<This is one of my rare, but firm, bipartisan positions: In no neighborhood in any American city can there be found a greater number of horrible bosses than on Capitol Hill. (There once was a Massachusetts congresscritter whose new staffers were told by the veterans in the office that, on pain of death, the boss should not be told that members of Congress can avail themselves of police escorts if they think they need to get somewhere in a hurry.) It should not be necessary at this point to mention that the congressional office buildings more than occasionally turn into Peyton Place with position papers. And then, apparently, there is Congresswoman Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina and thoroughgoing public nuisance.

Congresswoman Mace did an interview with The Daily Mail, one of Great Britain’s finer sewage-treatment plants, in which she did everything but rave about strawberries and rattle little steel balls in her fist. From The Hill:

“I knew that they were sabotaging the office for a while. I didn’t know to the extent that they were doing it,” Mace told the Daily Mail. She said her team signed her name on documents without permission, and “one of them submerged their electronic devices under water so we couldn’t access their files.” She claimed they would delete files, so new staff wouldn’t have access to them. The South Carolina representative, a mother to two, said one of her staff members hacked her devices, tracking her for nine months with access to her children’s calendars and Mace’s doctor appointments and medical information. She added that former staff mismanaged nearly $1 [million] from her office budget as well. One staff member would leak the names of new hires in an attempt for negative stories to be written about them, and interns quit because former staff threatened that “they would never get a job on the hill if they worked in my office,” she claimed. “The stories I have from some of my former staff are horrific, and were a massive invasion of my privacy,” Mace said.

Last February, it should be noted, The Daily Beast reported that nobody who’d been working in Mace’s office in November of 2023 was working there anymore. That’s some impressive churn right there. Coal tenders on the Titanic had better job security.

The former staffer added that Mace “has no idea what it actually means to be a member of Congress and is too scared and self-conscious to deal with other people, so she accomplished nothing.” “All this is why pretty much every staffer and fellow member on the Hill thinks she’s a joke,” this ex-employee said. “Also a big reason why she’s only able to hire former George Santos staffers right now.”

Now some of her ex-staffers—and they are, at this point, legion—again have taken to the public prints, in The Washington Post this time, to say, in essence, that, yeah, their former boss is kind of a lot.

Six former Mace staffers, speaking on the condition of anonymity to preserve their future employment prospects on Capitol Hill, said that Mace mischaracterized normal office functions as part of a staff conspiracy against her. They said that like most staffers serving members of Congress, some people in the office had access to her personal, political and official calendars to coordinate her schedule and manage daily operations.

Also, the staffers said, the boss was rather a deadbeat.

Three staffers also questioned Mace’s claim that the money should have been directed toward staff salaries, as she was notorious for underpaying staff and often declined to provide staffers with small raises. They said that Mace was prone to asking staffers to cover the costs of everyday administrative tasks, like filling up her car with gas, and that she often failed to reimburse them when they followed up for repayment. Mace once asked an aide to buy cupcakes to celebrate her then-fiancé’s birthday, according to two former staffers. She asked everyone in the office to go to the Oversight Committee staff room and sing “Happy Birthday” to her then-fiancé. She never reimbursed the aide for the purchase, the staffers said.

Mace has between now and the fall to get the cheese back on her cracker. She’s facing a tough Republican primary coming up, so her access to free cupcakes may well be terminated before Halloween.>

<As Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan reaches a critical turning point, an amusing paradox has emerged. For once, Trump claims to be happy with his lawyers’ performance after a long history of fractious relationships with his attorneys. This might ordinarily be a welcome development for him — but the problem is that they are not doing a particularly good job defending him.

Put simply, Trump’s legal team has made several considerable, and at times baffling, missteps over the course of the trial that have increased the odds of a conviction.

Adding to the strangeness of all this is the fact that Trump’s defense team is probably the strongest group that he has assembled in any of his various legal proceedings to date. The principal lawyers are experienced criminal litigators who, as a group, are moderately to very well regarded among New York City’s white-collar bar. At the moment, it’s impossible to know for sure how Trump will ultimately fare in the case. The trial is now likely to turn in large part on the jury’s assessment of Michael Cohen’s credibility, which has always been the central risk for prosecutors.

