DL Open Thread: Sat., December 24, 2022
I know it’s the day before Christmas. I know that many of our daily readers will be away and will not be reading this.
But you never know. This could be the greatest DL Open thread ever. (Granted, unlikely.) Could you forgive yourselves if you missed it? Didn’t think so.
Was Cassidy Hutchinson The Only Witness That Trump’s Lawyers Tried To Get To Commit Perjury? Rhetorical question. Of course not:
So, the young aide, out of work since Trump had left office a full year earlier, initially decided to turn to Trump world for help. Which is how she came to receive a phone call from Stefan Passantino, previously a lawyer in the Trump White House counsel’s office.
“We have you taken care of,” he told Hutchinson. When she asked who would be paying the bills, Passantino demurred — this despite legal ethics rules that let attorneys accept payment from third parties but only with the “informed consent” of their client.
“If you want to know at the end, we’ll let you know, but we’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now,” Hutchinson, in her deposition, recalled him saying. “Like, you’re never going to get a bill for this, so if that’s what you’re worried about.”
It is a tale, at least in Hutchinson’s telling, of Trump allies dangling financial support in exchange for unyielding loyalty. “We’re gonna get you a really good job in Trump world. You don’t need to apply other places,” Passantino assured Hutchinson. “We’re gonna get you taken care of. We’re going to keep you in the family.” The goal, as he set it out, was clear: “We just want to focus on protecting the President.”
Admit it. You want to read the rest of the story.
Not Your Normal ‘Tourist Visit’. Weapons seized by Secret Service on Jan. 6:
“269 knives or blades, 242 canisters of pepper spray, 18 brass knuckles, 18 tasers, 6 pieces of body armor, 3 gas masks, 30 batons or blunt instruments, and 17 miscellaneous items like scissors, needles, or screwdrivers.”
These only from those who agreed to go through the magnetometers:
Others evaded the Secret Service checkpoints. “At 6:29 a.m., Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, reminded his group’s members that DC prohibited blades over ‘3 inches’ and encouraged them to ‘[k]eep [the knives] low profile.’ Others were thinking along the same lines. At 7:25 a.m., the National Park Service reported that a significant number of attendees ditched their bags in trees, rather than have them inspected.”
But again, the people leaving their bags outside the checkpoints did then go through. Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Tony Ornato, the deputy chief of staff in charge of security, told Trump that many people “don’t want to come in right now. They—they have weapons that they don’t want confiscated by the Secret Service.” According to Hutchinson, there may have been thousands of people refusing to go through security for that reason.
That’s still not all. “Three men in fatigues from Broward County, Florida brandished AR-15s in front of MPD officers on 14th Street and Independence Avenue. MPD advised over the radio that one individual was possibly armed with a ‘Glock’ at 14th Street and Constitution Avenue, and another was possibly armed with a ‘rifle’ at Fifteenth Street and Constitution Avenue around 11:23 a.m. The National Park Service detained an individual with a rifle between 12:00 and 1:00 p.m.”
‘There Is (No Longer) Help’ On Twitter. The Muskmare ordered the suicide prevention feature deleted:
Twitter has removed a feature in the past few days that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content, according to two people familiar with the matter, who said it was ordered by new owner Elon Musk.
The removal of the feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, has not been previously reported. It had shown at the top of specific searches contacts for support organisations in many countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, Covid19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression.
Twitter and Musk did not respond to requests for comment on the removal of the feature.
Why Do RWNJ’s Hate Zelensky? No, it’s not merely that he wouldn’t pay extortion to Trump:
Partly, it’s simply partisanship: If the libs are for it, we’re against it, and the more offensively the better. (And if the pre-Trump Republican establishment is also for it, then we’re even more against it.) Partly, it’s the belief that Ukrainian democracy is a Biden/Obama/Hillary Clinton/”Deep State” project, all the more suspect because it’s related to Trump’s first impeachment. Partly, it’s the “national conservative” distaste for liberalism—not only in its American progressive iteration, but in the more fundamental sense that includes conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: the outlook based on individual freedom and personal autonomy, equality before the law, limited government, and an international order rooted in those values. Many NatCons are far more sympathetic to Russia’s crusade against secular liberalism than to Ukraine’s desire for integration into liberal, secular Europe.
OK, not an all-timer, but not an all-time stinker, either.
What do you want to talk about?
Elon Musk seems to be checking every single box regarding behaviors that illustrate how empty he is of redeeming social value. Even “deplorable” doesn’t go far enough in labeling his lack of conscience. Brutal, selfish, blind, egomaniacal, ignorant, callous, depraved indifference all a headlines about his personality. Best of all, he was revealed to not be an engineer or inventor, another spoiled rich kid who used his wealth to climb over the real deservers of recognition of their accomplishments in electric cars and space travel. Nor does he deserve credit for the aesthetic choices of his minions.