The morning after the night before
The week in Washington was overshadowed somewhat by the antics up the Acela corridor in New York, where a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty of thirty-four counts of falsifying business records. For Trump haters, Thursday’s decision adds to a long list of “firsts”: he’s the first president to be impeached twice, the first president to be found liable for sexual abuse… and now, the first president to be convicted of a felony.
But as with his previous court fights — over E. Jean Carroll’s accusations of sexual impropriety against him and Letitia James’s real-estate fraud case — it’s not yet clear how the guilty verdict will harm him in the polls as he attempts to be reelected as president. Trump has long claimed the mantle of a victim of the legal system, targeted by prosecutors elected upon promises to “get Trump.” “They’re not after me, they’re after you and I just happen to be standing in the way,” goes one common Trump stump speech line. The strangeness of the New York case, based as it was on a “novel legal theory” — jurors could decide that Trump had falsified business records to cover any one of three felonies, without all having to agree which one — may not turn the Trump brand toxic in the minds of the swing voters who will decide November’s election.
What the verdict will do, though, is strengthen the resolve of those who already back Trump. The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report that Trump has “insisted privately that the verdict can play to his political advantage, just as the indictments energized and consolidated his support in the Republican primaries.” And a GOP source told Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman that WinRed, the Republican donation platform, was overwhelmed in the moments after the decision. At his Trump Tower press conference this morning, Trump claimed his campaign brought in “a record $39 million in about a ten-hour period” on Thursday.
In a trial which featured Trump’s defense team trading barbs with porn star Stormy Daniels about who was using the proceedings for profit by selling merchandise — answer: both Daniels and Trump — Cockburn finds it fitting that Hillary Clinton’s first post after the verdict was an attempt to hawk mugs that read “TURNS OUT SHE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.”
Other welcome reactions came from the DC Council, who tweeted, “No one is above the law.” The DC Council, in case you forgot, presides over a city where virtually everyone, especially boosters, juvenile car thieves and random attackers, is above the law. And Cockburn’s winner comes courtesy of an abolitionist PhD student at Columbia, who, in response to Stephen King’s tweet that “The Republican candidate for president is a convicted felon,” wrote, “yeah this is fucking gross, felony stigma is gross.” As the president who signed the First Step Act, you’d have to surmise that Trump would agree…
Meanwhile across the Pond…
You might hope that back in the Old Country, the stiff upper lips of British politics are keeping their election a little less mucky than involving porn star hush money trials. You would, unfortunately, be wrong: scurrilous conservative political blog Guido Fawkes has revealed that the eldest son and daughter-in-law of Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner — likely to become the next deputy prime minister — have been rather entrepreneurial on the “influencer” site OnlyFans.
Shannen Batty, aka ShannHeartilly, is a pansexual she/her/they/them “GothMommy” switch creator — whose subscription cost $7 a month before being pulled after the Guido scoop. Her husband Ryan, Rayner’s son, has, per the blog, been serving as his wife’s “stunt cock” (sorry). The pair were wed in a goth ceremony last year.
The Labour Party supported the decriminalization of sex work under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in the 2019 election — though it is unclear if they will retain that policy under the more moderate leadership of Sir Keir Starmer. Cockburn, who is generally pro-goth, will be watching this space — and hopes Mrs. Batty sees fit to continue in her line of work: it’s substantially less debasing than being an elected official…
Do Hispanic congressmen get an N-word pass?
In a week punctuated by controversy over who may or may not have said the N-word, let’s not lose sight of a politician who definitely did say it. According to the Washington Free Beacon, now-Congressman Gabe Vasquez called a former coworker at the call center he was fired from the N-word.
Per the Free Beacon, “In the summer of 2004, a human resources employee at a call center in Las Cruces, New Mexico received a call from a man who asked for ‘Chris.’ The employee asked the caller to elaborate, given that more than one Chris worked at the center. ‘Chris, the n—er,’ the caller responded, using a racial slur.”
That caller was ID’d by voice and phone number as a disgruntled Vasquez, who had been “terminated for cause for falsifying data,” per a police report also obtained by the Beacon.
This leads to an interesting conundrum — does Vasquez, a Hispanic Democrat, get an N-word pass?
Cockburn reached out to the NAACP and a wide range of members from the Democrat-only Congressional Black Caucus to get their thoughts only to be met with near-total silence, despite these organizations’ commitments to fighting racial injustice. He did almost get a response from Congressman Jim Clyburn, a House Democratic leader-turned rank-and-file member, whose team told us they would circle back only to leave us on read. Are you a member of Congress? Let Cockburn know your thoughts!
Bob Menendez, Independent?
A defiant Senator Bob Menendez isn’t going anywhere — at least not without a scrap. A full-blown rebellion by the New Jersey Democratic Party — which is now jeopardizing the seat in Congress occupied by his son as well — isn’t stopping the indicted senator from (allegedly) blowing past the threshold of signatures needed to qualify to run for reelection, as an independent this go around.
According to NBC News, Menendez only needs to collect 800 valid signatures by Tuesday in order to appear on November’s ballot — but the wily senator is aiming for 10,000. It is unclear if he is relying on paid signature gatherers — or if he is offering payment to them with some of his legendary gold bars.
The news is a shot in the arm for an otherwise moribund New Jersey Republican Party that hasn’t seen success since the days of Chris Christie. A Fairleigh Dickinson University poll released last month shows that in a three-way race, likely Democratic nominee Andy Kim’s lead against the two leading Republicans, Curtis Bashaw and Christine Serrano Glassner, narrows with Menendez garnering low single-digit support, mostly from Hispanic and black Democrats.