But it’s also clear that Trump’s lawyers are pursuing a flawed and risky strategy. Why? Most likely it’s not them, but him. Trump is the client, and he gets the final word on major decisions. So far as I can tell, this team has managed to stay on Trump’s good side by indulging — perhaps necessarily — his worst traits and instincts. It may be their downfall.

Most devastatingly, lead attorney Todd Blanche, in his opening statement, repeated Trump’s claim that he never had a sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels. That was followed by days of testimony last week that — if you believe Daniels’ very persuasive account — effectively demonstrated that a central plank of Trump’s defense is a lie and has been a lie for years, and that the jury cannot trust even Trump’s lead counsel to tell them the truth.

A bunch ofTrump-supporting legal commentators have claimed that Daniels’ testimony was irrelevant to the case — a truly baffling interpretation of events given what actually happened. Prosecutors had no choice but to put Daniels on after Blanche affirmatively called her a liar in his opening statement, and they had to elicit considerable detail about the sexual encounter in order to establish her credibility in response to Blanche’s attack inside the courtroom and Trump’s years of attacks outside of it. Not only was that the appropriate way for the government to defend the integrity of its investigation and its witness, it was also an unmissable opportunity for them to tank the credibility of Trump’s entire legal defense.

Another major misstep occurred in the form of defense lawyer Susan Necheles’ cross-examination of Daniels. Necheles went to considerable lengths to suggest that Daniels had changed her story over time and had been motivated by money when she agreed to keep her story quiet in the run-up to the 2016 election. None of that matters much under the circumstances, since the only thing that the jury really had to take away is that Daniels and Trump had sex.

It is also very bad when the witness manages to embarrass the cross-examiner, as Daniels did on multiple occasions. Trump’s legal team appears to have assumed that Daniels was dumb. What emerged instead from Daniels’ time on cross-examination was a woman who is resourceful, sharp and quick-witted. She effectively turned the tables on Necheles, likely making her more sympathetic and credible in the eyes of the jury. (All of the pearl-clutching about the intimate nature of Daniels’ testimony from the Trump-defending commentariat clearly falls flat in the year 2024.)

Even before Daniels took the stand, Trump’s lawyers were not off to a good start. For months, Trump’s pretrial court filings were laden with pointless, distracting and false broadsides about how he is being politically persecuted by his political opposition. It may have been good for his campaign, but it also made it much easier for the judge to rule against him and his lawyers on pretty much every important issue headed into the trial.

The government’s case also began with some witnesses — in particular, the former publisher of the National Enquirer David Pecker and Daniels’ former lawyer Keith Davidson — who Trump’s legal team should have portrayed as peripheral to the government’s case, and as lacking any direct knowledge of Trump’s conduct in connection with the alleged falsification of business records (the actual core of the case). Instead, Trump attorney Emil Bove pursued oddly long and wandering lines of cross-examination that scored few clear and relevant points for the jury to take away.

If you spend any time reporting on the inner workings of Trump’s legal team, as I have, several things become clear very quickly.....>

<....First, Trump is largely unmanageable. He is unfocused and not as intelligent as he thinks he is. He may have had extensive experience as a civil litigant, but criminal litigation — particularly as a defendant — is very different. Even the lawyers who have joined Trump’s legal team hoping to crack the code with him have ultimately been disappointed, diminished or both. They routinely leave or are fired. In the last year alone, these include: Tim Parlatore, Jim Trusty, John Rowley and Joe Tacopina.

Second, Trump makes the key strategic decisions in his legal cases, including his criminal cases. Yes, he does so on the basis of his attorneys’ advice — the ones working for him at the moment, at least — but he’s the decider, as another former president once said. This is not surprising. It is as it should be, in fact.

Clients are largely entitled to make the key strategic decisions in their cases, and attorneys are largely required to follow those decisions unless they independently run afoul of other ethical constraints. It is worth bearing this in mind at the moment — both because it is helpful for understanding what is going on in Trump’s trial right now, and also because if Trump loses this case, he will probably start blaming his lawyers for decisions that he himself made.

Third, Trump has two key strategies for defending himself in legal settings, and they are the same ones that he uses in political settings. First: Deny, deny, deny. And second: Attack, attack, attack. It’s something he learned from Roy Cohn and has been deploying for 50 years.

