My fave quote today: Trump as CEO of…EVERYTHING

The opening paragraphs of an opinion column in today’s Times, by Bill Saporito, a former editor of Fortune:

Not content to steer the ship of state, our president apparently wants to run the ship of commerce, too.

Literally. The entire Fortune 500.

In ripping up numerous business regulations, Donald Trump seems intent on replacing them with himself. The recipient corporations don’t necessarily want Mr. Trump’s meddling, particularly given his fun house view of economics, but they can’t get away from it. They won’t necessarily benefit, and neither will we.

Love it, especially the global view stippled with Saporito’s wit.

On a second reading, I love how lovingly Saporito diminishes Trump as a credible force at anything.

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Almost exactly six years ago, I wrote about Epstein & conspiracy theories

I’m not proclaiming prescience here — a lot of people were naturally delving into Epstein’s death — but on August 10, 2019 — six years and one day ago, the day the NYT published the story about Epstein’s death — I published a post entitled, “How many conspiracy theories can one weary nation take?”

Today’s title should be, “How many conspiracy theories can last six years without losing a drop of poisonous energy?” Whatever. I’m re-posting it exactly as I published it back then.

Oh but this one is metastasizing conspiracies.

To keep my friends who eschew Twitter up on its universe, here are some of the conspiracy theories I’ve picked up re Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide (or “suicide”):

  • Hillary did it. Since she kills people with impunity and abuses children sexually…
  • The Clintons together did it. No one is saying how they got into this tight prison but still. And if someone can recover Epstein’s body — he was taken to a hospital — they’ll find he didn’t hang but was shot. In the head. Or both. (As an inveterate viewer of Foyle’s War, I suggest a number of people are combing this brilliant series for theories about Epstein’s death. Apparently, they don’t have the imagination to make up their own.)
  • Where is Epstein’s body????
  • This is not a conspiracy theory: Russian trolls are at work with the Hillary thing. I’ve read them. They are as English illiterate and bat shit crazy as ever but my, do they know how to insert emojis!
  • By the way, “bat shit crazy” is now a fully accredited expression on Twitter and is used by everyone, including famous and serious professionals.
  • A really intelligent and once fully rational lawyer pointed out that there must be 24-hour video of Epstein’s cell and someone had better get hold of this quickly but if it’s reported the video has mysteriously disappeared….well….!
  • No word yet on whether the video has disappeared.
  • Fact: William Barr, who has been granted responsibility for utterly discrediting the DOJ and who is, thus, responsible for the federal Bureau of Prisons, has made a statement. He is “appalled” and will be conducting an investigation.
  • Not fact: William Barr, who is in ultimate charge of the Bureau of Prisons, is responsible for getting rid of Jeffrey Epstein on behalf of Trump.
  • A bunch of hysterics are yelling about how the “MSM” isn’t reporting on Epstein’s death. I read their screams after reading the New York Times’s front page story AND editorial about Epstein’s death. Note: Times’s commentators haven’t yet descended into the Conspiracy Hell of Twitter.
  • Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew are trending but I haven’t seen any theories about their involvement, not yet. Meanwhile, I am now wondering further about Dershowitz’s weird defense of Trump over the past couple of years. He has offered “legal” arguments against the Mueller Report and supported the idea that Trump can’t be indicted — possibly ever. Then, Dershowitz kept yammering his own defense against accusations that he participated in Epstein-catered events — so much so that other lawyers tweeted advice that he do what they’d recommend to all their clients: shut up. He didn’t.
  • One usually responsible lawyer and journalist heard from another journalist that Trump visited Epstein at his Florida home in December 2017. And other stuff. (I can’t remember everything.)
  • A bunch of tweets from sane people saying that Epstein financed Mar-a-Lago and was investing $$billions for MBS, who had Khashoggi murdered and dismembered, with no rebuke from Trump.
  • A battle is being waged on Twitter: who killed Jeffrey Epstein? The Clintons or Trump? I think someone dragged Putin into this but I can’t remember the logic, if there was any.

In general, even sane people are going nuts on Twitter.

The overall view is there is an alternative universe in which hugely powerful and wealthy people have conspired over the years to indulge their secret and repulsive sicknesses.

This may not be a mere theory. My own observation while working for very rich men is that gradually the wealth can eat away at their moral restraints and offers them paths into a disgraceful world. And then — because this small, select world is occupied by other men similarly powerful and rich — their dissolution is washed away by group approval. (My new bolding as of today, August 11, 2025.)

I’m categorizing this under “the filthy rich.”

And I’ll keep you up to Twitter-date, never fear.

Posted in Corruption, Crime & Punishment, Culture, Law, suits and order, MAGA, Politics, The Facts of Life, The filthy rich, Trumpism | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Almost exactly six years ago, I wrote about Epstein & conspiracy theories

“Club Fed” is in heightened re-development phase

Yesterday, in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd wrote a op piece primarily about the White House, the building, that is profound, superficial, repulsive and utterly entertaining, as she mashes Trump, The Monstrous Gilt Id, and his craze for decorating.

And then this:

“Trump sent his former lawyer, now deputy attorney general, to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, who was then summarily transferred to Club Fed amid whispers of a possible pardon.”

Club Fed, the Comeback Kid.

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