Yesterday, during the avalanche of news that Biden had just won the election for President of the United States, Rudy Giuliani and other swamp creatures were holding a “big news conference” on the outskirts of Philadelphia in the parking lot of the Four Seasons.  Hotel, you ask?  Oh, no.  It’s much better than that.  The Four Seasons Total Landscaping.  When I saw it on Trump’s Twitter feed yesterday morning, I thought it was just Trump’s usual idiocy, but it’s better than that; a LOT better than that.  Trump had actually tweeted earlier that said “big” press conference would be at the Four Seasons Hotel, but when he found out that indeed it was the landscaping company, someone deleted that tweet and issued a corrected one.  So, apparently Trump doesn’t have a building named for him in Philadelphia so he gave orders to get the Four Seasons Hotel, so some harried and bullied staffer rushed to book the event, apparently not thinking there was more than one Four Seasons in Philadelphia.  So Rudy shows up here:

That’s right, here is the former “America’s Mayor” turned presidential slanderer giving Trump’s “big news conference”  from the shabby parking lot of a landscaping company sandwiched between a crematorium and porn shop.  Next to the boat with Trump flags at the bottom of Lake Travis, there is no better metaphor for Trump’s disastrous infestation of the WH.  Oh, and here’s the boat:

Here’s hoping the landscape company owner got paid up front.

A guest story from Nick Carraway —

“Everyone that knows me knows I had a falling out with Tom Buchanon. He was one of my friends in school, but as luck should have it, I really didn’t know him as well as I thought I did. Sometimes I never know a guy as much as you think you do. The same thing happened again this week.

A friend I went to high school with and drove to school every day has become radicalized. He was apparently spouting off about this whole election is a coup on the Facebook. Facebook doesn’t take kindly to folks that are potentially inciting violence based on false information. They took the post down. He has decided to quit Facebook.

He sent me a “breakup letter” after one of my posts on my personal blog site. He had asked me to share my posts with him just a few weeks earlier. I always knew he was conservative, but he was one of the reasonable ones. At least, that’s what I thought. One of us has gone clear around the bin. At the moment, I suspect it’s him, but who knows.

A large part of my ethics requires me to admit that I can be wrong. No one has a monopoly on the truth. However, we split based on the fact that he internalized my criticism of the Trump truckers that ran the Biden bus off the road and the various right-wing groups sewing discontent at protests by fomenting violence and then letting Antifa and Black Lives Matter take the blame.

What was so disjarring was the fact that he took it as a personal attack. It’s one thing to buy into the narrative that the protests have been violent because of the protesters. I get that on some level. I still don’t get the personal affront of calling out people that planned the kidnapping of a sitting governor. Why is he internalizing this? Why does he feel the need to defend this on such a level?

I’m not mad. I’m sad. I’m overwhelmed with grief. While we haven’t seen each other in years we had stayed connected online off and on throughout the past 15 years. It’s a rhetorical question that will eat away at me for quite a while. What in the hell happened to him? I left him my contact info and put the ball in his court. It will be up to him.

I tell this story because I suspect many of you have a similar story to tell. It’s one of the curses of social media. As John Oliver said in passing, “gee, it’s too bad about Larry. I guess he sucks now.” We stay connected only to find someone we thought we knew so well Is gone. Mourning someone that is truly gone is hard enough. Mourning the loss of a friendship stings that much more.”

When all the votes are counted, it will be a landslide.  I can breathe again.  I know you can, too.

Must read.  A great article today by Jennifer Rubin the the Washington Post about stopping right wing myth making.

One of the most chilling statements made by any of the players in the Trump drama was when Michael Cohen, in Congressional testimony, told the committee that, should Trump lose the election, “he won’t go peacefully.”  How prescient was that statement.  As of this moment, Biden is leading Trump 264 to 212, and there is a strong case that Biden will easily get to 270 and possibly as high as 306 should he land GA and PA.

Last evening, Trump took to the podium in the WH briefing room and spewed such nonsense, lies, and conspiracy theories about the vote count that every single major network pulled away from him documenting the lies he was repeating and pointing out that he was making completely unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud.  Fat Elvis was singing My Way for the 300th time.  It seems that this moment was the tipping point.  After his tirade, some Republicans FINALLY began to pull back from Trump even as Lindsey Graham was full on brown nose.

As Trump’s red mirage dissolves, expect him to get even more outrageous.  Why?  Two reasons: 1) He’s a toxic narcissist who cares about NOTHING but himself; 2) He sees jail looming in New York and years of legal battles over his career-long corruption.  Both the State of New York and the City of New York have already built a portfolio of charges against Trump, his family, and his cronies and it ain’t going to be pretty.

How will this end?  I expect him to fight until the last gasp and last lawsuit is exhausted.  Then, he may try to seize power to keep in office (I believe that will fail massively) or he’ll do a deal with Pence to get at least federal pardons for him and his people and then flee.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he even tries to get out of the country to avoid prosecution.  At any rate, I certainly don’t expect to see Trump at the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, 2021.  The painful thing is that we had several opportunities to rid ourselves of threat of Trump and we blew it.  Can you imagine what a different conversation we would be having today had Senate Republicans grown spines and convicted Trump in January?  Maybe fewer people would have died in the pandemic.  Maybe wouldn’t be leading the world in cases.  Maybe 10 million Americans wouldn’t be unemployed.  Maybe some of our diplomatic ties and alliances could be repaired.

Trump’s infestation of the WH has cause untold and long term damage to our democracy, our system of governance, our alliances, and our standing among nations.  It’s time to start building back.