All of this has been on display in the course of Trump’s trial. You could see Trump’s handiwork in Blanche’s opening denial of Daniels’ account — a grievous strategic and tactical error for a serious lawyer. You could see it in Necheles’ unpersuasive and protracted cross-examination of Daniels and in her unsuccessful effort to portray Daniels as a liar. And you could see it in Bove’s disproportionately sharp cross-examinations of witnesses who should have been diminished and dismissed by Trump’s team.

These decisions are so obviously wrong as a strategic matter that it is frankly hard to believe that Trump’s defense team all agreed with them. These lawyers are not a bunch of hacks, and they aren’t dumb either. We may never know what went on within Trump’s legal team headed into this trial — most if not all of that information is likely to remain shielded from public view — but they almost certainly tried and failed to talk Trump down from some of these approaches.

As the government’s case draws to a close after Cohen’s testimony, Trump will have to make the most important decision in his legal cases to date: Should he take the stand in his own defense?

The answer is clearly “no,” and no competent defense lawyer would advise him to take the stand under the circumstances.

That is usually the standard advice that criminal defense lawyers give to their clients, but in Trump’s case, the government also has an unusual wealth of material with which to discredit him on cross-examination, including a long history of lying that has been substantiated by major court rulings and jury verdicts in civil proceedings against him in the past year.

Trump is also thin-skinned and incapable of answering difficult questions straightforwardly — very bad traits for any witness on cross-examination.

More to the point, Trump has testified in his defense twice in the last six months, and both were a disaster.

When Trump took the stand to defend himself in the civil business-fraud case brought by the New York attorney general, he ended up arguing with and admonished by the judge, who later ruled against him to the tune of more than $350 million.

When Trump took the stand to defend himself in the second defamation trial launched by writer E. Jean Carroll after Trump denied her sexual assault allegation, he was on and off the stand quickly after muttering under his breath and answering a few questions.

His courtroom behavior in that case later got him into more trouble when he got up and walked off during the closing argument of Carroll’s lawyer Robert Kaplan. When that happened, Kaplan later told me, “I thought to myself, ‘Okay, that’s another $10 million.’” The jury ultimately ordered Trump to pay Carroll more than $80 million.

If Trump takes the stand, it will almost certainly be over the advice of his own lawyers. And it could be disastrous for the former president — whether he knows it or not.>

<Not all that long ago, I thought that the trial currently being held in The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump would be the <last> one I’d want to see as the first one tried against the former president. It seemed the least serious of the cases against him. Here’s a man who tried to overthrow American democracy by launching a coup to stay in power. A man who allegedly stole dozens of boxes of classified national-security documents from the White House, some containing secrets about other countries’ nuclear-weapons capabilities, then lied about the documents, concealed them, and obstructed a federal investigation about them.

I thought I would have strongly preferred the cases about those matters to have gone first, particularly the secret-documents case, which substantively would be a lock, were it not for the judge overseeing it. But I feel the need to admit error. The truth is, I’ve come around to the view that People v. Trump is, in at least some ways, the perfect case to put Trump in the dock for the first time, and—I hope, but we’ll see—perhaps prison.

Because this case really captures Donald Trump. The legal commentariat have been engaged in an odd debate about what to call it. “The Stormy Daniels case.” “The hush-money case.” “The porn-star-hush-money case.” (Personally, that’s always been my favorite, and I think it sounds even better in German—Pornostarschweigegeldrechtsfall.) The more legally precise would like it to be known as “the New York business-records-falsification case,” because that’s what the New York penal code says it is. Some high-minded people I know prefer “the New York election-interference prosecution,” because it involves the concealment of a matter that might well have affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential race.

All these locutions work, but what the case is really about is Trump’s modus operandi—lying. He’s a matryoshka doll of mendacity. He lies, usually lies some more, and then often lies about the lies he’s previously told. He told at least 30,573 lies while president, by The Washington Post’s count. He lies almost whenever he opens his mouth, even when truth would better serve him. To be sure, his other criminal cases involve lies—lies about the 2016 election, lies about the military secrets he stole. But the alleged lies in People v. Trump strike at the core of his moral putrescence—and Trump knows it. They are lies allegedly meant to cover up a tawdry man’s tawdry behavior. The case truly embodies Donald Trump. And for that reason, I think, it deeply disturbs him.

