'Sabotage'

As the U.S.A. barrels towards its semiquincentennial under the heat and funk of what has become of our bloated empire under the careless and corrupt, so-called leadership of the worst POTUS in our history, we are treated to spectacle and spurious celebration.

In stark contrast to the well-earned, inclusive and historic joy that erupted in NYC in the wake of the Knicks becoming NBA Champions for the first time in over half a century.

The UFC cage match at the White House on Sunday evening represents the apex of a culture that Donald Trump has long sought to co-opt. A carnival for the carnivorous and the careless. Pyrotechnics and steel where roses once grew. Closed fists in lieu of open hearts and optimism. The bacchanal of the bellicose and the brutal.

The toxic masculinity we see on display now, in all forms of MAGA iconography and the creatine-spiked machismo of inebriated clowns like Pete Hegseth, were always catnip to the manicured old man who turns 80 today.

Trump used to hang out with mobsters and goons in his NYC days. He would post motorcycle gang members at the entrance of his ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ afterparties and employed a personal security team that could best be described as Cro-Magnon. It was always an act, of course; performative tough guys encircling the softest man on the planet. Donald is physically lazy, intellectual incurious and possesses all the bravery of a tadpole. Feathers make him flinch.

This is why I knew the version of events we witnessed in Butler, PA, were a stunt - and not the natural reactions of the man whose family I worked closely with in reality TV. Even Tucker Carlson revealed recently that Dan Bongino told him Trump personally shut down the FBI investigation into his ‘assassination attempt’ when he came back into office.

Which makes total sense seeing how effective the ‘Fight, Fight, Fight’ branding operation had become for him - and how there is no way the events of that day would hold up to further scrutiny. Including the actions of the Secret Service, who seemingly went against all previous training and protocol to allow POTUS the opportunity for a photo op during an attempt on his life.

To put it simply, it doesn’t pass the smell test - and, as I have said many times before, Donald Trump should never be given the benefit of the doubt. Most especially when it comes to choreographed optics that serve the fraudulent image he has spent a lifetime crafting.

DJT’s entire career has been an illusion designed to mask both the criminal underbelly of his eponymous organization and his own crimes.

We have seen further evidence of this ongoing strategy this week in the revelations of how senior Trump administration officials, including his under-qualified Vice President, JD Vance, gathered in the Situation Room to discuss options for keeping Donald’s decades-long involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, and his prominent role the Epstein files, from being revealed to the American people any more than they already had been.

The administration was in damage control over the soon to be released Wall Street Journal article further illuminating DJT’s close relationship with the notorious sex trafficker, including his infamous birthday card. ‘Public servants’ were colluding to protect the President of the United States from his criminal sexual predation, the abuse of sex-trafficked women and girls - even going so far as discussing the graphic nature of his proclivities (which align completely with what my friend who spent time in Epstein’s East 71st Street mansion with both men described to me).

That’s the thing with Trump - the multiple allegations against him always have the same set of details and circumstances, describing the same sort of behavior over and over again.

Behavior that was no secret in certain circles in New York City and Palm Beach, and certainly not to his immediate family, including his children and former and current wives.

Do you think anyone present in the Situation Room believed Trump was innocent of the evidence against him in the Epstein files? Of course they didn’t, but put their own self-interest and protecting his hold on power above the interests of the nation and justice itself.

Participating in such a shameful action in a facility designated for the most sensitive of military operations belies any attempt to put forth the notion they believed Trump wasn’t guilty. They knew he had committed the heinous acts described by multiple survivors and witnesses and conspired to cover it up anyway - and while this is not surprising, what it says about the character of the folks running this nation, in that way, should not go unremarked upon as we celebrate this country’s founding.

In convening to obscure such perilous and impactful truth from the citizens they are supposed to serve, those present functioned as saboteurs of democracy.

Given these recent revelations, what do you suppose they are currently covering up regarding Trump’s physical and mental deterioration? That Situation Room meeting occurred last summer - and we have all seen POTUS’s disinhibition and erratic behavior increase over the last year.

