BY WILLIAM C. HENRY I know that you’ve been variously described as The Artist of the Deal, The Great Deal Maker, and Master of the Deal. High praise indeed! Except that it’s all horseshit! Face it, Mr. Fraudster, you can’t–and NEVER could–deal your way out of a paper bag–or into a poker hand bluff–if your bankrupt, bullying, welshing, dodging, LIFE depended on it. For Christ’s sake, even your claimed authorship of that so-called “deal” book has been branded as COUNTERFEIT! So, where was all that purported EXTRAORDINARY “deal making” skill of yours whensomething as crucial as national security (your […]
WORTH REPEATING: Benedict Burr
“Aaron Burr” by A. DEGRAFF JUST SECURITY: In July 2016, when Trump called on “Russia, if you’re listening” to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, several Republican leaders directly and indirectly criticized him. […] By that point, however, not only did Burr know that the intelligence community had attributed the DNC hack to Russia, but the U.S. intelligence agencies even knew in summer 2015 the specific unit and agents within Russia’s intelligence services who performed the hacking. Among other specific data, Dutch intelligence agencies had for months reportedly accessed security cameras in the hackers’ Moscow offices and handed that information over to […]
The Only Response To SOTU 19 That Matters
WASHINGTON POST: An 11-year-old boy who says he’s been bullied because of his last name — Trump — will be one of President Trump and first lady Melania Trump’s guests at the State of the Union on Tuesday, the White House announced. Joshua Trump, a sixth-grade student from Wilmington, Del., who is not related to the president, drew headlines last year after his parents went public to share stories of the abuse they said he had suffered because of his last name. MORE
WORTH REPEATING: Chasing The Ghosts Of LBJ
NEW YORKER: I am constantly being asked why it takes me so long to finish my books. Well, it’s the research that takes the time—the research and whatever it is in me that makes the research take so very much longer than I had planned. I’m currently working on the fifth and final book in “The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” about the nineteen-sixties. I am also planning to write a full-scale memoir, describing in some detail my experiences in researching and writing my books about Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson—my experiences in learning about these two men and their methods […]
WORTH REPEATING: What Future Of Journalism?
Illustration by ERIK CARTER THE NEW YORKER: By some measures, journalism entered a new, Trumpian, gold-plated age during the 2016 campaign, with the Trump bump, when news organizations found that the more they featured Trump the better their Chartbeat numbers, which, arguably, is a lot of what got him elected. The bump swelled into a lump and, later, a malignant tumor, a carcinoma the size of Cleveland. Within three weeks of the election, the Times added a hundred and thirty-two thousand new subscribers. (This effect hasn’t extended to local papers.) News organizations all over the world now advertise their services […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: 8,158 Lies And Counting
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Question: How can you tell if the President is lying? Answer: His mouth is open. So, after two-plus years of the President of the United States continuously lying through his dentures (the latest total by the Washington Post is 8,158 lies and counting) about his motives for failing to give a shit about the lives (literally) and livelihoods of millions of American workers and their families, I feel it only politic to conduct a deservedly dubious in-depth re-examination of the veracity of his claims regarding the benefits ensuing to his dupable I’m-always-going-to-believe-anything-he-says-regardless-of-any-documented-evidence-to-the-contrary-and-besides-he’s-a-dedicated-racist-and-misogynist-so-why-wouldn’t-I-believe-him “base” from previously […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Before The Big Fall
Artwork via WHAT THOR TOLD ME BY WILLIAM C. HENRY How do I hate the orange man who lives in a white house of pain and the theater of cruelty he has staged for the past 24 days? Let me count the ways. For starters, folks, did you know that the Texas REPUBLICAN U.S. Representative whose district includes more southern border — 820 MILES — than ANY other politician in the southwest does NOT want this COMPLETELY ASININE WALL constructed! But, this completely ASININE Republican President of ours DOES! And, to make matters even more horrendously ASININE, this completely ASININE […]
SO, YOU’RE GOING TO JAIL: The 17 Active Federal Criminal Investigations Into Donald Trump/Russia
WIRED: While popular memory today remembers Watergate as five DNC burglars leading inexorably to Richard Nixon’s resignation two years later, history recalls that the case and special prosecutor’s investigation at the time were much broader; ultimately 69 people were charged as part of the investigation, 48 of whom pleaded guilty or were found guilty at trial. After three weeks of back-to-back-to-back-to-back bombshells by federal prosecutors and special counsel Robert Mueller, it’s increasingly clear that, as 2018 winds down, Donald Trump faces a legal assault unlike anything previously seen by any president—at least 17 distinct court cases stemming from at least […]
BEING THERE: We The People Rally @ Independence Mall
Photo by HENRY SAVAGE The threat of a large contingent of violent, pro-fascist Proud Boys and racist skinheads descending on the MAGA-aligned We The People rally this morning at Independence Mall never quite materialized. In fact the two dozen flag-waving MAGA types that assembled behind a vast police cordon on the lawn on the northside of Market street were outnumbered by hundreds of anti-fascist #PushBack counter-demonstrators who taunted them from across the street with chants of “WHO’S GOT THE NUMBERS?” and “ASS-HOLE” and signs that read NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF and SMASH THE FASH. There was a giant pussy puppet […]
Hundreds Gather At Thomas Paine Plaza To Protest Trump’s Firing Of Jeff Sessions, Move On Mueller
Photo by DARREN LOPRINZI Hundreds of Philadelphians gathered at Thomas Paine’s Plaza on Thursday night, in solidarity with thousands across the nation who were staging rallies in their cities and towns, to oppose the forced resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the appointment of Matt Whitaker as acting AG. Whitaker, who openly shit-talked Mueller investigation on Fox News, is now taking charge of the Department of Justice and with it the Mueller investigation. Everyone from Millenials to Baby Boomers were in attendance, with some folks rocking signs that said things like YOU CAN’T FIRE THE TRUTH and PROTECT MUELLER, […]
The Time 20,000 American Nazis Came To NYC
THE ATLANTIC: In 1939, the German American Bund organized a rally of 20,000 Nazi supporters at Madison Square Garden in New York City. When Academy Award-nominated documentarian Marshall Curry stumbled upon footage of the event in historical archives, he was flabbergasted. Together with Field of Vision, he decided to present the footage as a cautionary tale to Americans. The short film, A Night at the Garden, premieres on The Atlantic today. MORE RELATED: The apparent spark for the worst anti-Semitic massacre in American history was a racist hoax inflamed by a U.S. president seeking to help his party win a […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Since the 2010 election, 24 states have implemented new restrictions on voting. Alabama now requires a photo ID to cast a ballot. Other states, like Ohio and Georgia, have enacted “use-it-or-lose” laws, which strike voters from registration rolls if they have not participated in an election within a proscribed period of time. Mother Jones journalist Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot, says that many of the restrictions are part of a broader Republican strategy to tighten access to the ballot — an effort that was bolstered in 2013 by the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder […]
Washington Post Taps Phawker Alumnus Alex Fine To Illustrate Jamal Khashoggi’s Final Column
WASHINGTON POST: The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011. Journalists, academics and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries. They expected to be emancipated from the hegemony of their governments and the consistent interventions and censorship of information. These expectations were quickly shattered; these societies either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before. My dear friend, the prominent Saudi writer Saleh al-Shehi, wrote one of the most famous columns ever published in the Saudi press. He […]