That’s what stood out to me last Thursday as I sat in court watching the second day of the cross-examination of the prosecution’s witness, Stormy Daniels, who had taken the stand to testify that she’d met the defendant at a celebrity golf tournament on the south shore of Lake Tahoe in 2006, that he invited her to his room at Harrah’s hotel and casino there (ostensibly as a prelude to dinner), that she (rather unenthusiastically) acceded to his advance, that they then (rather briefly) had sex, and then that, 10 years later, days before the defendant won the 2016 presidential election, she was paid off by the defendant’s fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, to keep her mouth shut about it all. (Trump denies having had sex with Daniels, and he also denies having falsified records in an effort to suppress reports of the liaison.)

Strictly speaking, Daniels’s testimony wasn’t necessary—particularly the details about the sex. The case is about whether Trump caused the falsification of business records at his business, and whether that falsification was intended to cover up another crime (among other offenses, violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act). Daniels has absolutely nothing to say about the Trump Organization’s business records, and the fact that she was ultimately paid the hush money isn’t in dispute. The sex strictly doesn’t matter: If Daniels and Trump didn’t have sex—as Trump maintains—but the facts alleged by the New York County District Attorney’s Office were otherwise the same and proved, Trump could still be found guilty of a Class E felony under the New York penal law.....>

<....But as we have so often seen over the past nine years, Trump’s instinctive, narcissistic mendacity came into self-defeating play once again—this time by making Daniels’s testimony more significant than it had to be. It’s hard to imagine that many sentient, honest human beings could believe Trump’s denials of having congressed with Daniels. Yet Trump continues to insist on denying it—not only in public, but in court. And not only is sex not an element of the crime, but his strongest defense—the one he could actually skate on—will be to argue that there is insufficient evidence that he knew his people were falsifying business records. This defense faces many problems—including that Trump personally signed (on the Resolute desk!) some checks (made out to Cohen) in packets with false backup attached. Still, Trump would have been best off having his lawyers focus their efforts on the question of his knowledge and intent regarding the payments.

As usual, though, this defendant just couldn’t help himself. The prosecution was entitled to put on evidence of the sex to establish Trump’s motive for the payoff and cover-up. The defendant could have had his lawyers not dispute the point, even stipulate to it. What’s the harm? His political supporters stand by him even though he’s already a civilly adjudicated sex offender, so why would they care one whit about what he did consensually for a couple of minutes with an adult-film actor once upon a time in Stateline, Nevada? Had he not insisted on contesting the point, Daniels might not have had to testify, or at least she might have been on and off the stand in a flash. Because, again, what ultimately matters in the case happened mostly in New York City in 2016.

Trump’s insistence on pointlessly contesting Daniels’s veracity entitled the prosecution to draw her account out even more than it otherwise could have—not only to establish a record on why Trump would have been motivated to hush Daniels up (because sex), but to bolster her credibility with detail of her recollection (about sex). As Justice Juan Merchan later told the defense counsel in denying their motion for a mistrial:

Your denial [of a sexual encounter] puts the jury in a position of having to choose who they believe: Donald Trump, who denies there was an encounter, or Stormy Daniels, who claims there was.

Although the People do not have to prove that a sexual encounter actually did occur, they do have the right to rehabilitate Ms. Daniels’ credibility and to corroborate her story, which was immediately attacked [by the defense] on opening statements.

The more specificity Ms. Daniels can provide about the encounter, the more the jury can weigh to determine whether the encounter did occur and, if so, whether they choose to credit Ms. Daniels’ story.

The result, thanks to the defendant, was the introduction of more evidence that made him look like a duplicitous clod. There were limits, to be sure. Merchan warned the prosecutors before Daniels took the stand that “we don’t need to know the details of the intercourse.” (The universe thanks you, Your Honor.) Accordingly, and in contrast with how some characterized it, Daniels’s testimony wound up not being very “graphic.” As the prosecution later pointed out to the court, “there was not a lot of detail elicited” about “the actual sexual encounter,” which was the subject of only a handful of questions put to the witness. Not just that, but the judge also sustained objections or struck testimony on what position Daniels and the defendant were in, whether she touched his skin, and how Daniels, as they coupled, “was staring at the ceiling … trying to think about anything other than what was happening there.”

