almost run out of new dictators to praise.
I’m going to let the reader here try to guess who the new addition is.
We know it can’t be Kim Jong-un . . .
You already praised him last January . . .
“If you look at North Korea, this guy—I mean, he’s like a maniac, okay? And you gotta give him credit. How many young guys—he was like twenty-six or twenty-five when his father died—take over these tough generals? You know, it’s pretty amazing when you think about it. How does he do that? . . .
“He goes in, he takes over, and he’s the boss. It’s incredible. He wiped out the uncle, he wiped out this one, that one—I mean, this guy doesn’t play games . . .”
“Incredible” . . . “amazing” . . . “you gotta give him credit.”
Sure, you do, Trump—if you are more interested in a despot killing people the way Stalin used to kill people than you are interested in us and how we deal with a psychopath who rules his country on the premise that he will eventually stage nuclear war against this country.
So it’s not Kim Jong-un.
*
So—Putin?
Can’t be Putin, can it, Trump?
Three weeks ago, Homeland Security and the director of national intelligence said both agencies are “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.”
In simpler language, Trump: the Russians hacked us. Just like you invited them to, at your last news conference.
And the intelligence community told you that—presumably in much more detail.
And then Hillary Clinton brings it up in the last debate, and you say . . .
“She has no idea whether it’s Russia or China or anybody else. Our country has no idea.”
She explains it, and you interrupt her to say, “I doubt it.”
So you’ve said Putin and Russia are probably right—and our intelligence agencies are probably wrong.
How many times is that, that you’ve defended Putin and Russia, Trump? I’ve lost count!
And how many times have you praised Putin? Over Obama? Over Clinton?
Just this week, you did it again . . .
You told Reuters you had questions about “how she is going to go back and negotiate with this man who she has made to be so evil.”
“Made to be so evil?”
He is evil, you disloyal bastard!
*
So the new strongman whose side you took isn’t Russian.
Chinese, maybe?
No. You already praised them—twenty-six years ago!
In Playboy!
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”
If you are an actual American, Trump, after you call the Chinese at Tiananmen Square “vicious” and “horrible”—there is no “but.”
There is just vicious and horrible, Trump.
*
So is it Saddam Hussein?
No, you already praised him, too.
July: “You know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. They were a terrorist? It was over.”
Once again, Trump, your stupidity about foreign dictators—dead or alive—is rivaled only by your naiveté. If, somehow, the only people Saddam Hussein killed were terrorists, then what you said might make sense.
But he killed at least 200,000 of his own citizens. I’m guessing the children he killed probably weren’t terrorists, Trump.
*
So your new candidate for BFF isn’t Iraqi . . .
But we have actually finally gotten warm.
Rodrigo Duterte, the lunatic elected in the Philippines on a mandate of shooting first and asking questions later about possible drug dealers, drug addicts—basically anybody he thinks should die now, without a trial. Or often without an arrest.
Approximately two thousand dead in his first hundred days in office.
Oh, and in August, Trump, this buffoon said to Secretary of State Kerry that . . . “your ambassador is a gay son of a bitch.”
A month later, he said of President Obama, “Son of a whore, I will curse you.”
So now, in an interview with Reuters, who did you blame for this murderer Duterte insulting our leaders and damaging his country’s relationship with us?
Him?
Of course not! He’s showing power, right?
Only you, Trump, could blame this on Obama, because you think our president “wants to focus on his golf game” rather than engage with these tyrants, so it’s Obama’s fault that Duterte showed—again quoting you—“a lack of respect for our country.”
“Our . . . country,” Trump?
I hear that and I think—which country do you view as your country?
For all the flag hugging, figurative and literal, when it’s North Korea versus the United States, you side with North Korea.
When it’s Russia versus the United States, you side with Russia.
When it’s China versus the United States, you side with China.
When it’s Iraq versus the United States, you side with Iraq.
And now, when it’s the Philippines versus the United States, you side with the Philippines!
