GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1097: PLAYBOY 4: TRUMP VS CUBAN

 Back when I was a subscriber, Playboy interviewed both Donald Trump and Mark Cuban (separately over the course of years, I should add). Here are a few highlights that I thought you might be interested in.

I wonder if Hochman is still "comfortable" with Trump. Also, "sumptuous" is possibly the grossest way to refer to Trump's office. But the part about him being enthralled with himself is by no means a stretch of  my imagination. The Duke of Mammon only thinks about other people when he's in a room with an attractive blonde woman, and it's not because he's considerate.

How's the Taj Mahal doing these days?

That was probably the extent of it back then, but now I want to know who does his combover. Ever watch Penn & Teller's Bullshit? There was an episode on hair featuring a Vegas magician with the most elaborate combover ever. I suspect Trump might use that guy. I mean, Trump knows Penn, so . . .

He keeps talking past tense here. I think he's still a brat, which is a little weird considering how, in the 2024 election, it was his opponent that kept getting called a brat. But did you notice the lie he told in this answer? He lies so often that it's hard to catch them all, but he just claimed to not be violent, yet he gave one of his teachers a black eye?

Everything you need to know to understand this piece of human offal is right here. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if Fred Trump had only told his son that he loved him, we wouldn't be going through this fucking disaster.

This interview was in 2003 or 4, so he really hasn't changed all that much. He's been using the same tactics all these years. Also, there's that V word again. I've listened to a lot of Washington insiders who used to work for him talk about the experience, and they all agree: if Trump doesn't get his way, and he's not in front of a camera, he throws a temper tantrum, which I think is a more accurate term than "controlled violence."

That part about the Guinness Book of World Records is true. He was very, very briefly listed for this comeback. However, per Politico, they dropped it a year later because the idea of a comeback "was subjective and not standardizable across the globe." I wonder how he feels about no longer having that record. Is he even aware of it?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you're wondering what my laughter is in reference to, look up how that foundation is doing these days and, uh, why it doesn't exist anymore.

I do believe him when he says he's never had booze or drugs. I even believe the coffee thing. He gets his caffeine from Diet Coke instead. The good news is, when we get to the Nuremburg part of this shitshow, he can't say, hey, I was drunk at the time. Or, I was high at the time. All of this madness is him. Sober. No excuses to save him from being found guilty. Also, why are you talking to people who are fucking on a table in front of you? They're busy, and that's rude.

So. How's that call to Saudi Arabia going?

I would pay good money to see that clown doing his jerking-off-two-tall-invisible-men dance while listening to Eminem.

Hm. Something sticks out in that block above. What could that possibly be? When you see it, please join me in wondering where *that* Donald Trump went. Oh right, he never existed. This is just more bullshit.

I'm just going to let that one stand on its own. Because holy shit, that is a staggering level of hypocrisy. I mean, he had no way of knowing that one day he would be in such a leadership role, but still, if you're going to talk about how the world should be, and then find yourself in a position to make those changes, and you do the exact opposite? I don't believe in Hell, but I'm pretty sure that if Hell existed, it would be built specifically for people like Donald J. Trump.

And don't get me started on John Trump.

(I guess I didn't let that one stand on its own. Ah well.)

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. This was Trump vs. Cuban. Don't worry, there aren't a lot of excerpts from Mark Cuban's interview.

There are two things happening here. Remember those insiders I mentioned earlier? They all agree that almost all of Trump's bullshit is performative. Behind the scenes he's polite, and he always apologizes for giving someone a hard time publicly. So if he's on TV calling you names, he usually gives you a call after to say, hey, sorry for all of that, but you gotta play the game.

The second thing is, of course, Trump's love affair with himself. I'm sure Cuban has a high opinion of himself. He's a billionaire. It comes with the territory. But it's refreshing to see someone on his level note this about Trump.

This probably goes without saying, but this was before streaming was a thing. This idea was clearly ahead of its time. Playboy was right in this case. It was too early. There's more:

Here is the key difference between Trump and Cuban. Trump clearly cares more about money than anything else on the planet except maybe for himself. That makes him like almost every CEO on the planet. To them, the purpose of a business is to make money. And while it's true that this is *a* purpose, it's not *the* purpose.

Cuban understands the latter. He concerns himself with the consumer experience. A business exists to solve a problem for the consumer. The byproduct of that is putting money into the hands of the business. Also note that he wants to cut the theaters in on the profits. If Trump had come up with this idea, sharing the profits would be unthinkable to him. That's why, if I had the choice to work for either Trump or Cuban, I would pick Cuban. Trump's employees get yelled at. Cuban's employees make money. Just ask the people who worked for him at MicroSolutions. How many of them walked away from that business as millionaires? Almost all of them.

I'm ending on this note because Cuban is warning businesspeople not to buy their own line of bullshit. Sure, it's easy to look back on that particular bubble and say, yeah, it was destined for failure. Yet here we are again, except this time the bubble is AI. The techbros are drunk off their own shit, thinking they have the ability to print money.

Except . . . do you keep an eye on the Stock Market? I do, enough to know that facts are meaningless in the current market. Confidence is the only thing holding it up. What's the percentage of the market that's currently propped up by AI technologies? I've seen numbers ranging from 30-45%. Even if it's closer to the former, what happens if that bubble pops?

I think we're about to have another depression, one that will put the Great Depression to shame. I know in America we're trying to turn the clock back to when heterosexual rich white men held all the power, not just most of it, but can we not rewind to the 1930s, please?