In the end, the only somewhat lurid detail about the sex that actually got into the record was that the former president (in contrast with performers at her prophylactic-mandatory then-employer, Wicked Pictures), didn’t wear a condom, which concerned her. And that small factoid got in solely because the defense counsel inexplicably failed to object. (The judge later observed, “For the life of me, I don’t know why [the defense counsel Susan] Necheles didn’t object. She had just made about 10 objections, most of which were sustained. Why on earth she wouldn’t object to the mention of a condom, I don’t understand.”).....>

<....So the testimony wasn’t all that sexy, in the literal sense. Still, because of the defendant’s denial of what happened that night at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, the testimony ended up being deeply embarrassing to Trump. To bolster Daniels’s credibility, the prosecution’s questioning went into great detail about what led up to the fleeting fornication—essentially, her conversations with Trump beforehand. And that brought out some memorable, and highly believable, testimonial gems that perfectly capture the lowbrow, hyper-self-absorbed 45th president of the United States. There’s Trump telling Daniels, “You remind me of my daughter because she is smart and blond and beautiful.” And him admitting that he and his wife, Melania, “actually don’t even sleep in the same room.”

And there’s him repeatedly interrupting Daniels to talk about—whom else?—himself: “He would ask me questions and then not let me finish the answer. He kept cutting me off, and it was almost like he wanted to one-up me, which was just really hilarious when you think about it.” And there’s how, when the self-consumed future defendant asked, “Have you seen my new magazine?” and pulled out an issue with his face on it, Daniels called him “rude, arrogant, and pompous,” and said, “Someone should spank you with that. That’s the only interest I have in that magazine. Otherwise, I am leaving.” And there’s how, when finally faced with the prospect of Daniels walking out, Trump rolled the magazine up and gave it to her.

In that Nevada hotel room that night, Daniels said, she rose to the challenge:

“I took it from him and said, turn around. And I swatted him.”

Where?

“Right on the butt.”

The alleged spanking hardly could have rent Trump’s rump in 2006. But given his extreme vulnerability to narcissistic injury, the story surely had to have inflicted acute trauma upon his most delicate ego when Daniels told it 18 years later.

We need not speculate. The day before, Merchan had ruled on the district attorney’s third motion to hold Trump in contempt for violations of the court’s gag order, which restricts the defendant’s ability to make public statements attacking witnesses. And for the tenth time, Merchan held Trump in contempt. But more important, Merchan gave the defendant a warning. The legal maximum of a $1,000 fine for each count of contempt, the judge observed, had failed to deter Trump from violating the gag order; “therefore, going forward, this Court will have to consider a jail sanction if recommended.” He addressed the defendant directly, in open court: “The last thing I want to do is to put you in jail … But, at the end of the day, I have a job to do, and part of that job is to protect the dignity of the judicial system and compel respect … So, as much as I do not want to impose a jail sanction … I want you to understand that I will, if necessary and appropriate.”

That was where matters stood the next morning, when Daniels testified about the spanking: Trump was so very close to—perhaps just one more contumacious act away from—incarceration. And yet when he heard Daniels say she had spanked him, he almost landed himself in lockup. Not long after that testimony, the court took its regular midmorning break. The jury was excused, and Merchan immediately called the lawyers to the bench. He told the defense counsel that their obviously “upset” client had been “cursing audibly” and “shaking his head.”

Trump had done that, in particular, the judge said, “when Ms. Daniels was testifying about rolling up the magazine, and … smacking your client.” Quelle surprise.

“That’s contemptuous,” said an angry Merchan. “It has the potential to intimidate the witness.” Even without a gag order, and 10 prior violations of it, swearing at a prosecution witness is the kind of conduct that, before some judges, could quickly land a defendant in jail. Merchan commanded: “You need to speak to him. I won’t tolerate that.” And so the lawyers remonstrated with their client during the break. It was all a bit reminiscent of a moment in the second E. Jean Carroll defamation trial, when, within earshot of the jury, Trump had muttered that the trial was a “witch hunt” and a “con job.” The presiding federal district judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, threatened to eject Trump from the courtroom. “I would love it. I would love it,” Trump responded. To which Judge Kaplan replied, “You just can’t control yourself in this circumstance, apparently.”....>

<....In Merchan’s courtroom last week, whether Trump could control himself had once again become the question; and once again a judge gave him a break. But the struggle continues, and it’s being waged behind the scenes—largely by Trump’s legal and political teams. Another person battling to maintain his freedom would probably remain focused on that battle, but Trump remains distracted by his petty obsessions and resentments, including of some of the faces he sees in the gallery. A couple of weeks ago, he glared at me. I had smiled at him. He didn’t like that. He also seems to have a particular distaste for the MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell.

