Yesterday, Chump was claiming victory in his war of choice on Iran. Didn't work out that way. No, like most things out of Chump's mouth, this was a lie. Sarah-Jane Collins (DAILY BEAST) reports:
It took less than 12 hours for President Donald Trump’s latest claims of victory in Iran to blow up in his face, as an Iranian Revolutionary Guard ship fired on a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz early Saturday.
Iran’s military announced that it was against closing the vital waterway and putting it under “strict control” until the U.S. ended its blockade. It was a dizzying reversal after Iranian officials and Trump had said the strait was open to commercial vessels again on Friday.
The 79-year-old president had called journalists with the news of his triumphs on Friday afternoon. In a phone interview, he told USA Today that the standoff over the crucial waterway was “over.”
“It’s over, it’s a great victory,” he said. “We’ve had a great victory and we’re going to finish it off.”
The lesson should have been learned years ago. Chump is a known liar. He's been one his entire life. If he makes a statement, present it as "Chump claims . . ." Not as a fact, never as a fact, until you can verify his claim. Many in the press didn't learn that lesson as Ben noted late yesterday on MEIDASTOUCH NEWS.
He's a known liar and now he has dementia as well. Alan Rusbridger (INDEPENDENT) observes:
Last week in this space, I suggested that maybe Donald Trump was not quite all there. I would like to revise that opinion. I think he may be what we used to call stark raving bonkers.
I apologise for my use of rather blunt language. A reader cautioned me that the use of such terms was stigmatising of people with mental health issues. Of course, Donald Trump himself would regard this as woke nonsense. Only this week, he used the phrase “NUT JOBS” to describe four former cheerleaders who dared criticise his chaotic and murderous adventure in Iran. Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Alex Jones were not only NUT JOBS, but they were also LOSERS with low IQs.
In
this spirit, I think Donald Trump would appreciate others using direct
speech. So let’s not pussyfoot around talking about his “erratic” or
“unpredictable” behaviour. Let’s just say all the signs are that he is
positively unhinged.
Let’s consider four episodes this week in which the president’s behaviour was straightforwardly loony.
The first was the Jesus image thing. Let’s say just say this slowly so that the full insanity of what happened can fully sink in. The most powerful political leader in the world posted an AI image of himself dressed up as the son of God, healing the sick.
How narcissistic do you have to be to do such a thing? What kind of delusions of grandeur do you have, what degree of messianic complex or hypomania?
A useful measure of abnormality would be to consider how an averagely well-run business or organisation would deal with a leader who behaved so aberrantly that it became routine for observers to suggest they had lost their marbles.
Donald Trump's ability to pack arenas is evaporating.
The president who once filled sports venues across the country couldn't even come close to filling a 4,500-seat Arizona church on Friday night, exposing the dramatic erosion of his political momentum.
According to the Washington Post, Trump was the featured speaker at a Turning Point USA rally in Phoenix at Dream City Church. Despite his boast earlier in the day on Truth Social about addressing a "BIG CROWD," the turnout was sparse and underwhelming.
The
attendance numbers tell the story. A Turning Point USA spokeperson
claimed only about 3,000 people attended — meaning the church was
roughly two-thirds full at best. For a president who once commanded
arena-sized audiences, the half-empty megachurch represents a stunning
reversal.
The demographic breakdown was equally telling, reports the Post. The megachurch was supposed to be a venue for Trump to drum up support among young voters. Instead, he found an audience whose members skewed older and were focused on divisions within their own party.
The only thing more messed up than Chump may be his administration. Yesterday, THE ATLANTIC published Sarah Fitzpatrick's "The FBI Director Is MIA: Kash Patel has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences." Jen Psaki spoke with Fitzpatrick about her exclusive last night on MS NOW.
Fitzpatrick's report opens:
On Friday, April 10, as FBI Director Kash Patel was preparing to leave work for the weekend, he struggled to log into an internal computer system. He quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a “freak-out.”
