Back in 2016, I distinctly recall a presidential candidate egg on the members of his rally audiences to commit battery on others at the rally because he didn’t like how they were acting or what they were saying. “Knock the crap out of ’em,” he growled. “I’ll pay your legal fees,” he offered to them.

Did anyone ever take him up on that?

Since the answer is a resounding “crickets,” then you haven’t heard the news about The Felonious Guy’s lawyer and advisor, Boris Epshteyn. That’s him at right coming out of some courtroom, a common sight these days.

In May, Epshteyn found himself in a pickle in Arizona when he was indicted in The Case of the Fake Electors. The matter showcases another MAGA attempt at committing election fraud by claiming that a set of Republican Electors were legitimately produced as the duly sworn Electors in Arizona’s 2020 presidential election.

They were not. Arizona went for Biden by 10,467 votes, or 0.3% of the vote. Close, but no cigar.

Epshteyn apparently helped out with that scheme, earning him a place in court with 17 other TFG idolizers, many of whom also appeared on the list of defendents in Georgia’s RICO trial.

But this is Boris’s first dance with election treachery. He’s been “in the room” before but never got his name on a true bill.

And to our knowledge, TFG has never coughed up a single “dead president” to pay anyone’s legal fees other than his own – with PAC money no less.

So how is it that we find out, through TFG’s own Save America PAC’s FEC report, that it paid Epshteyn’s attorneys, Tully Bailey LLP, a total of $50,000 on May 14, 2024?

That’s a lotta lucre for a lawyer’s legal fees.

It could just be that The Former Guy, or more probably his accomplices, have learned from past experience that you don’t let your lawyer stew in Otisville Federal Prison while you lord it in the Oval.

They get a bad case of resentment if not outright hostility. They might even testify against you.

Just ask Michael Cohen.

David Frum is one sour-faced talking head/political columnist who hates The Felonious Guy as much as the next “Never Trump” Republican. Absent that, I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with anything he’s ever written or said on the flat screen. But as Shakespeare wrote: “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows”.

So with that, I will reproduce for you a theoretical conversation that Frum wrote on social media. A conversation between a theoretical Democratic partisan and an archetypal professional journalist. The partisan’s comments are italicized.

Donald Trump tried to overthrow an election by violence.

That’s old news, we already reported that.

As president, Donald Trump directed tens of millions of tax dollars to his own pocket.

Old news.

Russian intelligence helped elect Trump by illegal means. Trump welcomed the help.

Russia Russia.

He was proven in court to have raped a woman.

Civil proceeding, not criminal – and sexual assault, not rape. Besides, old news.

Two dozen women say Trump attacked them. There’s literally a recording of him boasting about it.

Old news, we litigated all that in 2016.

There’s new news just unsealed about Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

Salacious gossip. Beneath our editorial standards.

You don’t have to focus on the sex stuff. There’s more evidence that Trump gave a seat in cabinet to a man for no good reason other than to thank him for the Epstein cover-up.

Arrant speculation. Also old news.

It’s not arrant speculation that Trump’s family falsified receipts to cheat the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.

Old news.

It’ll feel like new news because you ignored it all the time.

We gave it a day.

Trump used the same trick – false records – in all his many civil frauds, and also in the hush-money case that got him convicted of 34 felonies by a jury!

Complicated technicalities. You’re boring me.

You want simple? Someone bravely defied a non-disclosure agreement to go on the record that Trump used the most vicious racial slurs on the set of The Apprentice.

Doubtful source.

The ‘suckers and losers’ quote comes from an impeccable source.

Old news.

But Trump denied the ‘suckers and losers’ quote only last week during the nationally televised presidential debate. He lied to the whole country.

Not our job to fact-check every word he says.

But you personally know it to be a lie.

Maybe we do, maybe we don’t.

OK, look. Let’s do it your way. What does interest you?

Indications of cognitive decline.

We’ve got millions of examples of Trump obviously off his rocker.

Right. He says crazy things all the time. Not news.

Are you telling me that the more often a candidate for president says addled, senile, crazy things – the less news it is?

Not exactly. We also need a lot of background quotes about how his party is worried. If the party is cool with his dementia, we’re cool with it.

These rules don’t seem on the level.

We’re not the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court isn’t on the level.

Oh, now you’re undermining confidence in our most sacred institutions. How is that different from Trump.