Trump’s many grievances pose a problem for him. As Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times reported last week, “People close to Mr. Trump have worried about whether long days in the courtroom have had an effect on his mental state.” The care and feeding of a narcissistic sociopath (see my exposition on that subject five years ago here in The Atlantic) and keeping him on a relatively even emotional keel is difficult—and sometimes impossible—even on a good day, and so Trump’s team has resorted to extraordinary measures to soothe him during this trial.

A key player in the current effort is apparently a young aide named Natalie Harp. Her job—no joke, this was in the Times—is to schlep around a portable printer “so she can quickly provide Mr. Trump with hard copies of mood-boosting news articles and social media posts by people praising him.” Last Thursday, after Daniels’s testimony, team Trump apparently found another use for this device. During the lunch break, Trump posted on his Truth Social account pictures of … me … from Election Night 2016. Alas, in one of the shots, I was, confessedly, rather inebriated. I had tears of joy in my eyes, was wearing a “Make America great again” hat, and was hugging my then-wife, the campaign manager whose remarkable talents had astoundingly just elected a buffoon. “Mr. Kellyanne Conway celebrating my Victory in 2016!” Trump’s post read. (Yes, Donald, supporting you was indeed a low moment in my life. Damn, you sure know how to hurt a guy.)

Now, I mention this not (just) because it is insane, hilarious, and involves me, but because it also makes my point about Trump being his own worst enemy. His uncontrollable pique at his plight, a plight caused by his own poor choices, leads him to make even more poor choices—and here, to impose those choices upon not just his political aides but his lawyers to boot.

Which brings us back to Daniels on the stand....>

<....The cross also forayed into archaic, even nonsensical, slut-shaming. Sure, the witness made a living engaging in sex on camera for money. But does that really mean she shouldn’t have been horrified to see Donald Trump suddenly take off his clothes? And was there any logic at all in seemingly trying to show that the sex the defense said didn’t occur was consensual because Daniels wanted it? The defense’s cross-examination made Daniels appear more sympathetic than any prosecutor’s direct questioning ever could.

Worse yet, it emboldened Daniels. She’s a smart woman—and she’s clearly strong-willed, with a sharp, quick-witted tongue. Normally it’s not a good idea for witnesses, even smart and tough ones—perhaps especially smart and tough ones—to fence with lawyers too much on cross-examination; witnesses tend to lose credibility when they do. But the belabored and argumentative nature of this cross-examination gave Daniels some running room. And she took every inch of it.

At one point, for example, Necheles asked a question about Daniels’s history of writing porn scripts containing “phony stories about sex [that] appear to be real”—obviously implying that Daniels’s story about Trump in the hotel room was fake, like the scripts. Daniels’s devastating retort: “The sex in the films, it’s very much real. Just like what happened in that room.”

At another point, Necheles attacked Daniels for selling merchandise about Trump’s indictment.

Necheles: Again, you’re celebrating the indictment by selling things from your store, right?

Daniels: Not unlike Mr. Trump.

And then, this jewel of an exchange, in which Necheles got zinged once again, and, by unsuccessfully moving to strike the zinger, drew more attention to it:

Necheles: Okay. Even though you tweeted and celebrated about him being indicted, you have no knowledge of what he was indicted for?

Daniels: There was a lot of indictments.

Necheles: Your Honor, I move to strike that.

Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger: It is responsive, Your Honor.

The court: It’s responsive. Overruled.

<I recommend inspecting Doll - <perfy> spams hot chicks. All of us know what did that mean in our younghoods, but in his age, instead of contemplating how did he grow so old, fat and lonely, doing THIS is the most unsettling thing I have ever encountered at CG. It is worse than the treatment you (and I) usually get.

Poor, poor <perfy>. I hope he will not get butthurt upon reading this.>

<The good thing is that possibly no one on the entire planet gives a schitz what kind of games <perfy> spams on his forum.>

<....<zed: Sorry, <Messiah>, the only off-topic comment is your off-toffy comment about offtopic comments.

The other comments are referring to the game's PGN being out of synch with the info on the game page. So - decidedly on-topic.

Really, <Messiah>, you're just trolling. If you must troll the least you could do is make it either information or entertaining.

