Unsightly Mental Blemishes

It’s been quite a while since I checked-in on bitcoin. Back in March of 2024 it had a value of $68,507/coin. Today?

A respectable jump for 10 or 11 months – and that’s why it’s disqualified as a candidate to be a currency. Currency values shouldn’t jump – and fall – like that. See the thread for explanations.

But the big news of late was just-now-President Trump has his own cryptocurrency, called $TRUMP, which may cause illness in those aware that President Trump allegedly grew up in a prosperity theology church. Maybe he figures inadvertent chanting of “$TRUMP” will bring him more money?

And just how much money? Axios presents a quick analysis:

Why it matters: The stunning launch of $TRUMP caught the entire industry off-guard, and speaks to both his personal influence and the ascendancy of cryptocurrency in his administration.

• It also speaks to the nature of the crypto industry that someone could have more than $50 billion worth of something that literally did not exist 48 hours previously.
• Combined with the value of his social media business and his real estate holdings, it nominally makes Trump one of the world’s 25 wealthiest people.

It feels like the world’s biggest con, doesn’t it? And cryptocurrency enables it.

Some cryptocurrency advocates may be aware of it. Here’s Professor Richardson, quoting an anonymous source with no link:

CNN noted that the release of the meme coin had raised “serious ethics concerns,” but those who participate in the industry were less gentle. One wrote: “Trump’s sh*tcoin release has caused possibly the greatest overnight loss of credibility in presidential history. He made $60B. Great for Trump family, terrible for this country and hopes we had for the Trump presidency.”

Not so incidentally, that person, whoever they are, sounds rather like me last October in this post concerning the market cap of DJT, President Trump social media company. Minus the naivete.

Speaking of, did DJT benefit from $TRUMP’s release? Here’s a 1 month chart of DJT’s stock price:

Emphatically not, at least so far. But the Presidency is young and Mr Mendacity has yet to be deposed, by VP Vance or prosecutor Jack Smith, so …

This is what a mob boss does to warn everyone else to stay in line:

Within hours of taking office, President Donald Trump terminated the Secret Service detail that was assigned to his former national security adviser John Bolton, Bolton confirmed to CNN on Tuesday.

Bolton, who left the Trump White House in November 2019, has required ongoing US Secret Service protection because of threats against him from Iran. Trump initially terminated his protection after he left his administration in the first term, but President Joe Biden restored it once he took office. [CNN/Politics]

Honorable civil servants deserve necessary and obvious protections. I hope Bolton has a devastating surprise waiting if he is assassinated.

Andrew Sullivan picks up an unexpected reaction to the new Administration (paywall):

But attached to that nausea is something else: boredom. He just doesn’t get to me the way he used to. When I read about his provocations toward Canada and the Panama Canal, for example, I merely found my eyes rolling gently backward. Good one, Donnie. But you’re not gonna trigger my amygdala this time. You busted it already.

Same with the Bobby Kennedy nonsense and the Elon Musk madness — a man whose political judgment seems as finely honed as an autistic 14-year-old who just discovered TikTok.

I know I’ve been avoiding news concerning politics since Election Day, and it’s only a small portion of dread – there’s a lot of feeling like we’ve been down this path before. Trump will try to, say, kill off birthright citizenship, and a bunch of lawyers will file litigation to fight it.

Another four years of bombast and mendacity, accented by dementia? Oy.

Noted in this WaPo piece on Latino Trump voters:

He argued that he never really heard an economic plan from Harris and instead felt like she focused too much on LGBTQ+ issues. … “So [Trump] talking about being able to lower the cost of houses got my vote,” said Andy.

And then along comes this:

And what, pray tell, will this acting trio [of Mel Gibson, John Voight, and Sylvester Stallone, sent to Hollywood by President Trump,] do? “These three very talented people will be my eyes and ears, and I will get done what they suggest,” Trump added, concluding that the result will be a return to “The Golden Age of Hollywood!” [Maddowblog]

Uh oh. Is Trump really focused on the economy, or is he just going to cut business taxes again, proclaim victory, and ignore the Federal deficit, while trying to push studios into making movies that he prefers?

There was a surprising lack of useful pictures online.

Ghost In The Shell (2017) is basically a simple Corporations are evil! screed. Major Killian is a combination of a human brain with an artificial body – a cyborg. She works for a company that is developing and implementing anti-terrorism protocols, which makes for lots of shooting and explosions.

But Killian is bothered by hallucinations, and soon she needs to find out what’s going on. This leads to, well, unsavory revelations concerning her employer and potential competitors for her services. What happened to her parents, again?