Trump, I’ve asked this before and I have to ask it again:
Are you loyal to the United States of America?
WORSE THAN WATERGATE
Post date • MONDAY, OCTOBER 31
Donald Trump is—for once—correct.
It is worse than Watergate.
And, as in Watergate, the director of the FBI must resign.
First—he must retract his statement, then resign.
*
There are only two alternatives:
Either James B. Comey knowingly tried to tamper with a presidential election, eleven days out, on a hint of a possibility of a rumor of an inference of a chance of Clinton emails that reportedly aren’t from Clinton and aren’t to Clinton, which his bureau hadn’t bothered to tell him about, nor gotten a warrant for, until last night . . .
Or James B. Comey had no idea that his statement would impact a presidential election in such a way that there would not be a chance to disprove the negative he threw against the wall, like the shit—by all accounts—that it is.
In the former case, Comey—once that rarest of individuals, the nonpartisan legal hero from the Bush administration—is a criminal who has desperately and personally and at the last minute tried to deliver this country and its 240 years of democracy into the hands of a self-obsessed, compulsively lying fascist with no respect nor interest in anyone or anything besides himself and no understanding of the real world and the billions he could kill in a fit of pique over something somebody said about him on TV.
In the latter case, Comey is merely criminally stupid—a man who did not foresee that his actions were the equivalent of crying “Fire!” in a theater, without saying which theater he means and with no evidence that there is any fire anywhere.
Regardless of which—stupidity or criminality—his viability as the head of the FBI ended the moment he sent his note last Friday to, among others, the chairman of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Who should also resign—today.
Because this is far worse than just an FBI director swinging the mighty weight of his bureau against one presidential candidate while refusing to confirm that it is even investigating the other presidential candidate and his staff and former staff for their manifestly obvious ties to Russian propaganda and disinformation.
Far worse.
The actions of the chairman of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform—before and after FBI director Comey’s letter—imply either collusion . . . or guesswork on the chairman’s part that rises to the level of extrasensory perception.
Because on Friday, on Saturday, yesterday, and even this morning, the timeline of how that chairman, Representative Chaffetz of Utah—former wrinkle-cream spokesman—came to know about the investigation has been almost utterly ignored . . . and it is, at best, disturbing.
On the night of Friday, October 7, hours after the release of the Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump boasting about his preferred methods for sexual assault, Chaffetz spoke of his fifteen-year-old daughter:
“Do you think I can look her in the eye and tell her that I endorsed Donald Trump for president when he acts like this, and his apology? That was no apology, that was an apology for getting caught. . . . So I’m not going to put my good name and reputation and my family behind Donald Trump for president when he acts like this. I just can’t do it.”
*
The morality of Chairman Chaffetz lasted exactly nineteen days.
At 9:05 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time last Wednesday, October 26, Mr. Chaffetz—out of nowhere—suddenly tweeted:
“I will not defend or endorse @realDonaldTrump, but I am voting for him. HRC is that bad. HRC is bad for the USA.”
So much for Mr. Chaffetz’s fifteen-year-old daughter.
Sometime around noon last Friday, Mr. Chaffetz received his communication from FBI Director Comey about a hint of a possibility of a rumor of an inference of a chance of Clinton emails that aren’t from Clinton and aren’t to Clinton, which his bureau hadn’t bothered to tell him about, nor gotten a warrant for, until last night.
Immediately after receiving Comey’s ode to vagueness, Mr. Chaffetz put two essential, critical, devastating words in Mr. Comey’s mouth.
At 12:57 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time last Friday, October 28—thirty-nine hours and fifty-two minutes after he repudiated his own moral stance and declared his support for Trump—Chaffetz tweeted:
“FBI Dir just informed me, ‘The FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.’ Case reopened.”
*
That, of course, is not what Comey said.
Mr. Comey did not say he had reopened the case.
Of all the pernicious, anti-FBI, anti-American, anti-democracy things James B. Comey did last Friday (and before), saying he had “reopened the case” . . . was not one of them.