You're neither.>

As an illustrious member of perfy's crooked brigade you have to be very proud that at least you did not compose French-sounding gibberish without understanding what does it mean, like your owner is committing that blunder frequently.>

This piece of flotsam needs to be silenced for good and all--pity it will never happen.

<Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is expected to pay his respects to Donald Trump this morning by showing up at the courthouse where the former president is on criminal trial, joining a steady line of GOP electeds who have seen it as in their own political interest to make the pilgrimage to Manhattan.

The pathetic display of slavish devotion has a third world tinpot dictator feel to it – which is of course in keeping with Trump’s bogus casting of his own fate in terms of political repression by the current ruling regime.

While the GOP pols who see fit to kiss the ring are themselves a dubious collection of easily mocked figures – Sens. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and J.D. Vance (R-OH) among them – watching the “law and order” and “faith-based” party kneel before a criminal defendant in a case involving a porn star no less is another marker of how far things have fallen.

But when your party has unified around insurrections past and still to come, anything is possible....>

<Former President Donald Trump is facing backlash after suggesting that Jewish Democrats need to have "their head examined."

Trump made the remark outside his hush-money criminal trial in New York City on Tuesday after highlighting that lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a Jewish attorney who has publicly backed Democrats in that past and served on Trump's legal team during his first impeachment, had called the ongoing trial in New York "election interference."

The former president said that Jewish people who vote Democratic, including Dershowitz, need to "have their head examined" for not being Republicans, citing "what's going on with Israel"—a reference to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"He's a Democrat," Trump said of Dershowitz. "He can't be right about everything, because he's making a big mistake. If you're Jewish and you're a Democrat—and that includes Alan Dershowitz—you ought to have your head examined. You see what's going on with Israel."

Newsweek reached out for comment to Dershowitz and Trump's office via email on Tuesday.

Trump was quickly blasted for the remarks on social media, with some commentators suggesting that the comments amounted to an antisemitic "slur" that mirrors historical attacks against Jewish people.

"One of the oldest antisemitic slurs is that Jews are not true citizens of their country and owe their loyalty elsewhere," Bill Prady, a television writer and producer who is Jewish, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "By suggesting that American Jews should 'have their heads examined' for being Democrats perpetuates that slur."

"Again with his antisemitic remarks not knowing what he's doing," wrote Armand Hamouth, a writer and director who is also Jewish.

"Wow. Trump just said if you're Jewish and vote Democrat 'you ought to have your head examined,' " Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett wrote.

"Some more casual antisemitism from the Antisemite-in-Chief..." wrote @TrumpsTaxes.

The Biden-Harris campaign also weighed in on the former president's remark, sharing the video clip on X while saying that "Trump once again attacks Jewish people who vote against him."

Tuesday was far from the first time that Trump has faced backlash for making disparaging remarks about Jewish voters who favor Democrats, with the former president having repeatedly made similar comments in recent months.

Last month, the former president told right-wing radio host Wayne Allyn Root that "any Jewish person" who votes for President Joe Biden "does not love Israel" and "frankly should be spoken to," prompting the Biden-Harris campaign to argue that he had issued a "threat" to "Jewish Americans who vote against him."

Trump said in March that "any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion" and "should be ashamed of themselves" during an interview with conservative pundit Sebastian Gorka.

In September, the former president called out "liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed false narratives" in a Truth Social post on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year that marks the start of the faith's High Holy Days.>

<House Speaker Mike Johnson is not waiting for ex-President Donald Trump to be judged by a jury of his peers. He’s delivered his verdict already.

The top Republican in the legislative branch showed up Tuesday at the courthouse where the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is on trial, deploying his authority and the symbolic weight of his office against the justice system.

“The people are losing faith, right now, in this country, in our institutions,” the Louisiana Republican said outside the building where Trump is facing accusations of falsifying financial records to cover up a hush money payoff to a former adult film star before the 2016 election. (Trump has pleaded not guilty.) Johnson said Americans were “losing faith in our system of justice. And the reason for that is because they see it being abused as it is being done here in New York.”

As the trial reached its pivotal moment this week with the testimony of Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, Trump has been gathering high-profile Republicans at the courthouse – some of whom are auditioning for his vice-presidential spot. On Monday, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a possible VP contender, was there along with Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a famed former college football coach. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, also a possibility for the GOP ticket, showed up Tuesday and dismissed the proceedings as a “paperwork trial.”