Maybe you’d like to revise that testimony, eh?

Fun, younger audiences may find the implications a revelation; older audiences will nod in a display of non-surprise at the dubious morality displayed by upper management.

And those implied assertions are completely believable.

Enjoy.

This caught my attention:

President-elect Trump on Wednesday said he would not consider individuals affiliated with a host of Republican rivals and critics for jobs in his incoming administration, singling out former Vice President Mike Pence, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), among others. [The Hill]

If the salient characteristic of your hires isn’t competence, but, instead, loyalty – especially loyalty to such a grossly incompetent as Mr Trump – it is virtually inevitable that competence isn’t only not at the top of the list, but doesn’t even make the list. Competence is the enemy of the grifter.

This is not how you Hire only the best. This is how you hire brown-nosers who, having found success and prestige by being as extreme as they possibly could be while shooting rivals in the back, are going to be bound and determined to repeat that performance when they find themselves occupying positions of national prominence.

And that Presidential Office will seem so close that they can touch it.

It’s gonna be a shitshow for the next four years, or at least until Vance takes Trump’s place due to mental incapacitation. If we’re lucky, Trump will try to sell us ‘scandal-counting apps’ in order to take advantage of suckers every which way.

Thermokarst lake:

Thermokarst lakes and drained lake basins are widespread in Arctic and sub-Arctic permafrost lowlands with ice-rich sediments. Thermokarst lake formation is a dominant mode of permafrost degradation and is linked to surface disturbance, subsequent melting of ground ice, surface subsidence, water impoundment, and positive feedbacks between lake growth and permafrost thaw, whereas lake drainage generally results in local permafrost aggradation. Thermokarst lakes characteristically have unique limnological, morphological, and biogeochemical characteristics that are closely tied to cold-climate conditions and permafrost properties. Thermokarst lakes also have a tendency toward complete or partial drainage through permafrost degradation and erosion. Thermokarst lake dynamics strongly affect the development of landscape geomorphology, hydrology, and the habitat characteristic of permafrost lowlands. [USGS]

Noted in “Permafrost thaw beneath Arctic lakes poses surprise pollution threat,” Madeleine Cuff, NewScientist (11 January 2025, paywall):

Thermokarst lakes are formed when permafrost thaws, creating hollows where meltwater collects. They are a common feature in Arctic landscapes, with some being hundreds of years old, and they are increasing in number as the world warms.

Water in thermokarst lakes transfers heat into the sediment below, accelerating the thaw of deep permafrost under the lakebed. Once thawed, microbial activity emerges in this ancient sediment, triggering the release of carbon dioxide and methane.

From Martin Luther King Jr’s last speech:

Let’s have NBC News explain:

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration Monday, according to an official involved with planning the event.

They will have a prominent spot at the ceremony, seated together on the platform with other notable guests, including Trump’s Cabinet nominees and elected officials.

Musk said on X that he was “honored” to have such a prominent spot at the inauguration.

Colbert mentioned it, too, last night, and I’m just amazed – and quite certain that Trump is reaching an apotheosis of self-gratification. Musk, Bezo, and Zuckerberg are 1-2-3 currently on the world’s richest men list, according to the article^[1].

It’s the tableau that captures my interest. Three of the richest and most commercially powerful people in the world, clustered together to witness Mr Trump’s ascension to the throne, and, I suspect, supplicate to him to spare their little companies the rod and let them keep their riches. I shouldn’t be surprised if Mr Trump swells up and explodes out of narcissistic pride.

Get the point? It’s akin to watching a movie concerning the European medieval period, the new King being crowned, the nobles nervously jostling for a position of favor.

I do think I’ll be ill now.

The fortunes of the companies associated with these men should be quite interesting, as they’ll now be associated with Mr Trump, who has no love for the United States. It’s money or nothin’ with him.

¹ Although I’m suspecting Mr Zuckerberg might be sliding down that list if most of his worth is tied up in the company he leads, Meta, owner of Facebook. He has not demonstrated long-term skills in the management of a social-media company, and his avarice and ambitions – see the ill-fated Metaverse – are not sufficient to the job. Neither, for that matter, is Mr Musk, owner of Twitter X.

But it’s important to note that social media has been around for 50 years, not the 500 of legacy media, as they say. The rules of social media have not been distilled and laminated, and neither social media owner seems to have good ideas on how to successfully run such a business. Short-term success, based on novelty, does not necessarily translate to long-term success.

