Truth and no consequences

 Spit-take quote of the day:  "And friends of mine have said, you are the most honest person in the world."  Donald J. Trump, testifying under oath in the civil suit against the Trump Organization.  

In what even the New York Times calls "a series of meandering non sequiturs, political digressions and self-aggrandizing defenses" (is it really still so hard to write "lies"?) Trump told the court that he had nothing to do with the operations of the TO because he was too busy saving the world from nuclear holocaust by being alternately cuddly and stern with Kim Jong-un.  ("Don't get credit for it.  That's OK."  Modest, too.)  And who was hands-on every day as the Organization exaggerated its assets by over two billion dollars?  "My son Eric is much more involved with it than I am."  Tuck and roll, Eric, maybe the bus wheels will miss your head.

Luckily the rules are a lot stricter in criminal court, assuming his sub-Darrow attorneys are dumb enough to put him on the stand.  If he's asked about the toilet trove at Mar a Lago, we can expect the judge to strike a long peroration on the water pressure in the shower.

Or at least ask, "What were you thinking with that chandelier?"

But lying is becoming our national pastime.  Clarence Thomas finally handed in his late homework.  His financial disclosure for the past year lists three trips on Harlan Crow's private plane but says his security detail insisted on one of them to protect him from the mob of pro-choice women enraged by the Dobbs decision.  (Remember how they burned Cleveland to the ground?)  Samuel Alito, also tardy, at least didn't claim he had to hide out in an Alaska fishing camp.  He only grabbed that flight because of a little-known FAA requirement that every seat be filled.

Tucker Carlson continues to promote his story that Trump faces assassination, the logical outcome of so many indictments.  According to him, though not to polls, the orange guy's popularity increases with every fresh case, which means "official Washington" will have no choice but to kill him ("I mean, you know, graph it out, man!" he told Adam Carolla, probably concluding with that weird, whinnying laugh).  I'm starting to think Tuckoo really hates Trump, as he said in those inter-office texts.  After all, Trump cost him his beloved TV show and reduced him to Xitter.  There must be a long line of people who hate Trump -- disbarred lawyers, bankrupted investors, brutalized women, suckers who served time for his January 6 Putsch, sub-contractors and employees who never got paid, like a less glamorous Murder on the Orient Express.  Only instead of stabbing, they will testify against him.  Or, like most of us, vote against him.

Has Republican homophobia reached a crisis?  Today's Washington Post reveals the early life of George Santos in Brazil, when he (or should I say Kitara Ravache?) "shone" as the star of Niteroi's Pride Parade and performed in drag shows.  Now he stars on the "Don't say gay" circuit, having decided the Republican grift pays better.  Santos faces federal fraud charges and his future in Congress is doubtful.  Not so Tim Scott, the other South Carolina Senator, who qualified for the first presidential debate.  Big party donors are concerned about his seeming lack of a significant female other.  Scott told Axios in May that he has a girlfriend but he prefers to keep her identity private, and also that singleness gives him time, energy and "latitude" he would otherwise lack.  To be frank, Scott was never going to be the nominee anyway, but now his party can claim the reason isn't racism.

In other proof of not-racism, the Jacksonville shooter's manifesto has been released.  He calls for the murder of Eminem and Machine Gun Kelly and praises Anders Breivik, Timothy McVeigh and Seung-hui Cho (Virginia Tech 2007).  And he was a fan of Clarence Thomas, "the rare principled conservative, interprets laws based on the Constitution instead of doing f***y activist shit like the last half-century's worth of Supreme Court justices."  See?  Completely colorblind lunatic.  And this was before Eminem had to tell Vivek Ramaswamy to stop using "Lose Yourself," which left Iowa voters underwhelmed.  I know, Iowa, ground zero for hip-hop!  (I happen to know Meredith Willson was planning a hip-hop musical about Herbert Hoover when he died.  Lin-Manuel Miranda got there first with Hamilton.)

Speaking of Willson, Ramaswamy may want to learn the lyrics to "Trouble" now that the "glib, shallow, overbearing, smooth-talking biotech entrepreneur" has been compared to Professor Harold Hill by party elder Karl Rove in party publication the Wall Street Journal.  Only far worse, and devoid of the charm of Robert Preston.  Rove seems shaken by the possibility of this hustler becoming Trump's running mate.  I can't help it, I love these intergenerational smackdowns -- like Margie Greene declaring Mitch McConnell "not fit for office" along with Biden, Feinstein and Fetterman.  Tomorrow belongs to her!

YouTube -- is there anything it can't do?  It will carry Trump's Fulton County trial live.  With up to nineteen defendants, expect comparisons to the Nuremberg tribunal.