Abandon All Hope

Hope Hicks is a former model who posed for a local magazine in her hometown of Greenwich, Connecticut, the sort of magazine with puff-piece articles and even and business listings that you get for free in your mail.   She was also the cover model for the cover of a novel in "The It Girl" series.  So it makes sense that Donald Trump's most trusted advisor - who never would have met Trump if Trump's daughter hadn't started a fashion line, which wouldn't have happened if Trump's daughter's name hadn't been Ivanka Smith - has long been an anonymous cipher.  Hicks spent most of her time under the radar, screening those who wanted access to Trump, promoting his lies and fake denials, serving as his personal valet - even steaming his clothes while he was wearing them because he wanted to look fresh up to the moment.  She was like a third daughter to  him - and given how he lusted after Ivanka and treated Tiffany as an afterthought, she was more like his only daughter. 

So it must have been really, really painful for Hicks to testify at Trump's 2016 election interference trial and, after lying for Trump to get him elected, tell the truth with the specter of perjury hanging over her pretty little head.  She pretty much confirmed what everyone had suspected all along - that Trump had made it clear that he wanted his alleged affairs with a porn star and a nude model covered up and sought to avoid embarrassment against him in the aftermath of the "Access Hollywood" tape.  No wonder she cried - you'd cry too, if you thought you were on somebody's hit list.

I'm glad Hope Hicks old the truth, but she gets no medal for being so brave and honest on the witness stand, which isn't likely and she doesn't expect, because she shouldn't have told the lies during the 2016 campaign that helped get Trump elected in the first place.  Even Hillary Clinton's awfulness as Trump's Democratic opponent doesn't excuse Hicks. 

This Court and That Court

The trial of Donald Trump in New York City has ruined Trump's reputation so thoroughly that he's likely to take a big political hit from it.  Bear in mind that this is essentially an election interference case, and David Pecker, the first witness in the trial, has pretty much admitted that he bought news stories that would hurt Trump in the 2016 presidential election,and he spent as much money as he possibly could to keep the truth about Trump's extramarital affairs out of the public record . . . and Michael Cohen picked up the slack when Pecker refused to spend another cent.  And the plot was devised to bury such stories and falsify business records accordingly as far back as August 2015, before the presidential primaries began, before the 2016 presidential campaign began in earnest, a time when Martin O'Malley had at least a semi-realistic chance of becoming the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee - and was in Minneapolis calling for the Democratic Party to have more debates despite the Democratic National Committee's zealous goal to protect Hillary Clinton.

But, at least, everything the Democratic Party did to protected Hillary was legal.  Unlike everything done to protect Donald Trump.  The longer this trial goes, the worse it gets for Trump.

Good thing, too, because thanks to the Supreme Court, the other election interference trial has zero chance of getting off the ground - and will crash if it does.  The conservatives on the Court - except for Justice Barrett  chose not to answer Donald Trump's claim of immunity for charges related to the January 6 insurrection regarding Trump's appeal to the Court but chose to ponder whether Presidents are entitled to immunity from their actions but went off on tangents about hypotheticals going far into the future.  The all-female liberal wing couldn't believe their ears, trying tot get the case back n track.  Justice Jackson noted that if Presidents get full-blown immunity, it would make the Oval Office the center of all criminal activity in the United States, with Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and yes, Barrett, largely concurring.    

None of that seemed to bother Justice Alito.  "Presidents have to make a lot of tough decisions, he said without sarcasm or dramatic irony.  "Did I understand you to say, 'Well, you know if he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake. He's subject to the criminal laws just like anybody else.' You don't think he's in a special, a peculiarly precarious position?"

Listening to the conservative argument for Trump's immunity claim question - well, listening as much as I could take - was sort of like hearing heavy-metal fans who hate twenty-first-century pop making the argument that Kiss is artistically superior to Taylor Swift.  You were basically watching a bunch of white guys (Justice Thomas, who should have recused himself from oral arguments, mostly just sat there and nodded a lot) setting themselves up to be humiliated by a savvy black woman and a wise Latina.  And their gal pals.   

And if I may keep the pop metaphor going, this Supreme Court oral argument was the Woodstock '99 of Supreme Court oral arguments. 

All of the conservative justices not named Amy or John by their mothers, but when it came to making a mockery of the Court, Justice Alito was the top Katzenjammer. 

And I don't need to tell you again that he came form my hometown.

And Chief Justice John Roberts, based on observations from those who were present, looked like he was severely constipated.  He must have found Alito's line of questioning more than a little hard to digest. 

Lawyers, Sex and Money

The first criminal trial of Donald Trump (and likely the only one that we'll have before the election) finally gets underway tomorrow, with selection of the jury . . . which will likely be as exciting as watching paint dry.

But never mind that.  The conventional wisdom about this case is that it is the least serious and most trivial criminal case Trump faces.  Maybe.  But everything's relative.  Saying that this is the least serious case to affect Trump is like saying that "Rock and Roll All Nite"is Kiss's least sexually offensive song.  (I'll just say that the line "You show us everything you got" has nothing to do with asking a woman to display all of her Royal Doulton dinnerware.).  Because the bottom line is that Trump paid a porn star and a Playboy model to keep quiet about the sexual trysts he had with them and he got his lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to arrange for buying their silence.  And he did that to make sure that no one would know about his infidelity against his wife Melania while she was taking care of their newborn son.    

This is as much election interference as the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. 

Trump is afraid of this trial because it will likely uncover more sordid information like removing a rock uncovers all of those nasty beetles you find in your garden.  And you can bet that jury selection is going to go very slowly because of his defense doing what Trump's lawyers do best - stalling for time. 

The George Floyd Trial

While I would rather not watch wall-to-wall coverage of the George Floyd trial in Minneapolis on cable news - especially when there are still so many other things to worry about, like COVID, COVID variants, COVID vaccines, and the likelihood of COVID ending civilization as we know it - it is important to keep up with the trial, and quite frankly, the highlights are all you need to focus on.  The evidence is clear to me: Derek Chauvin is guilty.

How could this cop not be guilty?  He violated standard police procedures, he used unnecessary force (as many a trial witness and policing expert have attested), he seemed to be enjoying having Floyd's neck under his boot heel, he attracted a whole bunch of witnesses who all saw the same thing - no Rashomon situation here! - and the defense has put up a poor cross-examination before presenting its case. Its case, basically, is that Floyd was a drug user, and that was a major factor in his death, along with his various health problems..  Then Floyd's girlfriend - his white girlfriend - testified about his and her opioid addictions and how they were both striving to get clean.  So you have all of these witnesses speaking out on how they wished they could have helped Floyd, a white girlfriend telling tales of a biracial couple trying to help themselves and each other, a real sense of humanity in describing the ordeal of a man who didn't know the $20 bill that got him arrested in the first place was a fake, and the defense is saying Floyd's death is his own fault?

If comedy is tragedy plus time, then the defense case that is presented after the prosecution rests should prove that maxim, because the defense case promises to be comedy in the English absurdist sense.  Unlike the Goons or Monty Python, though, Chauvin's lawyers will be unintentionally funny - and they'll accomplish that in trying to prove that their client is innocent.  And that would be funny, if the crime and the implications of this trial's outcome weren't so damn serious. 😟 

Show Trial

When Trump finally left the White House, I thought Republicans would react to Trump's departure the way the Wicked Witch of the West's soldiers in The Wizard of Oz reacted when the Wicked Witch melted after Dorothy accidentally spilled water on her while trying to put out a fire.  When they told Dorothy she killed her, Dorothy grew very sacred . . . until the witch's soldiers started cheering and celebrating, knowing they didn't have to deal with the mean old broom-rider anymore.

Nothing could have prepared me for how loyal the GOP has remained to Trump since President Biden began his term last week.  With the article of impeachment against Trump for inciting an insurrection having been delivered to the Senate, only five Senate Republicans voted to accept and allow the trial to go forward.  Mitch McConnell, who has made no secret of wanting to find a way to get rid of Trump for good, was not one of them.  The 45 Republican Senators who voted against having a trial said that a trial was unnecessary because Trump is no longer in the White House (not true!), and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) even called the trial a "stupid" idea.

Trump still scares Republicans who fear a possible Trump comeback in 2024 or, if they vote to convict Trump and then allow a vote to bar him from holding office again, fear being primaried by QAnon/Trumpist candidates in Congress in 2022.  Trump doesn't have access to Twitter any more, but all he has to do is stick his thumb up or down like Nero to send a signal to have his base go after those who cross him.  Even if all of the Republicans in the Senate vote against barring Trump from holding public office again after he's been convicted and let the ban be passed by Democratic votes only, the fact they let it get that far in the first place by enough of them voting to convict would destroy them.  Someone had better figure out how to destroy Trump, or he'll destroy the country.

So the U.S. Senate chamber (below) is going to be the scene of a show trial - nay, a mock trial - that will be all sound and fury but will result in nothing.  Root for the success of New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. in their efforts to prosecute Trump in court.    

One day, someone will pull the curtain back on Senate Republicans and realize there's nothing there.

Impeachment: This and That

Former Giuliani associate Lev Parnas made a lot of news last week implicating Trump, Rudolph Giuliani himself, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, possibly someone else named Mike P., William Barr and Devin Nunes in efforts to get dirt on the Bidens from the Ukrainians by all being heavily involved and pretending to be concerned about corruption in Ukraine, but it's hardly going to matter one iota when the impeachment trial begins tomorrow.  Republicans afraid of reprisals from Trump - who, I must add, could still win the 2020 election in November - will refuse to vote for removal, and the Democrats can't even hope for a simple majority (two-thirds majority is needed for removal) that will at least make him look bad.  And Parnas, because he has been indicted for conspiring to violate bans on donations foreign nationals, will be dismissed as a dubious witness given the trouble he's been in. So far, the only people who look to come out of the losing end of all this are the Democratic senators not named Bernard by their mothers who are campaigning for their party's presidential nomination. And no one of these senators will be a greater loser than Michael Bennet.

Bennet has consistently been the most thoughtful and the least hysterical Democrat running for President in this election cycle.  No theatrics, no identity politics, no flashy slogans that say everything and promise nothing . . . all of which, of course, is detrimental enough to anyone running for President of the United States, but now Bennet has an additional burden.  The impeachment trial comes right at the moment the Colorado senator was beginning to gain traction in New Hampshire, so the trial will, more than anyone else . . . put Bennet in traction.

As a senator from Colorado, a left-of-center pragmatist, a politician with chiseled features, and an accomplished record in local urban politics (he's the former school superintendent of Denver), Bennet is sort of a hybrid of Gary Hart (who once held the Senate seat Bennet now holds) and Hart's protégé Martin O'Malley with the latter's inability to win votes.  But Bennet has one thing O'Malley never achieved in his presidential bid - respect from the press.  He's been given the sort of free media O'Malley never got, and he's made the most of it, expressing the reasons for his candidacy and explaining his policy proposals in clear, concise, mannered terms.  And the media love him for it, as his frequent appearances make obvious.  But to many voters, of course, he's just a boring white guy with a forgettable name - and someone even poked fun at him for spelling his surname with only one "t."  He already had a hard enough task at getting the Democratic presidential nomination without this trial intervening.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders seems to be benefiting from the trial's effect of keeping everything before Iowa and New Hampshire frozen in place, allowing him to coast on his lead in Iowa and New Hampshire and possibly win the Democratic nomination, which could lead the Democrats to their fatal doom.  Joe Biden can benefit by having the campaign trail all to himself for the next couple of weeks, but if he's called as a witness in the impeachment trial, that could cause a change of plans.  But then, if Biden and his son are both called as witnesses, all they have to do is comport themselves in the stand and demonstrate their irrelevance to the case at hand . . . by simply answering the questions they're asked and make the Republicans look awfully silly by having called them in the first place, whether John Bolton embarrasses the Republicans or not.

I could make a guess as to how all of this turns out, but, as someone who was mocked for advocating in 2016 for a presidential candidate no one cared about, I just don't give a twit . . ..  

More Model Misbehavior

You may not have heard of Helen Selby.  But you've most likely seen her before.

Yes, she was the Asian-American spokesmodel for L'eggs pantyhose in the early 1980s.  A model and an actress, she was chosen for her ethnicity to promote L'eggs' "Sheer Elegance" line for the similarity of its feel to "silk from the Orient," a politically incorrect sales pitch today.

Now, you're probably wondering why I'm telling you about Helen Selby on my regular blog and not on my beautiful-women picture blog.  Uh, yeah, that's the thing . . . I just discovered that she was one of the recipients of Bill Cosby's sexual advances.

"Oh, no," I gasped when I read about this online, "not Helen Selby too!"  But it's true.  In February 2015, Helen Selby - who had since gotten married and is now Helen Gumpel - told a group of reporters in Boston that, after playing a one-shot role on "The Cosby Show" in 1987, she was called back to the set of the sitcom and returned thinking that Cosby wanted to audition her again, presumably for another episode.  In fact, he wanted her to do an audition of a much different sort.  She was taken to Cosby’s dressing room, where Cosby handed her a drink and stood in front of her with his crotch in her face.

"I never thought of myself as a victim because I refused his advances," Mrs. Gumpel said of Cosby's obscene behavior. "But my career was a victim."

Fortunately, it was then Cosby's turn to see his career get victimized.  As soon as Mrs. Gumpel made those charges, Cosby was forced to cancel two successive appearances at a Boston theater.  He said it had nothing to do with Mrs. Gumpel's charges but instead was due to a winter storm expected to dump two feet of snow on the Boston area.  Oh, how convenient - but then, maybe Mother Nature isn't a Cosby fan.  In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who is a Cosby fan these days. 

As for the three charges of sexual assault against him from Andrea Constand that finally brought him before a magistrate this past December . . . well, here's where it stands.  A judge in Pennsylvania, where the Constand incident allegedly took place, ruled in May 2016 that the case can go to trial.  Cosby, free on $1 million bail, is to go on trial next June (June 2017); if convicted on all three charges, he could spend ten years in prison on all three charges concurrently or thirty years, ten for each charge, consecutively. (At 79 and reportedly blind as a result of a degenerative eye disease, Cosby may get a suspended sentence.)  Meanwhile, Cosby filed a motion to have his lawsuit against Beverly Johnson over her sexual-assault accusations dismissed so he could concentrate on his defense in the Constand case.

With so many women - 59, according to Wikipedia - having charged Cosby with rape and sexual assault, a prosecuting attorney would have to be ten times worse than Marcia Clark to fail to get a conviction in the Constand case. He's already been tried in the court of public opinion and found guilty; you can't find any of his old TV shows in syndication, you likely can't find any of his movies on video, and, assuming the recording industry still prints old comedy albums on CD, you're not going to find Cosby's comedy albums in a record store.  That's assuming you can find a record store, which is probably easier to find than anyone who believes that Cosby is innocent.  Apart from his wife or former "The Cosby Show" cast members, that is.  (Not to mention Kanye West as well.)  Meanwhile, at least fifteen of his 57 honorary degrees - including one from my alma mater, Drew University - have been rescinded.  His planned new sitcom for NBC was scrapped in November 2014, and the Creative Artists Agency dropped him as a client at about the same time.  It's as if he never existed.  

Bill Cosby is, in fact, what George Orwell described in "1984" as an "unperson."