Incidentally, Mr Bezos owns legacy media icon The Washington Post. And his management is beginning to show cracks as personnel and customers are leaving in disgust.

Vestry:

1. a room in or attached to a church in which vestments, sacred vessels, etc, are kept
2. a room in or attached to some churches, used for Sunday school, meetings, etc
3. Church of England
   1. a meeting of all the members of a parish or their representatives, to transact the official business of the parish
   2. the body of members meeting for this; the parish council
4. Episcopal Church, Anglican Church
   a committee of vestrymen chosen by the congregation to manage the temporal affairs of their church [Collins Dictionary]

Yes, yes, quite ignorant am I. Noted in “Minister accused of sex abuse landed one high-profile job after another,” Ian Shapira, WaPo:

The revelations about Taylor have shocked some Falls Church Episcopal alumni and validated the long-held suspicions of other former church families. The church, which originated in the 1730s, belonged to a parish or governing body whose vestry once included George Washington. During the Civil War, the Union used the church as a hospital. A new church report, though, revealed that its rectors and vestrymen held about 750 enslaved people in bondage between the 1730s and 1860s.

My Arts Editor was upset at the portrayal of Joan Baez. “She’s an alto!” she shrieked, “not a mezzo!”

A Complete Unknown (2024) is a fictionalized biography of the first five years of musician Bob Dylan’s advent on the music scene. My Arts Editor may have said it best, and I’ll summarize: Hey, you can understand the lyrics!

And, yes, there are other aspects to this movie: the people he worked with, scrapped with, who shaped him and why – but nothing about his family, interestingly enough. To that extent, it’s as if the void invented him and thrust him upon humanity.

But for me, for who neither poetry, outside of a little Milton, nor most song lyrics, scan, and who also has been ignorant of Mr Dylan’s work, it was an interesting exposure of some of the most obtuse, yet, judging from his devoted following, attractive song lyrics out there.

Exploring the issues of one creator and performer, including those inherent in the tensions between performer and creator, this is intense.

Recommended.

Erick Erickson thought his movement was principled. Now he knows better:

I can’t really recall the last time a major, well-funded movement in Washington simply decided to give up. The only group willing to voice concerns against Robert Kennedy, Jr. is Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Every other pro-life group has either hitched their wagon to the pro-abortion nomination or kept silent. …

I’m afraid we are rapidly reaching the grifter phase of the pro-life movement where they raise money off pro-life donors while doing really nothing much at all.

If they are not willing to fight against putting a pro-abortion Democrat into the presidential line of succession of a Republican administration because they might not get invited to a party, they are useless.

Maybe they’re grifters, although, truth be told, the abortion issue has always been a rallying point for both sides, and those who hungered for power could climb those organizations.

But my suspicion is that the word has gone out that either these minor organization adhere to Trump’s nominations, or donors will be notified that Trump disapproves of them, and that’ll mean the evaporation of the funds constituting the lifeblood of these organizations.

Trump did a deal with RFK, Jr., to get more votes. While I doubt they were pivotal, the deal was done and Trump has to follow through or he’ll damage himself in the eyes of the folks in a position to help him, to funnel money to him.

That may even include soon-to-be Vice President Vance and the Cabinet, which may have the power to at least temporarily suspend Trump from the Presidency.

I suspect the political currents motivating these organizations are a lot deeper than he suspects. Will we ever know for sure?

More to the point concerning the Los Angeles Finger Pointing Project is the response of Los Angeles resident Jim Underdown:

Send Prayers

No, send food, clothes, money, and lots of firefighting help. (No guns or lawyers, thanks.)

I know people mean well when they say I’ll pray for you, and I really do appreciate the sentiment. You’re showing empathy to people who are going through a rough time. But think about that praying thing for a minute…

You are praying to the same god who kept our usual rainy season dry as a bone and turned the local hills and mountains into kindling. This is also the god who made sure that whatever small flames first ignited turned deadly by sending howling winds so we couldn’t put them out.

God didn’t have to invent droughts or wildfires. He chose to.

Think about that before your next prayer[. – sic] Thanks for the nice thought, though.

Mr Underdown works for the Center for Inquiry. In case you were wondering why his mind wandered down that path.

It’s suggestive of confirmation bias, isn’t it? The bias being I‘m the center of the Universe and God loves only me. From the football player “thanking God” after a successful play, to survivors of disasters, why God positively favors one person while giving the next a good smiting is a question that’s hardly ever out in the open; one hopes it’s dragged out and given a drubbing in the privacy of religious institutions, but it should be aired publicly.