Oh, for God’s sake, the wives of two Justices supported – and one conspired in – Trump’s Big Lie. I don’t understand why you sat on this story for two years.

Leave families out of it.

Biden’s family, too?

We have to cover that. Trump’s made a campaign issue of it.

I give up. Talk to me like I’m eight years old. How the hell do you explain what you’re doing?

We have to report equal numbers of bad things about each side.

But what if they aren’t equal numbers?

That’s our job, to make sure that there are.

Wanna hear a great story to ease those “I Got The MAGA Blues” blues? Got one here.

TFG’s fourth White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, has a wife, Debbie. Or Debra for short. Debra started a political action committee called “Right Women”. Clever, huh? As in “hmmm, do they mean exactitude or a place on the political spectrum?

Or both?

Mark’s wife, along with another political wife, that of Theodore “Ted” Budd, the Republican junior senator from North Carolina, formed a Super PAC in order to fund MAGA-prone Republican candidates in primary and “winnable” general elections. Such congressional divas like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren “Beetlejuice” Boebert have benefitted from the PAC’s largesse.

It seems that the PAC made “an administrative error” in 2022 when it funneled $191,871 in campaign cash to the campaign of former Rep. Stella Yvette Herrell of New Mexico in her failed attempt to retain her seat against Democratic challenger Gabe Vasquez (D NM-02). The error entailed not reporting the donation to the FEC within the prescribed time period.

The FEC has a thing about reporting donations of more than $10,000 cash to a campaign within 20 days of an election. That’s probably to keep cheating cheaters who cheat from dropping a potload of money on a campaign without telling anyone so as to give them hidden advantage as Election Day nears.

It’s a pretty good law, but somehow the PAC forgot to mention to the FEC their donation until after the election.

After the election (that Vasquez won by 1300 votes), the PAC filed their report, the error was flagged, and the matter finally landed in the Alternative Dispute Resolution Office.

There, we are told, the PAC agreed to pay a $9,500 fine, and from what we are given to understand, the PAC agreed to fold their tent.

After paying their fine and various debts, the PAC cashed out by sending $45,000 to each of three charities that we can all agree are highly deserving entities: St. Jude Hospital, Toys For Tots, and the USO.

And that is $135,000 that does not go to make door hangers, campaign signs, and bumper stickers for some MAGA candidate.

Sometimes we win one.

[Hat tip to Alfredo at the Dairy Queen.]

I am captivated by this song by Bob Dylan. Here’s the chorus:

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

It was released in May of 2000, and Dylan actually got an Oscar for it for “Best Original Song”.

Readers here can well imagine why this song, now almost a quarter century old, rings true today.

There are better examples than my current focus that exemplify what Dylan was saying, like the whole SCOTUS/POTUS thing, but bear with me.

On June 19th, Louisiana Republican governor Jeff Landry signed into law Louisiana House Bill 71, making it mandatory that The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) be displayed in every K-12 classroom in the state.

That was news enough, but tomorrow, July 4th, marks another day in Louisiana state history: Conceal-carry is legal in the State of Louisiana. 

Isn’t that strange? A state that perceives itself as a land of law abiding Christian faithful also needs a law that allows firearms to be carried in concealment?

Never mind that it forbids convicted felons from carrying concealed weapons (so sorry, TFG), and never mind that they’re still trying to keep the law unenforced in The French Quarter, what is up with this?

Can things get any stranger in this country?

Don’t answer that.

When does a Supreme Court decision on the issue of Presidential Immunity for official acts cover paying off a porn star for having absolutely no sex with you at all?

Right now, it seems.

Judge Merchan has decided that since TFG was president when he signed checks, in the Oval Office no less, to compensate Michael Cohen for his services in paying “hush money” to Stormy Daniels, we have to figure out if The Felonious Grifter had immunity to do so.

Never mind all of the other stuff that TFG is immune from, now that SCOTUS has blessed his ability to lie, cheat, and steal his way through life. This one, this checking whether the former President can write Cohen these checks and then report the checks as business expenses (that bought him his Presidency, some would say), really takes “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen”.

September 18 is the next available date that Judge Merchan has to sentence the former President of the United States for his 34 felonies.

Or will it be 33 felonies? Or 3?

Only time will tell. 78 days of it to be exact.