Trump no longer has a work schedule beyond staged photo ops and press sprays in the Oval Office; where he sits behind the Resolute Desk like some sort of obese emperor with bruised hands, excoriating the press as ‘fake news’ and lying with impunity. He spent four days last weekend at his private golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, only returning to the White House late Tuesday afternoon - after falling asleep at Madison Square Garden on Monday night.

He barely mentioned the Knicks since then, choosing not to celebrate the most miraculous comeback in playoff history until a brief post celebrating their championship - which ended with ‘Make America Great Again!’, ignoring the ironic fact that the America he imagines has no place for the men who made New York proud.

I worked on NBA Allstar Game weekend for over a decade and never once did Trump attend - including when it was held in New York City.

He attended game three to try and steal some of the attention, so when the awe inspiring last second victory on Thursday night became headline news coast-to-coast, he chose to ignore it completely because it wasn’t about him.

POTUS is spending his birthday weekend with nothing on his schedule but a MAGA, Inc. fundraiser at his Virginia golf club and the $60 million dollar cost to taxpayers- fight on the South Lawn, which benefits a private company that he has a financial stake in. It is grifting on steroids, quite literally; even the White House press corps is being restricted, as the Trump administration turned over press credentialing to the UFC itself.

The Fourth Estate is being jettisoned in favor of a private company that is also selling corporate advertising. It is in many ways the perfect encapsulation of the ‘For Sale’ attitude of Trump’s entire regime.

POTUS was never interested in governing, only in lining his own pockets - and, as always, violence is the most effective way for him to achieve his aims. The sort of folks who would find such a brutal contest representative of our democracy are the same folks who in the end will be fleeced the most from his staggering corruption and dereliction of duty.

DJT was in very poor health, both mentally and physically, years ago - when I worked around him in his reality TV show days. His deterioration in recent months is still shocking.

I promise he has not spent most of his recent weekends in DC - in lieu of traveling to Palm Beach, or even his eldest son’s second wedding in the Bahamas - because he wants to be close to the Situation Room, monitoring the progress of an Iran peace deal.

He launched the Iran war while flying aboard Air Force One on his way to Mar-a-Lago, he doesn’t need to end it by being in the White House.

Trump is staying in DC because he is obviously dealing with some sort of medical condition, most likely exacerbated by his mid-May trip to Beijing.

He leaves for France after attending the fight tonight- and once again we may watch him physical falter under the strain of travel, which he never liked doing even before he was POTUS.

The White House medical staff are not being forthcoming about both his overall health and his late May trip to Walter Reed; DJT was in Bethesda much longer than a routine physical should take, and it was his fourth trip this term.

That should raise red flags to anyone who understands Trump’s long history of outright lying and general obfuscation about his health. Like most addicts, the leader of the free world lives in a perpetual state of denial and covering up for the consequences of his actions.

Trump has built a structure around him that enables his bad behavior and allows him to continue to wreak havoc in the lives of those who have a stake in his mental and physical health, which in a macro sense is now this entire country.

We are not only being misled, we are being abused.

This point should be emphasized over and over - instead we have a media that seems to largely disregard the obvious in favor of access. Bear in mind, this is a media that mostly ignored Trump’s decades of sexual predation and his ties to Jeffrey Epstein in the lead up to his first presidential election in 2016.

Not to mention his deep ties with organized crime.

They also gave those closest to him a pass, including Ivanka and Jared Kushner, who by then were already knee deep in sketchy deals with foreign investors, Russian oligarchs and mobsters.

Felix Sater carried Trump Organization business cards when I worked around the family on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ and spent much his time making introductions to various Russian mobsters and the Trump kids at the afterparties. Mark Burnett was in the room for much of this as well.

Trump and his kids used very public events to do very shady deals, essentially in plain sight, which has always been Trump’s modus operandi in a way. What better way to keep your juggernaut of crime and scandal out of further scrutiny than to seemingly have the blessings of NBC and a handful of B-list celebrities.

This speaks to what I wrote earlier about how Trump uses spectacle to distract from his behind the scenes thievery and predation. This same strategy was of course employed in his beauty pageant days and his attendance at big events like the U.S. Open, which was a long time hunting ground of sorts for Trump who assaulted two women in his private suite on separate occasions.