Patel oversees an agency that employs roughly 38,000 people, including many who are trained to investigate and verify information that can be presented under oath in a court of law. News of his emotional outburst ricocheted through the bureau, prompting chatter among officials and, in some corners of the building, expressions of relief. The White House fielded calls from the bureau and from members of Congress asking who was now in charge of the FBI.
It turned out that the answer was still Patel. He had not been fired. The access problem, two people familiar with the matter said, appears to have been a technical error, and it was quickly resolved. “It was all ultimately bullshit,” one FBI official told me.
But Patel, according to multiple current officials, as well as former officials who have stayed close to him, is deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy.
The Atlantic report, published Friday evening, claimed that Patel is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication at clubs in Washington, D.C. and his home city of Las Vegas, violating FBI conduct standards and potentially leaving the nation’s top law enforcement official vulnerable to coercion or exploitation.
The director’s drinking reportedly angered President Donald Trump, who is famously sober, and whose brother died from alcoholism-related health issues. Trump called Patel after the director was seen chugging beer with members of the victorious U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team to express his displeasure, according to the report.
Sources told The Atlantic that Patel’s alleged conduct at the helm of the FBI has alarmed officials about what would happen if the bureau was needed in a national crisis, such as a terror attack.
Friday’s Atlantic story also stated that Patel has drunk “to the point of obvious intoxication” in public, often at Ned’s in Washington, D.C., and at the Poodle Room in Las Vegas, where he lives. On occasion, the FBI has even reportedly had to reschedule meetings “as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights, six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule” told The Atlantic.
In some cases, the director’s FBI security detail had difficulty waking him because he was so drunk. In one incident, the FBI had to use “breaching equipment” of the sort SWAT teams use:
On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials. A request for “breaching equipment”—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request.
The report mentions Patel’s appearance in the U.S. men’s hockey team locker room after its win over Canada in the Olympic gold medal game in Italy. Patel was captured on camera chugging a beer. The scene reportedly prompted Trump to let Patel know he was unhappy with the director’s behavior.
Ka$h Patel. It's a long list of potential fires Chump's considering -- there's Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and Ka$h are just a few of the names. That's what happens when you nominate unqualified people to posts. In most cases, they are not able to handle the job. And that means that they're always in danger of being fired.
Ka$h has misused government funds and resources on his girlfriend and on his hobby as a hockey nut and he's done a very poor job as FBI director -- one screw up after another, always quick to run to the press with self-congratulations only to have the 'we've done it!' explode in his face.
Bongino's gone, Bondi's gone. Ka$h is the last big name in his department and he could be next.
He gets so drunk apparently, per what Fitzpatrick told Jen Psaki, that the FBI had to force open his front door one morning when they couldn't reach him by phone and he wasn't answering his door. He apparently got blotto drunk and was passed out and unable to awaken on his own.
This is who's running the FBI?
Ewan Gleadow (RAW STORY) reports:
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) took to Bluesky and suggested an exclusive from The Atlantic would be enough to see Patel removed from his post. He wrote, "Stooge Patel getting sloshed at the 'Poodle Room' in Vegas? You simply cannot make this up!! Too good. Start the clock."
Former Trump administration staffer Olivia Troye, who is running for a Democratic Party House seat nomination in Virginia, added,
"Remember when I warned this would happen if Kash Patel became FBI
Director? I said he was unfit. He threatened to sue me. Now he is the
Director—and it’s happening."
Patel has exhibited erratic behavior, including unexplained absences and what witnesses described as "bouts of excessive drinking" that have alarmed FBI staff, according to Sarah Fitzpatrick's investigation in The Atlantic.
Meanwhile, Ka$h has retained an attorney to sue THE ATLANTIC:
The lawyer FBI Director Kash Patel has enlisted to help him go to war against The Atlantic for a report accusing him of “excessive drinking” is known for several unsuccessful MAGA-aligned lawsuits.
Jesse Binnall represented former North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson in a failed defamation lawsuit against CNN and also worked on President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“See you in court,” Binnall posted on X following the publication of a Friday report by The Atlantic, which cited sources familiar with Patel, 46, alleging he was alarming officials with excessive drinking, erratic behavior, and unexplained absences.