Jason Chaffetz said that.
And that made it easy for people to think Comey had legally reopened the case.
And then Donald Trump said that—and lied!
And then television—with the exception of my former colleague the noble Pete Williams of NBC—said that, and broadcast a lie!
And then newspapers, with almost no exceptions from left or right, said that—and printed a lie!
And by the time they started backtracking, the toothpaste was out of the tube.
Except this was probably imaginary toothpaste. If we take Director Comey at his word, he had no idea. He still doesn’t. His agents reportedly knew of the emails at the beginning of October, yet he didn’t get a warrant until last night! He may not have the slightest idea before the election, and he has nothing with which to undo his malfeasance, or misfeasance, or betrayal of the democratic process.
*
But ignore not Chaffetz.
Why, after nearly three weeks of righteous indignation at Trump’s barbarism toward women—indeed, toward people—why, late Wednesday night, did he suddenly pivot back to supporting him?
Why did he reverse, thirty-six hours before Comey’s historically slovenly, craven note that left Pandora’s box unjustly unlocked so that a sniveling little coward like Chaffetz could peek inside, then deliberately exaggerate what he saw, and then fuel Donald Trump’s latest delusional rage?
Most assuredly, Jason Chaffetz is a prophet worthy of his religion’s Joseph Smith. Or he is the recipient of an accident of timing so unlikely as to be almost biblical.
Or . . . he knew or suspected that Comey’s note was coming.
How ever would he have found out about that?
FBI agents who reportedly knew.
An FBI director who was reportedly suddenly terrified of leaks.
And if Chaffetz knew that Comey’s note was coming, then he and Comey or other sources in the FBI have colluded to try to manipulate the election, in which case Mr. Chaffetz and Mr. Comey may need the best criminal defense attorneys money may procure.
And if Chaffetz knew that Comey’s note was coming—did he tell Trump?
And who can clear this up a week and a day before the most important election since the Civil War?
Oh, and that fifteen-year-old daughter Mr. Chaffetz isn’t so worried about anymore? She has far more to worry about than listening to the psychopath Trump boast about grabbing pussies.
Because she may soon be looking for a paternity test to prove that Jason Chaffetz is not her father—because he and James Comey may have been the linchpins in a plot to turn over the country—by treachery—to Donald Trump.
And it is a plot that is indeed—as Trump boasted—worse than Watergate.
Chapter 3
NOVEMBER, PRE–ELECTION DAY
2016
THE TRUMPCHURIAN CANDIDATE
Post date • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1
“I think”—says the loyal senator in the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate about his paranoia-mongering colleague—“if John Iselin were a paid Soviet agent, he could not do more to harm this country than he’s doing now.”
“Putin,” says Donald Trump in his speech at Grand Rapids, Michigan, yesterday about his opponent Hillary Clinton, “who she likes to say bad things about—you wonder why the world hates us.”
“A former senior intelligence officer for a Western country,” writes David Corn in Mother Jones this morning, has “provided the [FBI] with memos, based on his recent interactions with sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump . . .”
“If,” said Donald Trump about Russia during the third debate, “we got along well, that would be good . . .”
“The FBI,” reports NBC News, “has been conducting a preliminary inquiry into Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s foreign business connections.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” Trump said in a speech at Virginia Beach nearly two months ago, “if we got along with Russia?”
“A Group of Computer Scientists,” reads a headline at Slate.com, “Believes a Trump [Computer] Server Was Communicating with a Russian Bank.”
“At least,” Trump said last December when asked about Putin allegedly killing opponents and journalists, “he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country. . . . I think our country does plenty of killing also.”
“The speech is short,” says the wife of the Senator Iselin character in The Manchurian Candidate. “But it’s the most rousing speech I’ve ever read. It’s been worked on, here and in Russia, on and off, for over eight years . . . rallying a nation of television viewers to hysteria, to sweep us up into the White House with powers that will make martial law seem like anarchy.”
Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke) Page 10