After all, I rather doubt that Los Angeles, or City of Angels as that happens to translate, was full to the gills of people needing a good smiting, and if they did, I’d much rather see a big thumb come down and smush them out, rather than ambiguous use of natural phenomenon far more easily attributable to climate change.

Well, I’ll wrap this up before I tread the path where I prove God’s smitey wrath and competitive angels inevitably end up with Satan. Speculating on the nature of supernatural creatures makes my teeth itch.

About a month ago I noted that DJT, the stock of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., had been more or less static. That changed yesterday, when the stock took off for a 21% gain. Today, it’s down a bit:

News? I haven’t found any.  The company doesn’t appear to have any noteworthy announcements.

The stock could have been bid up by any of a number of manipulators, foreign and domestic, for any of a number of reasons.

The company’s main draw, Mr Trump, will soon be President. I’d expect a responsible President to drop off of social media as duties sucked away his time, but Mr Trump, along with a skewed view of responsibilities, uses social media as a pressure relief, so I expect investors who recognize Mr Trump is the primary asset of DJT will not be disturbed at his upcoming inauguration for its effect on DJT‘s offerings.

They may be disturbed by his proposed policies, his chronic mendacity, or quite a few other matters, but those are other matters.

If you’re like me, some of what is said on the right is questionable but, given the sheer volume of claims, hard to check – at least, like me, you’re a working dude and that’s not your gig. So, for instance, here’s Erick Erickson bulging his eyes over this:

“February was the wettest month in downtown Los Angeles since 1998. With over 12 inches of rain drenching the city, it was the fourth-wettest February — and the seventh-wettest month overall — in the city’s nearly 150-year recorded history.” Judson Jones reported on Los Angeles’s weather on March 2, 2024, in the New York Times. Just under a year later, Los Angeles is on fire and the fire hydrants have run dry from a lack of water. Yes, a city by the sea does not have enough water.

… is disquieting.

But the mainstream media has fired back. Here’s WaPo’s Philip Bump:

Ebullition:

1. : a sudden violent outburst or display
2. : the act, process, or state of boiling or bubbling up [Merriam-Webster]

New one on me. Sounds a bit guttural, doesn’t it? Noted in “Trump sentenced in hush money case, will not face jail or probation,” Shayna Jacobs, Derek Hawkins and Mark Berman, WaPo:

And now stop looking at them!

Yes, Mr Trump is dispersing chaff in his contrail to distract everyone. I saw it last night on Colbert: Annexations of Greenland and Canada came up, as did the extra-frothy ‘Gulf of America’ switcheroo.

They have the added advantage of distracting from Trump’s record as Lead Insurrectionist, but I think even that is not the primary goal.

As I wrote about here, Jack Smith’s report, due in to the DoJ and out to the press, but with Judge Cannon blotting her name yet more by an attempted interjection, and not mentioned by Colbert, is possibly the most important pressing matter on Mr Trump’s plate.

And the press should learn to ignore cute little squirrels and pursue the deadly ugly manatee that is trying to silently wiggle past them. Maybe just say, “Today, Mr Trump proposed make Syria into a colony of the United States. We laughed. In more important news, former prosecutor Jack Smith has said he’ll present his report concerning top secret documents retained by Mr Trump today …”

When it comes to top secret documents, I don’t have a lot of patience with patent irrelevancies like renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

If you’re not thoroughly tired of politics and are wondering where the next big thing might be popping up, might I suggest it’ll be in Florida, which may be no surprise, but it may involve a nightmare for Mr Trump:

President-elect Donald Trump and his former co-defendants in the Florida classified documents case launched an effort Monday to block the release of a final report by special counsel Jack Smith that also addresses the election interference case.

Both cases against Trump have been dismissed.

Lawyers for defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira filed a motion Monday night asking U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to block Smith, who prosecuted the case, from issuing his report. They cited the judge’s previous ruling that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.

“The Final Report promises to be a one-sided, slanted report, relying nearly exclusively on evidence presented to a grand jury and subject to all requisite protections—and which is known to Smith only as a result of his unconstitutional appointment—in order to serve a singular purpose: convincing the public that everyone Smith charged is guilty of the crimes charged,” the four lawyers wrote.

On Tuesday, Cannon ultimately put a temporary hold on the release of the classified documents report. [NBC News]

For the forgetful, the former President was alleged, by the FBI, to be concealing documents for which he lacked authorization, and, when given the opportunity to return the documents on the quiet, refused and concealed more documents. For this and a lot of wasted forebearance, Mr Smith began investigating the matter as a special counsel.