I worked on the U.S. Open opening and closing ceremonies for fifteen years (during the same period I worked on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ finales) handling wrangling duties for celebrity talent that performed anthems and Trump’s box was often next to ours. He would fill his suite with models and ‘Miss Universe’ pageant contestants, so I have no doubt about the veracity of the women’s claims, though the alleged attacks took place in the late 90s before my time on the U.S. Open.

Unlike the NBA Allstar games and Super Bowls I worked on, Trump was always around at the U.S. Open for obvious reasons. He is not interested in sport, he is interested in flexing his dubious wealth and power around women and using the veneer of his celebrity to prey upon the innocent.

Donald used his pageants to scout potential victims and would invite them to events, where they were vulnerable. (The layout of these suites is such that there is a private bathroom near the back, so while most guests were on a balcony watching the tennis, he would prey on his victims who got up to use the restroom). ‘47’ has done similar things to People magazine reporters visiting Mar-a-Lago and visitors to his office in Trump Tower.

It is also why the sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll, and subsequent conviction and legal judgement for defamation against Donald Trump are so credible.

The further targeting of the well-known journalist by Todd Blanche’s DOJ is an obvious outgrowth of the strategies laid out in last summer’s Situation Room meetings. Not to mention Blanche’s service as Donald Trump’s personal attorney during the appellate court trials in which DJT sought to overturn his civil court judgements. To have the same man who would protect a predator serve as U.S. Attorney General is an offense not only to survivors and victims of such heinous crimes, but to morality itself.

Carroll’s description of his actions are exactly how Trump behaves - he is most definitely the sort of arrogant sexual predator to assault a famous woman, that he knew, in a public dressing room in Bergdorf Goodman, and then go back to his eponymous tower and family shielded by his burly security guards, with his smug, self-satisfied, make up-caked face beaming proudly.

POTUS had undoubtably gotten away with the same sort of crime many times before; Carroll’s bravery in standing up to him and seeking justice, even decades later, is why he is so determined to use the DOJ to seek retribution.

When Trump had a teenaged Ivanka give him lap dances in front of the production crew on ‘Miss Teen USA’ pageants and in front of guests at Mar-a-Lago during a Beach Boys concert, he wore the same audacious, predatory smile.

Trump gets off on doing the unthinkable in plain sight. Now he is doing that on the world stage. His predator instincts are being melded with a new American Imperialism under the surreal ‘Donroe Doctrine’ his administration is carrying out.

I have no doubt Cuba is next on the list. It worries me deeply as I believe Trump will view that long suffering island and its people as a place for his plundering and proclivities to reach a pinnacle in our hemisphere.

Can you imagine the abuses and self-dealing of a Trump Hotel and Casino project in Havana? One perhaps overseen by his execrable sons and their South Florida gangster pals?

It will make the worst outrages of the Batista regime and the Mob playground of Havana’s ‘heyday’ seem like child’s play: we must be cognizant of the danger at hand if an invasion is launched in the coming days and weeks.

Any claims of a peace deal with Iran should be viewed with a wide angle taking this into account. Trump may not so much be ending that war as he is gearing up to start another one. The recent revelations regarding his administration’s Epstein files coverup and his outsized role in the sex-trafficker’s crimes will only fuel this insane trajectory.

We must not allow him to keep plundering and pillaging everything he perceives as in his rightful purview. One look at the man tells you he is a monster. Where there is smoke, there is fire - around DJT, an inferno is blazing.

We counter his crimes by bringing them to light and not succumbing to the distractions. He will do all he can to subvert the will of the people and to claim election fraud in the midterms, as he recently has done in California and with Democratic primary victories in Virginia.

POTUS has gotten away with far too much, for far too long.

It is time to change that. The only way we can fully do so is to remind our fellow citizens of the true cost of his crimes.

Be well and make room for joy. In spite of all the darkness there is always cause for hope. The illusion many of his supporters have been laboring under is dissipating in the summer sun.

Our job is to bring more light through those cracks in the clouds. To radiate peace in the face of acrimony and exclusion.

I believe we can.

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