In a court filing yesterday, the US Attorney prosecuting Giuliani associate Lev Parnas claimed that he was being paid by the Russians, too, and that he was hiding the money in his wife’s name.  He received  a cool $1 million from them in September.  They have asked the judge to revoke Parnas’ bail and jail him.

More manure on the giant Trump manure pile.

Last night at a secretive fundraiser in Florida, Trump brought onstage two war criminals. They were former US Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and former US Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn.  Both had been given clemency by Trump last month.  One was convicted of ordering the murder of 3 unarmed Afghans, and the other charged with murdering an unarmed Afghan.  The fundraiser netted $3.5 million.  One attendee noted that Trump “was in rare form” and “hilarious”.

Yes.  Nothing is more “hilarious” than honoring murdering war criminals.

Trump went on one of his now famous word salad rants yesterday, blaming light bulbs for his orange spray tan, then moving on to indecipherable complaining about showers, sinks, and low water flush toilets, and then somehow tying all that to the steel industry.

Here is the entire riff, word for word.  See if you can figure it out.

“The light bulb — they got rid of the light bulb that people got used to. The new bulb is many times more expensive and — I hate to say it — it doesn’t make you look as good. Of course, being a vain person, that’s very important to me. It’s like — it gives you an orange look. I don’t want an orange look. Has anyone noticed that? So we’ll have to change those bulbs in at least a couple rooms where I am in the White House. … We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers. And other elements of bathrooms — where you turn the faucet on, in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where the water rushes out to sea because you could never handle it — and you don’t get any water. You turn on the faucet and you don’t get any water. They take a shower and water comes dripping out, just dripping out, very quietly, dripping out.People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once. They end up using more water. So EPA is looking at that very strongly, at my suggestion. You go into a new building, or a new house or a new home, and they have standards where you don’t get water. You can’t wash your hands practically, so little water comes out of the faucet. And the end result is you leave the faucet on and it takes you much longer to wash your hands. .. For the most part. you have many states where they have so much water, it comes down — it’s called rain. They don’t know what to do with it. … A lot of things we do are based on common sense. If I didn’t get elected you wouldn’t have a steel industry. … We weren’t going to have a steel industry.”

????

In one of his now well known narcissistic fits last night at his rally in Florida, Trump curiously boasted about his “gorgeous chest”, which is anything but.  Even more curiously, this morning he tweeted out a photoshopped pic of the character Rocky Balboa with his head on it.  Hold your nose, here it is:

Of course, we all know he actually looks like this:

So, turn about is fair play, yes?

Right?

“I am not a crook.”  – Richard Nixon, 1973

“I’m a crook.  So what?” – Donald Trump, 2019

And GOP leaders don’t care.

Yesterday, Trump had an unscheduled 2 hour medical appointment at Walter Reed.  In a written statement, Stephanie Grisham, new White House press secretary toady, spouted some tripe about “getting a head start” on his annual physical for 2020.  I call bullshit.  This is one of two things: 1) He has a real health problem born of his morbid obesity, poor physical condition, and horrible diet; 2) This is the setup for manufacturing a health problem that will eventually end in a resignation from the office “for health reasons”.

First let’s talk about his physical condition.  Trump and his enablers regularly lie about his health.  He and his doctors claim he’s 6′ 3″.  That’s not even close.  I actually met him at a golf tournament about 15 years ago and he was not as tall as me, and I’m 6’0″.  Also, he’s known for a really goofy forward leaning, ass sticking out posture.  Here’s an example:

Also, Trump’s trouser length varies greatly, sometimes clownishly long.  Here’s a pic of Trump when he visited a Virginia church arriving directly from one of his hundreds of rounds of golf.

Analysts of body language say this odd posture is because Trump wears shoes with 2 1/2″ to 3″ lifts in them to make him look taller.  Those lifts throw off his balance causing this posture to lean noticeably forward to stay upright.  When he’s not wearing lifts, like when he plays golf, his trousers are way too long.

Why does Trump do this?  Probably for the same reason he lies about his hand size, intellect, global knowledge, and “unmatched wisdom”, but also to hide the fact that he’s morbidly obese.  His last physical in February 2018 had him at 243 lbs., 4 lbs. over his previous physical.  At his fictionalized height, that would give him a body mass index of 30.4, right on the edge of obesity.  At an actual height of, say, 5’10”, which has been projected as his actual height, that gives him a BMI of 34.9, right on the edge of morbid obesity.  With his other maladies, such as physical condition, high cholesterol, and grade school boy diet, he’s clearly in the morbid zone.

Having talked about his actual terrible condition, let’s talk about a “bad health” exit strategy.  This is actually the perfect exit for Trump once the tsunami of evidence against he gets so high that even he can no longer ignore and attack it.  Think about it – his doctors today freely lie about his condition; it’s conceivable that (in lieu of an actual health crisis) doctors could diagnose him with just about any malady and it would be believable.  He could resign based on this diagnosis, saving at least some face, ushering in Pence who would then pardon him for at least all of his federal crimes.  Trump could then retire to Mara Lago out of the public eye and then start fighting the state charges that would surely come.

Call me crazy, but I’ve always believed that a health based resignation could be a viable alternative for Trump to avoid facing impeachment charges.