I'm at a loss as to why we don't do what we usually do: wait for someone else to figure out the AI thing, then kill them and steal it and claim it as our own. We'd save a lot more money that way. Although to be fair, we don't have a lot of weapons right now due to our quixotic Iran jerkoff fantasies*, so if China beats us to the punch, we probably wouldn't be able to take them in a fight.

All right, that's all for now. The Playboy series will continue. I already have a new batch of shit, including a Dustin Hoffman fart joke told by John Malkovich, but we'll get to that at some point in the future. I'll try to make tomorrow night's GF shorter.

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*I think we went into Venezuela first because Trump's administration knew, 100%, that we'd be in Iran for months, if not years. The oil in Venezuela is supposed to tide us over until we conquer the Strait of Hormuz. And by "us" I mean US oil companies.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1075: A CLOSED MIND

 It's a little surprising how easily an open mind can snap shut like a trap. You might not even notice it happen. And then one day you find yourself in an argument, and someone accuses you of having a closed mind, and after you think about it, you realize holy shit. They're right.

When I was a kid I swore I'd never grow up to be like an adult in a horror movie. You know what I mean. The guy who won't believe the kids that there's a monster on a killing spree. Usually it's a cop or a parent, but it could be anyone.

I wanted to be more like Gary Busey in Silver Bullet. He didn't necessarily believe Corey Haim, but he played along and got the surprise of his life. Because he did this and was thus prepared, he survived the fight (unlike, say, John Vernon in Killer Klowns from Outer Space).

(Spoiler, I guess.)

But the thing about getting older is, the more years that pass, the more you think you know everything, especially when it comes to what you believe to be impossible. Because you've gone through so much, you think you know what reality is like, and your mind closes to anything that can't fit into your worldview.

This is something I'm prone to, and I'm also an obstinate son of a bitch. I give no ground when I think I know something. Do you know how long it took me to recognize this about myself, despite everyone I've ever argued with telling me about it to my face? Forty fucking years. Unfortunately getting your mind stuck in this state makes you more likely to make knee-jerk reactions.

I recently mentioned in this space that not responding with a knee-jerk reaction is the key to a saner life. It's also the key to a better understanding of the universe, the key to having an open mind.

The Trump Administration specializes in causing knee-jerk reactions. This is what they want. They want people freaking out and saying angry things, and we easily fall into their trap. People I know for a fact who would never threaten someone's safety or lives routinely wish death on Trump or anyone in his Cabinet of Douchebags and Sychophants. Sometimes this extends to anyone wearing a MAGA hat regardless of their ability to influence those around them.

The reason they want you to do that to them is so they can point at you and say, "See? They're monsters. They think we're subhuman. They want us dead." They don't even have to incite violence at that point. Once that idea is in the MAGA head, the job is done. Any crime they commit against those who wish them dead is an act of self-defense in their eyes.

Knee-jerk reaction = falling into their trap. So the next time these assholes make you angry, stop. Think. What do they want me to feel? How do they want me to act on those feelings? And who benefits from how I act? However you respond, remain calm. Don't panic. You have to take this tool out of their toolbox because it's cheap and stupid, but more importantly it is efficient.

The MAGAs have been sold a bill of goods. They think the left wants them dead because [place reason of the week here]. When you respond to Trump with violent rhetoric, you're giving him exactly what he wants. The key to getting that prick out of office is in his followers. Almost everyone has turned their backs on him. All he has left is the very small group of loyalists who won't believe anything you say, anyway. The Iran . . . adventure? . . . is a major nail in his coffin. All appearances to the contrary, he's on the ropes. He knows he's fucked if the midterms don't go his way. He flat-out begged his followers to vote Republican or "I'll get impeached." And if that happens, he'll have nothing to fall back on but the dementia act I think he's trying to run on us so he can avoid prison time when this is over. He stole everything else from Reagan. Why not steal the whole "I don't recall" thing?

Nearly everyone now sees the man behind the curtain for what he really is, but there are still people who hang on his every word. Please. Stop giving him ammunition to use against us. Because when he's gone, those diehards will still be around. If the spell finally breaks for them, we want them back in the fold. Because this is America, and despite the last ten years or more? We are all in this together. We don't have to like each other, but we do have to get along.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1007: RELEASE IT

 [To give you a heads up, this one is about Epstein. I don't like to use the word "pedophile" because it sanitizes the person it describes, implying the problem is a sickness, and not pure evil. As such, I refer to these guys as CRs.* If that bothers you, maybe skip this one.]

Back in 2016 I was horrified by something. For the majority of my life the world has more or less agreed that Nazis were bad, and all of a sudden, very much like HYDRA reemerging in the MCU, Nazis were crawling out of the woodwork. American Nazis. And I know history. I know America had a healthy Nazi party going during WWII, so something like that shouldn't have surprised me.

But it did.

I'm currently being horrified by something else. I think a majority of us are, and I'm including a good portion of MAGA in that "us." Because I remember a time when we all agreed, more or less, that raping children was bad. And I know history. America used to be totally OK with an adult marrying a child (in particular south of the Mason-Dixon). The word "underage" has certainly been flexible over the years. Not that long ago the age of consent in Idaho was 14.

But, as with all things, it's only wrong if you don't have money. The rich, on the other hand, can do as they please.

Hold that thought.

One of the main reasons I love Printers Row are the weirdos we get. Yeah, yeah, I know. That's a relative term, as we advertise ourselves as weirdos. But there's always someone who rants at us for about 45 minutes about a conspiracy theory (the good kind, but something utterly brand new to me) before moving on to the next table. I love those rants, most times.

But one year we got this guy who claimed to have worked for Fox News. This guy told me all sorts of things, starting with the real footage of Waco. He said that the government was playing down the level of violence they'd been responsible for and flat out told me that he saw video of tanks firing into the Koresh compound. Since then I've watched a couple of documentaries about it, and I believe this guy was telling the truth.

So he was probably telling the truth about this billionaire child rapist with his own private island where he hosted the most powerful people in the world. More importantly, the guy told me that he had seen this motherfucker's client list. He rattled a lot of names off, names anyone would recognize. He mentioned Matt Groening, at which point I thought he was out of his mind. The guy who created The Simpsons went to a child rapist island for billionaires? Pull the other one. But he mentioned a lot of people. Rock stars and politicians. I smiled when he said that Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were on the list. Of course they were. This sort of thing sounds right up their alley.

I forgot about this guy for a while until the Epstein story broke. Holy shit, that crazy dude was maybe not that crazy. And I did find court transcripts. Groening did, per the files, visit the island, but per testimony only got a foot massage on the plane.

And then it all nearly went away when Jeffrey Epstein died with a rope around his neck in a jail cell (he said cagily). But it didn't go away, did it? He was arrested in 2019, so the FBI most certainly got its hands on his client list. If they didn't, how did my Fox News guy know about it? Which reminds me, who was in the Oval Office in 2019?

One would think that a list supposedly composed by Democrats to attack Trump would have been exposed then and there. 2020 was an election year, after all. But the client list suddenly became hard to pin down. Then Biden took office, and in standing with other Democrats, he sat on the list. Why? Bill Clinton's name comes to mind. So yes, I believe Biden suppressed the list. I don't think he's on it, but I think Clinton might not be the only pal mentioned. All the same, if Trump's name wasn't on that list, it would have surely been a slam dunk to release it and go after the people who *are* on it.

MAGA has been salivating over the list for ages because they fully expect their enemies to all be arrested and tried for raping children. (Remember Pizzagate?) Which, I might remind you now, is no longer such a taboo thing if the people in charge of our government are trying to cover it up. Mike Johnson is panicking so badly he threatened to shut down Congress until September if people don't shut their fucking mouths about Epstein.

But now I'm sure that we'll never see that list, and MAGA will fall back into line. Or if we do see the list, it will be severely altered. We should have pressed this shit immediately. We shouldn't have let so much time pass. It's a clusterfuck.

But lost in the clusterfuck is an even more unpleasant thought. The Fox News guy got one thing wrong. He told me that Epstein sank his island to destroy all the evidence. The island is still there. (Technically he had two islands, but the star of the show is Little St. James.) In fact, the US Virgin Islands sued Epstein's estate for $105M because Epstein allegedly used the government to hide his illicit activities. The DA was successful and went on to say, and this makes me wonder a little, "[Epstein was never] a respected member of the community. It was public knowledge that he was a registered sex offender." Hmmm. Not bad for "a terrific guy" according to his longtime friend, Donald J. Trump.

So who owns that island now?

Hoho. Who, indeed?

First, if you were in the market to buy an island, and you came upon Epstein's, which was listed for $125M, would you be interested? I know people who wouldn't move into a house if someone died there, so who would want to buy an island that is probably the child rape capital of the world?

Stephen Deckhoff, actually. Black Diamond Capital Management, a private equity firm. You mean to tell me that a private equity scumbag (and that's pretty oxymoronic, but I stand by the assessment) bought the most fucked up island in American history? Yes, and he got a deal for it. He also bought the island next door. He bundled his island purchase for a mere $60M.

So a billionaire assumed possession of the billionaire child rape island. He plans to turn it into a five-star resort, I'm assuming for fellow billionaires. I wonder what's on their room service menu.

Release the fucking list. Before we go through all this shit a second time.

____________________________________________________

*CR stands for child rapist.

PS: I'm not seeing anyone else say it, so I guess I will. I don't think Virginia Giuffre committed suicide, either.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #961: DOGE CONTINUES TO SUCK MY BALLS

 

Gaze upon what is possibly the stupidest logo for a government department ever conceived. It looks like something from a stock photo site, but it's the official logo of the Dept. of Government Efficiency, or fucking DOGE, one of Musk's obsessions. We should perhaps come up with a list of things he likes waaaaaay too much. Like the doge meme, for example. The letter X. Mars, or a world that he can mold to his liking. It doesn't have to be Mars. It could be the planet we're on now in the present time. Never mind, I don't like spending that much time thinking about his desires.

Judging by everything you've seen in the news, what would you say is the main purpose of DOGE? I expected it to be about Musk and whoever else poring through the government, looking for organizations and regulators to cut, er, I mean, stuff the government spends too much money on. For all intents and purposes, this is what they continue to talk about when referring to DOGE. There are even news stories making fun of DOGE for being too far behind on their job already.

But this is *not* the purpose of DOGE. In fact, the stated purpose is so vastly different from what we were told that I have no choice but to believe that, no, it wasn't an error. They're flatout lying to us.

Big surprise, I know. Makes you wonder if there's any truth over at Truth Social . . .

If you want to know what they're really up to, it helps if you read the stuff they release. A president can't equivocate when it comes to wording executive orders, so why not read the executive order that created DOGE? Give it a shot here.

There's a lot of stuff there, but this is the relevant part:

Section 1.  Purpose.  This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.

Nothing about cutting the CFPB there. So if Musk is still doing that, he doesn't have authorization for it. If you see him doing that kind of work, you must stop him immediately. Explain the paragraph you just read like he was 5 years old. He is, effectively, five years old. Draw pictures if you need to. Make goofy faces and sounds with your mouth to make sure he continues to pay attention. If all else fails, show him a doge meme.

Remember when a conflict of interest was important? Anything goes these days.

So what is DOGE *really* supposed to be doing? Modernizing tech always sounds like a good idea. If you have tech stuff to do, you'd rather have top of the line, hot off the press shit, right? It sounds reasonable, but it is my suspicion that Musk is really building backdoors into all the IT infrastructure so even if he's no longer in the government (and I guess technically he is), he would have no problem getting back into the government's shit and then doing whatever it is he plans to do. Wield his conflict of interest like a club? Steal tech from competitors through government contacts? Cut corners and red tape in one fell swoop? Borrow some data and maybe use it to manipulate the stock market? Or worse, sell it to Putin? There's a lot he can do with that kind of thing. I'm sure Trump is under the illusion that Musk is doing this for the good of his master, but Musk could royally fuck Trump up if he wanted to. If Trump maybe didn't like something Musk did. Instead of throwing a fit like he usually does, why not just step through that backdoor and sabotage a few things?

Trump's followers apparently call him daddy. Mel fucking Gibson called him daddy at least once. Trump might seem like the daddy, but if Musk is allowed to continue working on the true purpose of DOGE, then Trump is going to find himself living in a trailer park raising Don Jr and Eric on food stamps. Which would bring a great sense of schadenfreude to me, of course. I'm a huge fan of schadenfreude.

But I don't think MAGA will suffer like everyone seems to think they will. A massive amount of people who should know better are underestimating these cocksuckers. I'll give you an example. Everyone on the left seems to believe that Trump can't end birthright citizenship. It's enshrined in the 14th Amendment, as Evil John Bruni recently explained (poorly, I might add). I don't mean to alarm you, but you should be alarmed. Granted, only one amendment has been repealed thus far (the 18th by the 21st), but do you think that can't happen again? All it takes is one asshole in the House to propose the bill, then for the House, owned by Trump, to pass it to the Senate, also owned by Trump. Then, and only then, will the amendment land on . . . who's desk? Sure, he could veto it, but do you think he will?

Goodbye birthright citizenship.

If they can do that to one amendment, what about the rest? What about the 1st? I'll allow that doing so would be a bright burning red flag declaring they are, indeed, evil, but what else have they been doing so far? I can't think of a single thing they've done that is actually good. Even Nixon did something good every now and then. All these assholes do is bitch and moan and steal rights away from others. None of that can even remotely be viewed as good.

Stop underestimating these swine. The rules you're familiar with no longer apply. You're living in a different world than you did on January 19, 2025. MAGA is not fucking around, and we shouldn't, either. They demonstrably lied to us. I proved it tonight. The thing that gets me most, though, is that proof doesn't matter, either. The choir will concur, as is their solemn duty, but the people who *need* to be shown the error of their ways will never believe it. MAGA is a brainwashed cult even worse than a cult, as they currently have the reins of government in this country. Imagine if Charles Manson suddenly took over California in the 'Seventies. That's the kind of thing we're dealing with, here. Do you think his children would listen to sense?

Trump's children won't, either.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #944: REAL GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS

 That was fucking intense, but it had to be done. There were no sane responses for what happened last week, so I picked an insane response. I saw myself writing a bunch of Evil Goodnight Fuckers, but I realized rather quickly why that wouldn't work. The best way to describe it is . . . well. OK, I thought I'd take the fight to the enemy and get a Truth Social account. I would then satirize the rich bastards to their faces. Or "faces," I suppose. I wanted to see if admin would eventually step in and ban me. But then people started saying insipid things like, "Your body, my choice." I knew in that moment that everyone over there is most likely to agree with the crazy shit I was going to say. If I said, "Hooray! King Trump says kill the poor! Let's set up camps!" I wouldn't feel good about getting similar declarations from the snake pit, all of them decidedly *not* satire. There may be no way to satrize these fucks.

Where do we go from here? I'm sure we must either kiss the ring of feel the boot on our throats. Or nothing will happen. A lot of Republicans turned on the Trumpster. Hell, the Senate already dismissed his suggestion for Senate Majority Leader. It's possible they'll still be around to stymie him. Make no mistake, the only people in any position to make a difference right now are the Republicans who can't stand him. One of the things currently exciting me is the fact that Trump's own team, not the Republicans I was just talking about, are annoyed with Elon Musk and want him to get the fuck out.

Does any of this even matter? The precious economy is soaring. Gas prices are down. This is all due to Trump getting elected. But things might be different on January 20th. If he actually does live up to his campaign promises, the economy would have no choice but to tank. Sure, the tariffs will ensure that merchants buy American, but that's about a pubic hair's width away from being Communism. But Americans *do* love choice. I wonder how the oligarchs will feel about importing a Lamborghini and having to pay tariffs out the ass for it. Or will they once again be exempt from the rules? The funny thing, though, is American companies who manufacture overseas, like Lincoln cars, will still have to pay the tariff to import their own products. Ain't that a kick in the ass?

American economics are about to get bent over, and as someone who despises American economics, I'm here for it. Typically I'd make a comment about how I'd love to see Trump flounder with this problem, but he never flounders. People let him get away with EVERYTHING. And he knows it. I'll bet he really could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue in NYC and get away with it, especially if that man is Joe Biden. He could be caught in mid-rape on live television, and hey, it's just Donnie bein' Donnie, lol. The closest he's ever come to accountability is an assassin's bullet.

(Speaking of which, how is Kyle Gass doing? Hollywood Jables chose voicing cartoon characters over his friend and music partner for decades because of this shit weasel. (I'm regular John Bruni now. FUCK SHIT WEASELS!))

I'm tired. A lot of people are. To cope with it all, we might have to embrace the apocalypse . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #941: THE DUKE OF MAMMON

 

Tomorrow is Weasel Stomping Day, so this is my last chance to shit-talk Donald Trump as a presidential candidate, at least until he returns in four years to make our lives a living hell again. If you are still somehow on the fence about this guy, it is my intention tonight to try to get you to vote for someone else. Anyone else. Is Ross Perot running again? Vote for him.*

Back when I was in college JFK, Jr., created a magazine called George, named after the first president of our nation (as opposed to the King we fought a revolution against?). His intention was to explore where politics and pop culture meet. It was an interesting idea at the time, so I subscribed. It turned out to be a very uninteresting magazine, though, so I let the subscription lapse after a year. I think it would have been a lot more interesting today, in a world where politics and pop culture are inextricably linked to one another.

As you may know I've been cleaning out my house since my grandma's death, expecting to be kicked out at any moment by the bank who now owns it. So I've been exploring a lot, and I found my old issues of George. (Not, sadly, the one the MAGA douchebags point to as evidence that JFK, Jr., was supposed to come back and be Trump's running mate. I think that one, worth thousands (as opposed to this one, worth hundreds), was a couple of months before my subscription started.) One of them stood out from the rest of them: the issue pictured above.

(Please note, in the bottom left-hand corner, these words: THE TRUMPSTER. I'm pretty sure it was the editor who came up with that idiotic nonsense. If you're too young, there was an inexplicable time in our history when adding -ster to anything was cool. It was not actually cool. It was incredibly stupid at the time, so I'm going to take to calling him the Trumpster until he dies.)

As we were living under the threat of another Trumpster Administration at the time (and still are, at least until tomorrow) I thought it would be an important article to read. It was most illuminating. I'm not going to say much myself in this, just some commentary here and there. These are pictures I took of the article at various times. There's also a bonus section at the bottom for the unfortunately named "First Babes."

Let's start off with why I've called this column such:

This portrait of the Trumpster hangs in Mar-a-Lago, a chintzy Florida property he bought up way-back-when and covered with the cheap gilt shit he puts on everything. He bragged about putting a million down to buy it, but we know what his brags are really about. If you don't, you will shortly. But just for a second, let's pretend that the Trumpster (which nearly rhymes with "Dumpster," by the way, very apropos considering his recent jaunt in a garbage truck) was a normal person. Like a dude who lived down the street from you. Could you imagine going into such a neighbor's house and being confronted with this gaudy painting of himself? Could you take him seriously? I certainly couldn't. But the Trumpster was Not Serious when all this started. More on that in a moment.

This article was published in 2000, back when he was running for president the second time. I don't have much info about that first time (you'll see that little bit of info in a moment), but this time a reporter was smart enough to ask him why he was running.

The Trumpster, not being all that bright, told him the truth. (Or, as Gore Vidal would say, he "gave away the game.")

Wait, he was running for president as a PROMOTIONAL TOOL?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! So then . . . what about that first time he ran?

OK, let's stop for a moment. He ran for president the first time to bring visibility to his book? HE RAN FOR PRESIDENT AS A BOOK PROMOTION?!?!?!?!?! That son of a--wait a minute. That sounds kind of familiar. OK, yeah, I ran for president as a book promotion once. I, uh, don't have a lot of shade to throw on that one, I guess.

The first argument against this is, the Trumpster already has a lot of money. Why would he need to get more? Boy, do I have news for you about our corporate overlords! But here's a few thoughts on the Trumpster's personal worth as "presidential material":

That's not bad. Not bad at all. That's definitely worth telling a few lies over.

The Trumpster ran again between then and 2016, much with the same result: bowing out of the race with the ability to rent condos worth millions instead of hundreds of thousands. But 2016 changed everything. Do you remember how he conducted himself back then? There was no way that dude was serious. Even in 2000 everyone knew he was not a serious contender.

What went wrong in 2016? To ensure that he was not going to get elected, he said just about anything and everything he could imagine that would turn people off. My theory is, he didn't count on how many pieces of shit we have in this country who want a racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic (except Russia and Germany (specifically Nazi Germany)) garbage man as their Commander-in-Chief. He was not pleased when he won the White House. Perhaps these passages from George are the explanation as to why. And if you doubt his rage upon becoming the most powerful man in the world, here are a couple of quotes. The first is from author Mary Jordan, Melania Trumpster's biographer.

“The election night win came as a surprise even to Trump, according to many on his campaign, and little preparation had been done for what came next. Trump had even talked about going to one of his golf courses in Scotland immediately after the election so he didn’t have to watch Hillary Clinton bask in her success. One campaign aide recalled that candidate Trump had ‘told the pilot [of his private jet], ‘Fuel up the plane.’ “

Or how about this from author Michael Wolff? ("Their" being the Trumpster campaign.)

Their unexpected adventure would soon be over. Not only would Trump not be president, almost everyone in the campaign agreed, he should probably not be. Conveniently, the former conviction meant nobody had to deal with the latter issue.

As the campaign came to an end, Trump himself was sanguine. His ultimate goal, after all, had never been to win. “I can be the most famous man in the world,” he had told his aide Sam Nunberg at the outset of the race. His longtime friend Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News, liked to say that if you want a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network. It was a great future. He would come out of this campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunities.

“This is bigger than I ever dreamed of,” he told Ailes a week before the election. “I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.”

That's pretty tasty, but here's the best part of Wolff's assessment:

Shortly after 8 p.m. on Election Night, when the unexpected trend — Trump might actually win — seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears — and not of joy.

There was, in the space of little more than an hour, in Steve Bannon’s not unamused observation, a befuddled Trump morphing into a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump. But still to come was the final transformation: Suddenly, Donald Trump became a man who believed that he deserved to be, and was wholly capable of being, the president of the United States.

Let's pause a minute to contemplate the fact that Don Jr. calls his dad DJT. Seriously. DJT? Your dad? It makes me wonder what Donald called Fred Christ the First. A few funny things occur to me, but in all reality Fred strikes me as the kind of dad who would accept nothing less than "sir" from any of his children.

The whole article is a great read. It's part of Wolff's bigger book on the topic. But tomorrow's Weasel Stomping Day. Treat yourself.

So the Trumpster accidentally became President. I'm pretty sure it was at that point when the privilege we witnessed during Fred C. Trump III's discussion of his uncle manifested. Suddenly the Trumpster was not just the US President; God had meant to put him there. He was now on a mission from God. And that's what all this nonsense he's spewing now in 2024 is about. He recognizes that garbage talk got him into the White House, and now he's hoping it will do the same again.

(It just now occurs to me that I said I wasn't going to say much, that I would only add commentary here and there. Whoops!)

But George isn't done. While the author of the article points out all these insanities in the Trumpster's character, he also makes it clear that he admires said Trumpster for it. It is his opinion that the Trumpster is America. The 2016 election results seem to bear that out.

Lest ye forget, the Trumpster is never as rich as he says he is. Even his 2016 campaign made comments about how cheap he was being with his own money. Why should Americans invest in the Trumpster (who is really America)?

Thankfully I'm not the only one out there telling you how much of a shit person the Trumpster is. Note to self: Find and read The Lost Tycoon.

Because Blogger is being a piece of shit right now and won't let me continue with the next picture without fucking the rest of my formatting, I need to put this line here. Continue please.

How can anyone vote for this dipshit with a straight face? He has flat-out told everyone he's a conman. But the Trumpster has learned Samuel Johnson's lesson well: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." At the end of the day, there is no real justification for voting for this grifter. Are you really that far gone as a human being that you have to vote for a scarecrow stuffed with empty promises?

I'll let the article have the last thought on this. It's not meant to be a condemnation, but it can very well be taken as one.

ADDENDUM:

There's a sidebar to this article that's actually a two page spread called the "First Babes." It's a list of women the Trumpster has been with, along with weirdly distorted pictures of them. I'm not sure what the point of that was. I mean, I can guess. Let's impress everyone with all the hot chicks the Donald has fucked! But if so, why the distorted pictures? What this sidebar does instead, I think, is denigrate those women. Editorial sure didn't give much of a fuck about them beyond objectifying them. Here's a sampling with Melania saved for last.

A noble sentiment, to be sure, but, ah . . . well.

Does it surprise me that the Trumpster doesn't know anything about Black culture? Do I need to go over how ignorant he is of history again? But as far as Ivana goes, I couldn't check up on her. For obvious reasons. (There seems to be some evidence that Trump can't recognize his wives in pictures. To borrow a joke from Seth Meyers, is it possible that he's not cheating? That he thinks he's just sleeping with his wife when he's not?)

I find this one fairly disturbing, but not for the reasons you think. A lot of people give Melania a pass because of who she's married to. I don't . . . because of who she's married to. I have another picture regarding that, but I want to mention the part about her having broken up with the Trumpster between the interview for the article and the publication of the article. All the same, take a look at that magazine cover from the top again. Notice someone else in that picture? Here's the full image found inside the issue.

Isn't that a little weird? Creepy, even? That Melania had broken up with the Trumpster, and yet here is George still using that image as if to prove, hell yeah, hot chicks dig this guy! If I were Melania, I would have sued the magazine over this. But I don't feel too bad for her. You shouldn't, either. After all, who is she married to right now? Also, she knew exactly what she was getting into:

If you still think voting for this cumstain is going to make America great (again?) or is going to take back America (from whom?), you're out of your mind. As previously discussed in GF, America hasn't been great since 1950. Who didn't have many rights back then? Oh yes. Now it becomes clear. It's not a docile zoo elephant. It's one of Hannibal's war elephants. If you wanted to travel back to that shameful era of American history, why didn't you just build a time machine? It would be a lot easier . . .

*Ross Perot is dead?! Why didn't anyone tell me this?! Anyway, you should still vote for him.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #916: AROUND THE BEND

"Donald was the kind of child who could drive almost anyone around the bend."
-Fred Trump III

 

Fred Trump III is the son of Fred Trump, Jr., meaning his grandfather was Fred Christ Trump himself. (Yes, his middle name was Christ. If you don't believe me, look it up.) Which makes Fred III Donald Trump's nephew, and you don't have to listen to Fred for very long before you realize that he's not a fan. He wrote a book called All in the Family, and I read an excerpt a while back. I thought that now that we're getting close to the final month of the election, this would be a good time to bring it up.

Fred III starts out mentioning his name and how he's come to accept a lot of the horror that comes with having it. People don't like him right off the bat. He's had accounts taken away from him at work. He's long suffered from his uncle's enemies trashing him, sometimes damaging his property, all because he's a blood relative of the shittiest person in politics right now. It's unfair, but he's gotten used to it.

At one point he says that he's been asking himself a question for many years: why is there so much cruelty in the Trump family? Uncle Donald likes to tell the world that he's a self-made man, but that's simply not true. How can it be when he got a bunch of money he borrowed from his dad to start his own business . . . I don't want to say "empire." More like "scheme." But his dad really was a self-made man. He started with nothing and built a real empire, not the shiny gilt shit that Donald smears over everything. So Fred Trump really was a business man, not the con artist his son became. I honestly think if Fred Trump loved his son enough and knew how to show it, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now.

So what was li'l Donald like as a kid? I'll let Fred III tell you about it:

In a family that could sometimes seem like the cast of a 1950s sitcom, Donald’s role was as the obnoxious one. Many of Donald’s adult traits – his determination, his short fuse – first displayed themselves in childhood. He learned early that he could get away with things. Stupid kid stuff at first.

Taking toys from other children. Throwing cake at a birthday party.

So much has already been said about my uncle’s tumultuous boyhood, I don’t want to repeat all that. But I know my family well enough to grasp how the five siblings got formed by an unyielding father and also by each other.

He then gives the reason why he said his uncle could drive just about anyone "around the bend." He was so obnoxious that his siblings pranked him, including Fred III's dad. He tells this story of how Fred II, knowing Donald is deathly afraid of snakes, put a garter snake in Donald's bed while he was taking a bath. I wish I'd been there to hear li'l Donnie's screams of horror. Yet oddly enough Donald loved his older brother and kept a picture of the two of them when Fred I shipped him off to military school.

But then Fred II wanted to leave the family business. Instead he wanted to be a commercial pilot. Fred I sent Donald to bring his brother home. Fred II stuck with TWA, and the rest of the family decided he wasn't as important as they were. That translated, by the way, to Fred II's wife and kids.

I gotta say, any snarky thing I have to say was said by Fred III first. I'm going to quote him again when it came to a game of catch between adult Donald Trump and another of his nephews, a child:

With Donald, almost everything had to be a competition. One day, he and my cousin David were playing catch. Just a friendly game. That’s what David thought. But as the baseball went back and forth, Donald started throwing harder. Until he was firing rockets at his nephew. Then, one hit the tip of David’s glove and bounced off his forehead, sending my cousin straight to the grass.

Maryanne came running over, mad. ‘He’s just a kid,’ she yelled. Donald wasn’t apologetic at all. ‘That’s what the glove is for.’

That was Uncle Donald. To him, a win was a win was a win, whether or not the other person even knew the game was on.

What a fucking shitbag.

The Trumps despise weakness, and unfortunately Fred II had a big one: ALCOHOLISM. When his first stint at rehab failed, well, here. These quotes are just spot-on.

My father’s drinking was getting worse. He decided to give rehab a try. I got a postcard he sent the day he arrived, saying he was doing great. The next day he left. It was heartbreaking. It was like he had given up.

‘Your dad couldn’t do it,’ Donald said the next time I saw him. That was true, though I’m still not sure why he felt the need to rub it in.

You know what? I'm not even scratching the surface of the horrors here. Instead of summarizing and quoting (extensively, I might add) you might get better mileage from reading the excerpt I found online. The cruelty really kicks in when Fred I dies, and Fred III's family is cut out of the will. He's told that Fred I cut him out, but Fred I had dementia near the end and possibly didn't do that. Who does that leave?

Just read it. If you're thinking about voting for Trump, I have no idea what you're doing reading my GF column. You must have taken the wrong turn at Albuquerque. But all the same, if you are somehow thinking of voting for this shit weasel (my apologies to actual shit weasels, I'm talking about a real fuck nugget, here, I'm sure you understand (my apologies to actual fuck nuggets, I'm talking about a real etc.)), read Fred III's commentary on Uncle Donald. Here it is.

Sweet dreams.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #856: A CONUNDRUM

 I was planning on writing a GF on felons not being able to vote and how unfair that was, but then Donald Trump became a felon recently, so I'm kind of spinning my wheels in the dirt on this one.

For some reason unbeknownst to me or anyone with a decent brain in their heads, it's illegal for felons to vote. Or, at least, that's what I thought. It turns out it's different from state to state. Some states don't abridge this right. Some states say you can't vote while you're behind bars. Others say you can vote again after a period of time. Others say you can never vote again.

Why? I kind of get it if you can't vote while in prison, as part of your punishment, but as soon as you're out you should be able to vote again no matter what. The argument could be made that felons could tank elections when it comes to, say, judges. That they would seek vengeance against those who sentenced them. To that, I say yes. A judge should fear that. A judge should make sure they're adjudicating properly.

Unless, of course, you want to demoralize a person for the rest of their lives. That seems to be the case here. A great American pastime is demoralizing prisoners and former prisoners. Once you're in the system, you're fucked. They want to take as much as possible away from you. Up to and including your pride. Especially your pride. They find that the most delicious.

I cast my line in the Google waters and saw that a lot of these laws were founded in the post-Civil War days, possibly as an additional barrier to former slaves voting. That makes a lot of sense considering the times. It also makes sense that the US would not want former Confederates voting in elections, too, and how many of them were up on felony charges?

Which is everything I wanted to say before Trump got found guilty of 34 felonies. My immediate thought was hooray! Followed by, I'll bet he gets a slap on the wrist. Followed by, fuck, I can't write that GF anymore. Anything to stop that motherfucker from voting would be good.

But then I had to stop myself. Think of all the people I'd be condemning just to get one piece of shit. So fuck it. Even Trump should be able to vote in the upcoming election. We need to end felon disenfranchisement ASAP even if it does mean letting a shit weasel off the hook.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #796: HEALTH UPDATE

 You know what I'm getting tired of? Writing that first post after a long time off. It always feels necessary to give you all an update, which you can probably tell for yourself if you follow me on social media. But here we are again. Welcome back!

I'm on short term disability from work right now due to a horrible illness that I was hoping to never deal with again. What happens is, I feel nauseous, and it gets worse and worse until I puke. And then I puke again. And again, and by now I have a horrible pain jabbing through my stomach and to my back. And it's relentless. It goes on for days, and I usually go to the ER three times before they take me seriously and admit me until the sickness is over. It usually takes a lot of Zofran and morphine to do the trick. I was told that if I quit drinking, I would never get sick like that again.

Lo! and behold! The doctors were wrong. I'm dry, and I'm still going through this shit. So now I've been thinking about drinking again. If it doesn't matter, why not? Well, there's still the Fear. You could probably put a shot of Wild Turkey 101--hell, Booker's!--in front of me, and I wouldn't take it.

(The Pappy might be a different story. That's a once in a lifetime drink for someone as dirt poor as me.)

I probably won't, but that's what's been on my mind.

Then there's the thing about stepping in glass. I saw my podiatrist, and he said that there's still a hole there. He shaved off a callus and showed me. Just because dead skin grew over the hole doesn't mean it's fixed. So I still have that to fucking plague me. I've been sleeping badly because of it. I keep dreaming about my left leg getting amputated just below the knee. Not fun. Especially since . . .

. . . I've started a series of four spinal injections. They're being administered by the pain clinic. The first was for my bad foot, and the other three are for my back. Oh yeah, I have arthritis in my back now. At any rate, the injection for my foot just kicked in today, and I can walk without feeling pain! For the first time in years! It would be a shame to lose that foot now that I've figured out a way to kill that pain.

My hand surgery went well. I no longer have trigger finger in either hand, and now that the stitches are out, I'm back to typing, which means I'm back to work writing. Which means Good Morning, Fuckers! is going to be new on Sunday. Even better, the middle finger on my right hand no longer sticks, so I can flip people the double-bird again!

I have an appointment with my regular doctor tomorrow so I can schedule my return to work. I think I'll be back on 2/26. There are still a lot of tests to do, including a stomach emptying study in which I'll eat radioactive egg whites and get x-rayed a few times to see how fast it moves through me. Because my gastroenterologist says I *don't* have gastroparesis, as I detailed in a previous GF column. So yeah, the sickness thing is still a goddam mystery after all these years. What the fucking fuck?

Hopefully this illness is actually over, so I can get back to writing these columns (and other stuff) on a regular basis. I have not forgotten the five-part GF series that might get me killed if I was important enough. That will take place next week. I fucking hope. Because I wouldn't wish this horrible illness on Donald Fucking Trump, and that's saying a lot.

All right. That's all for now. I'll see you tomorrow for a real GF column. Goodnight, you lovely fuckers, you.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #693: TRUMP BUCKS

 

Earlier this month, when I was still on hiatus from GF, a news story broke about Trump Bucks. Perhaps you heard of it. The idea was this: companies started selling money with Trump's image on it saying that when Trump is reelected in 2024, this will all be legal tender. Of course a bunch of Trump supporters bought a shit-ton of Trump Bucks only to find out that they were all scammed.

My first thought was to laugh at them. The people who follow a con man got conned? Big surprise there. A total lack of critical thinking skills. They deserved it.

But then I thought about it a little more and realized maybe it's not as funny as I thought. Not just because people sank thousands of dollars into bullshit when they really should have known better. I wonder at how many Nigerian princes have been made wealthy by these people. But it is actually kind of sad and frightening mostly because these people aren't the real enemy. It seems like it on the surface, but they've been propagandized.

More on that in just a second. I think it's interesting that none of them filed lawsuits or charges against these companies. I assume it's because no one wants to admit they were suckered, but perhaps it's also because, according to NBC, when making these purchases they were given a popup box that declared that this was for commemoration purposes only. Like anyone faced with a user agreement, they breezed past it and got suckered. That's a little heinous right there. Like the South Park episode about the Apple user agreement. These things are too long to read, and they could very easily slip in there that you now owe them your first born. That's bullshit right there.

Back to the propaganda. Everyone points out Fox News as the propaganda machine that it is. That's people on the left, that is. Meanwhile people on the right are saying the same about the left and CNN. Both sides are being fed lines of bullshit, and neither one of them is willing to admit that. Even worse, neither side is willing to compromise with the other.

Because here's the really horrifying part of this mess we're in. BOTH SIDES HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER. We were never really good at that, but we used to be better. Compromise used to be possible. But the fact of the matter is, no matter which side you're on, you're going to have to work with the other. It's unavoidable. The other side has a lot of people, and the only way to move forward to a solution that makes sense for at least one side is to do away with the other.

And what exactly happens when a society decides something like that?

So we have no choice. I mean, going full Nazi is a choice, I guess, but not one I'm willing to so much as entertain. The only other option is to compromise. Work together. Reach across the aisle. Dick Morris once had the temerity to write a sequel to Machiavelli's The Prince, and one of his driving principles was this compromise. I'm loathe to admit this, but Dick Morris is right.

The first step is to realize that the enemy isn't Trump or Biden. It's not even Joe Rogan or Whoopi. Hell, it's not the guy in your family friendly neighborhood riding around in the pickup with the FUCK BIDEN flag waving from the bed, and it's not your Gen Z nephew at Thanksgiving dinner shit-talking Your President.

It's the corporations. We have always valued money more than people in this country, but it didn't become officially sanctioned until the 'Eighties. Angry about inflation? Look no further than corporations. Angry about skyrocketing gas prices? Stop with the Biden and Trump stickers. You're blaming the wrong people. Angry about the passing of the Good Ol' Days? Where did all those mom-n-pop stores go? Oh yeah, driven out of business by corporations.

And we not only let that happen, we *encouraged* it.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Right now I'll settle for us figuring out that we really need to learn how to work together before we do anything else. Otherwise we might not have enough torches, pitchforks and guillotines to take on the corporations. Baby steps.

I'll leave you with this to finish off your night. I don't agree with everything in the song, but close enough. Goodnight, fuckers.