Trump followed up his “Quiet, piggy” moment by berating another female journalist, Mary Bruce of ABC News, who asked Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, during his appearance with the president, about his culpability in the dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. US intelligence concluded that the crown prince gave the order.
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“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Trump chided Bruce. When she later asked why Trump was waiting for Congress to release the Epstein files when he could do it unilaterally, he called her question “a horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question.” He added that Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, should look into revoking ABC’s broadcast licence.
Trump even defamed Khashoggi, saying that a lot of people didn’t like him and noting cavalierly that “things happen.”
Yes, Things Happen when you have no morals and your family is doing lucrative business deals with the Saudis.
By contrast, Trump was his most charming self Friday in his “fascist v socialist” meeting with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. He had blasted Mamdani earlier as a “communist” and “JEW HATER” and threatened to withhold federal funding for New York and send in troops. But by the end of their Oval Office news conference, the two were so lovey-dovey, a Fox News anchor warned that JD Vance might have to move over for Mamdani. And Trump, who once warned that wealthy New Yorkers and businesses would flee if the democratic socialist were elected, dramatically flipped, saying he would feel very comfortable moving back to Gotham under this mayor.
(“It was a Great Honour meeting Zohran Mamdani, the new Mayor of New York City!” Trump gushed in a bromance-y Truth Social post featuring pictures of the pair on a colonnade and posing in front of FDR’s portrait.)
It just proved that Trump admires charismatic winners more than he cares about ideology – or consistency. Mamdani was prepared, focusing on their common ground while flattering Trump by noting his election statistics and hometown roots, and avoiding Dear Leader fawning. He strategically embraced Trump as he touted the affordability issue, which the billionaire president loved. Seeing Americans restive at his fixation on foreign conflicts, Trump is feigning a new-found interest in grocery prices.
The president was so taken with Mamdani, he even jovially told him, in response to a Fox News reporter’s question, to go ahead and repeat his campaign claim that Trump is “a fascist”. Trump also defended Mamdani from the incendiary falsehood of Elise Stefanik, the Republican who’s running for governor of New York, that the Muslim mayor-elect is a “jihadist”.
Stefanik, a Trump henchwoman, broke away from the president on this issue, doubling down and posting on Friday evening that Mamdani is “Kathy Hochul’s jihadist.”
Unfortunately, we don’t get to see this genial Trump very much these days. He’s mean when he’s cornered, like the snapping turtle I had as a pet when I was a child. Republicans got creamed in the recent elections. To extend the porcine metaphor, Trump’s polls are dropping, to use a Dave Barry phrase, “like a pig out of a helicopter”.
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The president, ordinarily a master at recasting reality, had to give up his ludicrous attempt to paint the Epstein files as a Democratic hoax. Labelling Marjorie Taylor Greene, his former acolyte who now says she identifies with the Epstein victims, a “traitor” backfired.
On Friday night, Greene announced in a social media post that she was leaving Congress and said she didn’t want to face a “hateful” primary stirred by Trump.
“Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men,” she wrote, “should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the president of the United States, whom I fought for.”
She added, “I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better.”
And Trump’s jeering post about Republican congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the cosponsor of the bill to get the files released, wasn’t well received. Trump mocked Massie, a widower, for marrying again 16 months after his wife died. “Boy, that was quick!” This coming from the man who went straight from cheating with Marla Maples during his Ivana marriage to marrying her at the Plaza a year later.
Maligning members of his own party raised questions about why he was so desperate to hide the files of a child molester who was once his pal; the two bonded over their leering predilection for young women.
In a rare show of rebellion, Republicans refused to bend the knee and pretend that it was OK to shield a sexual pervert and give his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, treats in prison and pardon dreams just because Trump didn’t want the details of his involvement with Epstein to surface.
In emails Democrats released, Epstein wrote that “Trump had spent hours at my house” with one of the victims and that he believed Trump knew more than he had acknowledged, and called Trump “evil beyond belief”. You know you’re in trouble when someone evil beyond belief calls you evil beyond belief.