So he represented Mark Robinson previously? The liar who admitted a few weeks ago, that he had lied and CNN was correct in their reporting. Ka$h went with the attorney no one now wants.
Ka$h isn't the only one in the administration whose booze consumption has raised eye brows. Brigid Brown (THE IRISH STAR) reports:
Democrats have been reportedly trolling Pete Hegseth, piggybacking off rumors of him having a drinking problem, which he has vehemently denied.
The most recent attack is a photo of Hegseth with a caption that simply reads, “Vermouth?” referring to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s slip-up when talking about the Iran war and saying the Strait of Vermouth, instead of the Strait of Hormuz. It's not clear where that came from, but the Democrats took it and ran with it.
The photo is meant to be a reaction from Hegseth, that he heard the word Vermouth, and it piqued his interest, for example, him saying, “Vermouth? Did someone mention vermouth?” All joking aside, the Secretary of War has repeatedly and firmly denied having a drinking problem.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
National Labor Relations Board previously charged SpaceX with unlawfully firing employees who spoke up about Elon Musk mocking sexual assault allegations
Senators question whether political interference by or on behalf of Elon Musk undermined enforcement actions at NLRB
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) opened a new investigation into possible political influence in the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) decision to drop charges against SpaceX for labor rights violations. Elon Musk, who was previously close allies with President Donald Trump, is SpaceX CEO.
“Given [SpaceX CEO Elon] Musk’s extraordinary financial support for President Trump in the 2024 election, his substantial influence in the Trump Administration and interest in the NLRB’s work as head of [DOGE]...we seek answers to determine if the decision to drop the case may have been based on political considerations rather than the facts at hand,” wrote the senators.
In 2022, allegations of sexual abuse by Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, became public. In response, Mr. Musk mocked accusers on Twitter with a series of lewd “jokes.” Mr. Musk’s reaction reportedly alarmed some SpaceX employees, who responded with a public letter calling on the company to “[p]ublicly address” and “explicitly separate itself from” Mr. Musk’s behavior. According to the NLRB, SpaceX responded by firing eight workers who had been involved with the letter.
The fired workers then turned to the NLRB for help, filing charges against SpaceX for “commit[ing] an unfair labor practice” by firing the employees while they engaged in “protected concerted activity at work.”
Shortly after President Trump took office, Mr. Musk took over as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and reportedly took a special interest in the NLRB — an agency that had repeatedly found violations against Mr. Musk’s companies over the years. DOGE reportedly visited NLRB offices and extracted huge amounts of private data from its internal systems, which set off oversight alarm bells in Congress.
Earlier this year, despite there being no changes in the facts of this case or the law, the NLRB announced that it did not have jurisdiction over SpaceX and that the National Mediation Board (NMB) did. The NLRB had previously charged SpaceX with illegally firing workers critical of Mr. Musk. In doing so, the NLRB effectively killed the case, because the NMB’s governing law does not protect the same kinds of concerted activities as NLRB.
“The NLRB’s decision to dismiss the charges on jurisdictional grounds was based on questionable legal reasoning,” wrote the senators.
The NLRB deferred to the NMB’s determination that SpaceX was a “carrier by air” because its rockets travel through the air before reaching space. The NMB -– and by extension the NLRB — also argued SpaceX is a “carrier by air transporting mail for or under contract with the United States Government” because letters sometimes hitch a ride to and from the ISS on SpaceX rockets and SpaceX holds contracts with NASA, which “involve” delivering these letters.
The senators raised concerns given the Trump administration’s record of corruption and allowing former lobbyists and industry insiders to operate as key officials in charge of the executive branch agencies responsible for regulating their former allies.
“By dismissing its case against SpaceX under highly questionable circumstances, the NLRB has added to the cloud of corruption surrounding Mr. Musk and the Trump Administration,” wrote the senators.
The senators asked the NLRB to explain its justification for dismissing the charges against SpaceX, and explain whether the agency communicated with Mr. Musk or his representatives regarding the case by April 29, 2026.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) endorsed this letter.
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The following sites updated:
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Trump Can't Even Surrender Right13 hours ago
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Idiot of the Week1 day ago
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