It’s a testimony to Trump’s power in the party and command over its grassroots supporters that so many top GOP figures want to be seen supporting him despite his four criminal indictments. Even if this hush money case may be the weakest of them, and even if he’s acquitted, it’s resurfacing details of an alleged liaison with Stormy Daniels and airing testimony about his behavior that paints a grim character sketch. (Trump has denied the affair with Daniels.)

These Republicans’ desperation to move into the former president’s inner circle is also ironic since Cohen has offered a cautionary tale in describing how he turned himself into a bullying, lying clone of Trump to grab a piece of his power and reflected glory. His efforts ended – as with many of Trump’s associates – in shame and landed him on the wrong side of the law as he went to prison partly because of his role in the hush money cover-up.

But Johnson is not just some rising GOP lawmaker – although he may owe Trump his job after fighting off an attempt to unseat him in which the ex-president declined to play a role. The speaker’s appearance is different, given the constitutional heft of his office and the figurative connotations it evokes. “These are politically motivated trials, and they are a disgrace,” Johnson said Tuesday. “It is election interference,” he said, claiming the indictments show how “desperate” Trump’s opponents are, adopting the former president’s campaign trope that he’s a persecuted political victim....>

<....There are legitimate questions about this case – some of which were being teased out in court as Johnson spoke Tuesday – including whether the alleged offense arises to the level of a felony. Cohen, a convicted felon, is, to put it mildly, a problematic witness. Some experts have questioned whether any other defendant besides Trump would face the same indictment at the hands of a prosecutor, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat. The theory that Trump’s actions amounted to a conspiracy to interfere in an election might be provable in court but may strike many voters as a stretch, especially during an election eight years later. And then there’s the deeper question of prosecutorial discretion – whether the gravity of the alleged offenses is sufficient to take the unprecedented and politically radioactive step of putting a former president on trial as he seeks the office again.

But Trump is hardly a victim. He is fully availing himself of the protections of the legal system he frequently lambasts [sic]. His appeals in other cases, for instance, mean this may be the only one of four trials he faces before the election. That means he’s unlikely to face justice for seeking to overturn one election before standing in the next one. And his charges in this case were not just dreamed up – they emerged from a grand jury that decided there was a case to answer. Trump is exercising his right to mount a defense and is considered innocent until proven guilty.

Johnson, however, claimed the trial was an attempt to destroy Trump’s 2024 campaign and prejudged the verdict in lashing out at a “sham” trial. He attacked the judge and his partial gag order imposed on Trump to protect the safety of witnesses and sought to discredit the testimony of Cohen. “There’s nothing that he presents here that should be given any weight at all by a jury and certainly not this judge,” Johnson said of the star witness. In seeking to discredit the case and a potential guilty verdict, Johnson is implicitly questioning whether courts should have the power to judge politicians – a position that, if adopted, would erode a legal system based on the principle that everyone, even ex-presidents, is equal under the law.

Johnson’s embrace of Trump is a sign that the presumptive GOP nominee’s transgressions – including his two impeachments, his attempt to destroy democracy to stay in office, his three other indictments, his vows to use a second term to weaponize presidential power against political enemies and to start mass deportations of undocumented migrants, as well as his embrace of rhetoric that echoes 1930s dictators – are no impediment to a party that craves a return to full power.

And the speaker’s willingness to put the symbolism of the legislative branch of government at the service of a strongman who again wants to head the executive branch shows there would be even fewer constitutional restraints on Trump than there were in his first term if Republicans triumph in November’s election.>

When you see this, <antichrist the wuckfad>, hope you choke on it, along with lover boy <fredthecuck>.

<[Event "Harry Lyman Open"] [Site "Woburn Mass"]
[Date "1998.02.01"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Cherniack, Alex"]
[Black "Pohl, Klaus A"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "D97"]
[WhiteElo "2263"]
[BlackElo "2387"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 b6 3.g3 Bb7 4.Bg2 e6 5.c4 Bb4+ 6.Nc3 O-O 7.Bd2 d5 8.cxd5 Nxd5 9.O-O Be7 10.Rc1 c5 11.dxc5 Bxc5 12.a3 Nd7 13.Qc2 N7f6 14.b4 Nxc3 15.Bxc3 Bd6 16.Ng5 Qc7 17.Bxb7 1-0>

The lesson for today for my pursuers, the twin axes of evil: