Francisco 2.0

Maybe they go with the Hannibal Lecter move.

2 am this morning: And after he woke up this morning:

Eric and Jr choosing cabinet members. What could possibly go wrong. https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-64eb8987-dd6e-4502-ac08-dc955e4eb992.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

I don't know if 'Key to the White House' is something previous presidents ever did, but I have doubt. This seems totally contrived, as most anything Trump has ever done. And it most likely has a donation attached:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-absolute-looniest-trump-trial-takes-on-fox-news-so-far?ref=home

Seems legit.

Back in 2021, we took a 3 week road trip to the Pacific NW. Rented a small SUV from Avis, and they gave me a Hyundai Santa Fe. Aside: I hammered the shit out of the thing over the 3 weeks/5200 miles and it averaged 31 to a gallon. We left the house on a Sunday morning, and within 20 miles, I was so annoyed that I pulled over and figured out how to turn off the lane assist, adaptive cruse, driver "alert" settings (it suggested I pull over and rest after 10 miles for coffee) and other stuff. Gradually, as the trip progressed, I'd add back one feature at a time. By the end of the trip, I I had an appreciation for most everything the vehicle was wanting to do.

Investor Relations.

I'm picturing this full of weapons and ammo:

Or maybe they confiscated it from a mob-controlled earth moving company. Shrugs. NYPD has all sorts of shit; years ago, I was in Times Square and there was a NYPD School Truancy van. I just mentally pictured them running down some skipping jr high kids and throwing them in the back. https://www.policecarwebsite.net/fc/ny/nypd/nypddiv.html

A day after Trump issued a call for more supporters to gather outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, the number reached its nadir. The number of identifiable Trump fans across the street in Collect Pond Park on Tuesday sank to the mid-single digits, after hovering at about a dozen for a week. Trump continues to receive favorable treatment from the New York City Police Department. For a week, a large N.Y.P.D. dump truck has parked in the intersection of Hogan Place and Centre Street, with a uniformed driver sitting inside. Minutes before Trump's arrival each morning, the dump truck has pulled a half-car length forward, blocking news photographers’ views of him entering the side door of the courthouse. And this afternoon, like those before it, the driver did the same maneuver for Trump’s 2:37 p.m. departure.

Followup from the Times reporting of the trial: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/nyregion/national-enquirer-trump-trial-david-pecker.html?smid=url-share The National Enquirer’s help for Trump broke norms, even for a tabloid. The National Enquirer was more than a friendly media outlet for Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. It was a powerful, national political weapon that was thrust into the service of a single candidate, in violation of campaign finance law. The tabloid’s former publisher, David Pecker, testified nonchalantly on Tuesday about how the tabloid operated in tandem with the Trump campaign, “catching and killing” potentially damaging stories and running elaborate and false hit pieces on Mr. Trump’s opponents. But its practices were unusual even in the wild supermarket tabloid news game. By the admission of The Enquirer’s own publisher — first made to federal prosecutors years ago during the prosecution of Mr. Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen — the tabloid was operating with the full intention of helping Mr. Trump’s campaign. Under the First Amendment, newspapers are permitted to support candidates. But The Enquirer’s support went beyond journalism: The publication paid $150,000 for a story a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, was preparing to tell about an affair she said she had with the candidate. Then, it published nothing. That sort of deal is not unusual in the tabloid news trade, even if it violates journalistic standards followed by mainstream American outlets like this one, which have rules against paying sources. But before 2016, there had never been a known catch-and-kill deal to aid a presidential campaign. In that context, The Enquirer’s payment violated federal campaign laws prohibiting corporations from donating to presidential candidates — who are limited to receiving direct donations of $4,400 per person — and forbidding them to coordinate election-related spending with campaigns. As The Enquirer’s parent company at the time, American Media, admitted in a “non-prosecution” deal with the federal government in 2018: “AMI knew that corporations such as AMI are subject to federal campaign finance laws, and that expenditures by corporations, made for purposes of influencing an election and in coordination with or at the request of a candidate or campaign, are unlawful.” The deal helped secure Tuesday’s testimony. (The Federal Election Commission later hit The Enquirer’s parent company with fines of $187,000; Mr. Trump’s campaign escaped sanction.) The Enquirer was also providing a hidden value to Mr. Trump: By giving over its cover to his political needs, Mr. Pecker gave him the equivalent of free advertising space at most major supermarket checkout lines in the country, where the tabloid had long ago secured prime placement. One expert said at the time that such exposure could be worth as much $3 million a month. Worth potentially even more: The Enquirer’s agreement to keep from the checkout line not only Ms. McDougal’s story but the cache of Trump dirt it had in its own files — “tabloid gold” that would never see the light of day.

Honestly, who knows. This is Trump. Every one of the choices listed are normal possibilities as in they would be possible for you or I or anyone else. But again, this is Trump. These are uncharted waters and behavior not only of him, an entire political party and 1/3 to 1/2 of the electorate. Those three factors, together, makes nearly anything a possiblity.

NYTimes website. I have a sub, and they have a running narrative of the trial. They have 4 reporters in the room (Jonah Bromwich, Maggie Haberman, Kate Christobek, Michael Gold) and they each just add to the timeline. Occasionally, one of them will expound upon the reporting of another. I'm just copying/pasting; not always in chronological order. They don't update it every minute; sometimes there might be 5-10 minutes between updates. There's others who are reporting from the courtroom (or an annex) and using Twitter for their messaging. I'm not including them here. And it's a wrap for the day: We end the day without a final decision from the judge on whether Trump will be held in contempt and fined for violating his gag order. Justice Merchan could issue a written ruling at any point, or rule from the bench on Thursday or later. There is no deadline. Trump, speaking in the hallway outside the courtroom, says he thinks the gag order is unconstitutional. He’s holding a stack of printed articles that he says he’s not sure he’s allowed to share because of the gag order, which only pertains to a limited set of issues. While in the middle of talking to reporters, he says, “I’d love to talk to you people, I’d love to say anything that’s on my mind, but I’m restricted.”

David Pecker tells the courtroom that he asked Dylan Howard, the former editor of The National Enquirer, to investigate Karen McDougal’s story and that he told Cohen he had done so. He seems to indicate his conversations with Cohen soon increased in frequency and the two men began to talk multiple times daily. Cohen said they should communicate over Signal, an encrypted app, which is often used for conversations that a person wants to keep private. The jury is quite alert for this portion of Pecker’s testimony. Trump’s body language changed when Pecker started testifying about the catch-and-kill deal involving McDougal. He started moving his head, squinting and pursing his lips, and then crossed his arms over his chest. Pecker says he advised Trump to purchase McDougal’s story directly. “I think you should buy it,” he recalls having said to Trump, who was then a candidate for president. He says Trump said he’d think about it and have Cohen call Pecker back. McDougal, by the way, was selling a story of having had an affair with Trump. Pecker concluded the day’s testimony by saying that Michael Cohen was becoming increasingly agitated as The National Enquirer editor, Dylan Howard, traveled to hear McDougal’s story. “It looked like he was getting a lot of pressure to get the answer, like, right away,” Pecker says of Cohen at the time.

We are fifteen minutes — at most — away from the end of the day. Steinglass, the prosecutor, appears to be putting a bow on the story of the doorman who sought to sell Trump’s story. But he moves on immediately to the second catch-and-kill deal, which involved the former Playboy model Karen McDougal. She, too, had story about Trump to sell. Prosecutors like to end the day with the most intriguing question-and-answer series they can. I’d expected Steinglass to finish with the doorman, and perhaps allow the jurors to leave early. But by moving onto this next deal, he could be setting up a nice cliffhanger to leave jurors with, that he'll pick back up when we return Thursday morning.

Steinglass, the prosecutor, is asking Pecker why he paid so much for this story. “I made the decision to buy the story because of the potential embarrassment it would have to the campaign and Mr. Trump,” Pecker responds. This is catch-and-kill in a nutshell and Pecker just said several times in different ways that he was acting on Trump’s behalf.

Regardless of whether the allegation about Trump fathering the child was true or not, the jury is now being shown a contract the National Enquirer reached with Dino Sajudin, the doorman, in which the words “Donald Trump’s illegitimate child” feature prominently. Things like that can leave a mark.

And we are back after a break Pecker says Cohen called him furiously denying that the child in question was Trump's, saying that he offered to take a DNA test and that because he was German-Irish and the woman was Hispanic, it was impossible for the child to be his. To be clear, Pecker appeared to be saying that Cohen indicated that a child with a Hispanic mother couldn’t be Trump’s. Trump has often talked about “good genes” and blood lines. While running for president, he has denigrated immigrants from Latin American countries and said undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Pecker is now being asked about Dino Sajudin, a doorman who worked at a Trump building and looked to sell a story — which was apparently false — about Trump fathering a child out of wedlock. This is the first of three catch-and-kill deals that Pecker is expected to describe and we will likely get a fair amount of detail on each of them. This story clearly bothers Trump. Just like yesterday when it came up during opening statements, he frowned and shook his head. Pecker says the love child story would have been a big story, and he believed it was important to have it “removed from the market.” Cohen told him “the boss would be very pleased.”