Now, items to remember.

1. If you’re inclined to see Mr. Smith’s work as a hit job, remember that he’s a Federal prosecutor, and reputed to be one of the best. Throwing away a successful career isn’t what I’d expect of him.
2. These allegations may have been dismissed, but it was at Mr. Smith’s request due to DoJ rules – not because a judge, or more importantly, a jury, found Mr Trump not guilty. There is no exoneration here, no matter how loud Mr Trump shouts it. (I believe this is known as a dismissal without prejudice, but I’m not a lawyer.)
3. The items Mr Trump was alleged to retain included highly secret documents, for which certain governments would be willing to pay large sums.
4. Mr Trump is highly money driven, as seen during the pandemic four years ago when he attempted to hawk the dangerous medicine ivermectin as a therapeutic, in violation of his oath to protect the United States and its citizens, and has few, if any, moral restraints concerning his methods of collecting money. In other words, if you offered him $10 for a blowjob, he just might take your money – and then send an assistant to perform the sex act.

So we were scheduled to learn the contents of Mr Smith’s report, but now this has become doubtful. The scramble to quash the report, though, suggests it’s important stuff, as Steve Benen notes.

So how important could it be? Given we’re talking about top-secret documents, this could be Mr Trump’s big bid to keep his head above the sea of red ink in which he seems to live, outside of revenues from The Apprentice.

Could be treason-level?

And that’s why I ask soon-to-be, wielding the sword of the 25th Amendment, vice-president Vance if he’s picked out a Vice President just yet. He can’t talk to the Cabinet about booting Mr Trump out, because the Cabinet is not yet formed.

But it pays to be prepared, eh, Mr. Vance?

Judge Cannon, will your attempt at obstruction lead to your sudden resignation? Perhaps it’s time to update your resume as well.

Better luck next time!

Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror (1938) is a clumsy ripoff of the Sherlock Holmes series. Heck, the lead, Blake, strongly resembles Basil Rathbone of Holmes fame.

But it doesn’t help. Blake’s not as clever as Holmes, and his reliance on luck grates on the nerves for Holmes fans, despite a not-awful beginning. I liked the evil guy better than Blake, actually.

And the Watson analog, a guy named Tinker, should be the one sleeping with the hot French chick at the end, not Blake. Ah, well, the world is smothered in injustice.

Extispicy:

Extispicy is both the most indirect and non-spontaneous form of divination. Thus, it requires a complex cultic process in order to provoke it, and a complex interpretive process in order to reveal the divine message that is concealed within the organs of the sacrificial sheep. Although interpreting the shape of a sheep’s liver may seem strange to us, it was normal to those who lived in the ancient Near East, who perceived it as the most sophisticated act of divination. [TheTorah.com]

Noted in “Bad Moon Rising,” Jason Urbanus, Archaeology (January/February 2025):

Scholars are uncertain how Babylonian astronomers arrived at their grim conclusions. One theory holds that during an eclipse early in the empire’s history, a ruler may have perished, or a natural disaster may have struck. It’s possible that, thereafter, such events became inextricably connected with death and devastation. There were, however, steps that a king could take to alter his empire’s, and even his own, fate. First, priests could turn to extispicy, another way of interpreting the gods’ will that involved inspecting a sacrificed animal’s entrails. If those readings were seen as favorable, the priests would conclude that the eclipse had been a false alarm. If the diviners determined that the king’s life was indeed in danger, however, rituals would be performed to ward off the approaching peril. If all else failed, the king would go into hiding and a temporary substitute would be placed on the throne. Once the threat was deemed to have passed, the king would reassume his position. To dispose of any lingering evil, his stand-in would then be executed.

I’ve mentioned the fascinating Strandbeests before, and they’re still rolling along.

I wonder if former GOP Senate leader Senator McConnell (R-KY) has yet worked out that, by being clever, he’s endangered the nation. Recall that McConnell believed, at one time, that his most clever moment was refusing to hold hearings to put compromise candidate then-Judge Merrick Garland on SCOTUS. This, as history documents, was a decision surrounded with Republican mendacity.

Since then, while there have been several other incidents of note, the most significant was the trial of then-President Trump following the January 6th Insurrection. Senator McConnell could have voted for conviction, but he did not. He could have attempted to lead his conference in voting for conviction, but made no effort. Instead,

Clearly angry, the Senate’s longest-serving GOP leader said Trump’s actions surrounding the attack on Congress were “a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.” He even noted that though Trump is now out of office, he remains subject to the country’s criminal and civil laws.

“He didn’t get away with anything yet,” said McConnell, who turns 79 next Saturday and has led the Senate GOP since 2007. [AP]

Senator McConnell may have given many excuses, but the fact of the matter is that he was trying to avoid being the leader of the only American political party that has produced a President so wretched that he was not only impeached, but convicted. He pretty much said that he expected Mr Trump, when no longer protected by the Office, to be convicted and become anathema.

He got the first one right, but the Democrats and the Republicans both failed to offer candidates who are better actors, in the theatrical sense, than Mr Trump. Now McConnell, who is well known for hating Mr. Trump, has to deal with his enemy again occupying the White House, exercising Trumpian poor judgment, and possibly endangering the entire nation.

The McConnell Lesson – what happens when you think you’re too clever to actually do your duty. It’s better to eat the elephant shit sandwich than to be actually sat on by the elephant.

Steve Benen seems quite confident that the conspiracy theory that the January 6th Insurrection of 2021 was actually a creature of the FBI has been destroyed:

What actually mattered was the degree to which the inspector general took a sledgehammer to the right’s conspiracy theory that the FBI was somehow responsible for creating the attack and entrapping Trump’s poor, unsuspecting supporters. Horowitz’s report discredited this misguided idea once and for all. (The same findings made clear that there were no undercover FBI employees at the Capitol, either.)

That’s not how these things work, though. The more serious attention paid to a conspiracy theory, the longer it can live. Believers and even the skeptical are well aware that investigations can be based on fraudulent facts, and, if the theory strikes a chord, then it lives on and on and on.

What kills a conspiracy theory? People ignoring it.

But that’s hard to do. Conspiracy theories, at their heart, are an opportunity to construct a new social prestige ladder, and that’s attractive to those sitting at the bottom of other ladders with a little free time on their hands and an ambition to move up a ladder – any ladder. Add in some romanticism of any sort, and a ladder is more than likely to be constructed.

Especially when a President-elect benefits from such a conspiracy theory. And a government agency obliged to investigate every cockamamie theory is involved.

First, the quote, then I’ll explain why the author may not quite qualify. From a brief filed with SCOTUS concerning TikTok v. Garland, the suit in which social media giant TikTok claims a statute to force ByteDance, the Chinese company owning TikTok, to sell TikTok to an American company is unconstitutional. The brief is from Counsel of Record D. John Sauer, who is asking that the law implementation be ordered delayed until his client, Mr Trump, assumes office:

Further, President Trump is the founder of another resoundingly successful social-media platform, Truth Social. This gives him an in-depth perspective on the extraordinary government power attempted to be exercised in this case—the power of the federal government to effectively shut down a social-media platform favored by tens of millions of Americans, based in large part on concerns about disfavored content on that platform. President Trump is keenly aware of the historic dangers presented by such a precedent. For example, shortly after the Act was passed, Brazil banned the social-media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) for more than a month, based in large part on that government’s disfavor of political speech on X. See, e.g., Brazil’s Supreme Court Lifts Ban on Social Media Site X, CBS NEWS (Oct. 8, 2024). …

Furthermore, President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government—concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged. See, e.g., Executive Order No. 13942, Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok, 85 Fed. Reg. 48637, 48637 (Aug. 6, 2020); Regarding the Acquisition of Musical.ly by ByteDance Ltd., 85 Fed. Reg. 51297, 51297 (Aug. 14, 2020). Indeed, President Trump’s first Term was highlighted by a series of policy triumphs achieved through historic deals, and he has a great prospect of success in this latest national security and foreign policy endeavor.

Why does Mr Sauer possibly not qualify for this nomination, in light of the ludicrous paragraphs above? Because he’s working for someone else, as lawyers are wont, and in this case it’s … Mr. Trump himself. It is entirely possible that these paragraphs, and a few others conveying similar sentiments, were written at the direction of Mr Trump himself. If this is true, I am uncertain as to whether Mr Trump may be nominated for an award concerning an absolute and embarrassing, not to mention potentially phony,  devotion to, ah, Mr Trump.

A proposed trophy: probably molded plastic. No artist listed.

But given the quality of these incorrect claims – for one, Mr Trump’s Truth Social, by all reports, is failing rapidly – one cannot ignore Mr Sauer’s claims to the award, so, if an occasion ever arises in which the trophy in question is actually awarded, a determination of qualification will be made then.