Trump Melts Down as Idiot Sons Are Set to Take the Stand

Donald Trump appeared to be having a bit of a meltdown online, just hours ahead of his sons’ testimony in their New York bank fraud trial.

Trump and his two sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are defendants in the $250 million case brought forward by New York Attorney General Letitita James with hopes of barring the three from running New York businesses. So far, Judge Arthur Engoron has ruled that the trio committed fraud and has stripped the Trump Organization of its business certificates. Trump is also fighting hard to appeal that decision.

Trump Jr. is set to testify in the case on Wednesday afternoon, and Eric is set to take the stand on Thursday.

Despite having received two gag orders already in the case, along with $15,000 in combined fines, Trump chose Truth Social to let off some steam, attacking the judge, the attorney general, and witnesses.

In one post late into Tuesday night, Trump accused James, a Black woman, of being “racist” and former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who provided bombshell testimony last week on how Trump lied about his assets, a “sleazebag lawyer.”

Above all, Trump seemed concerned with damage control around his perceived net worth.

“Additionally, however, the Financial Statements Values are Conservative (LOW!), Mar-a-Lago is worth MUCH MORE than $18,000,000, there is a 100% Disclaimer Clause on the [first] page of the Statements, the Banks and Insurance Companies were paid in full, no defaults, they all made money, and there is no Victim (except me!),” Trump posted.

“Leave my children alone, Engoron. You are a disgrace to the legal profession!” he added.

Hours later, Trump was awake and posting again, this time upset that the prosecution had brought up a “low ball offer” he made in 2014 to buy the Buffalo Bills.

“Someone else offered much more, so what? Now they come up with something called ‘disgorgement.’ I never even heard of the term. WITCH HUNT!!! ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!” Trump wrote.

In a final post that seemed to conclude his rant, Trump lambasted Engoron for being biased due to the gag order and the lack of a jury, both things that were Trump’s own doing. Trump also seemed upset that the trial hadn’t experienced more delays, likening the swiftness of the trial’s onset to being “railroaded.”

“Engoron is crazy, totally unhinged, and dangerous—Our Judicial System has gone to HELL,” Trump posted.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday about whether a California man can trademark a phrase mocking Donald Trump as “too small.”

Labor lawyer Stephen Elster created a line of T-shirts that describe Trump as “too small” on a variety of social and political issues, with a healthy dose of innuendo thrown in. The slogan refers to an exchange during a 2016 presidential debate, when Marco Rubio accused Trump of having small hands. Trump, who is notoriously thin-skinned, has been unable to escape the barb since.

Elster tried to trademark the phrase “Trump too small” in 2018, but the Patent and Trademark Office denied his request. Wednesday’s lawsuit hinges on the question of whether a trademark can refer to a person. Federal law prohibits trademarks that refer to a person without that person’s consent. But last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that that law was in violation of the First Amendment, because it limits “speech critical of government officials or public figures.”

The Supreme Court has previously avoided taking up cases related to Trump, denying his request to intervene when Congress sought his tax records or when he lost the 2020 election, among other instances. But clearly, the justices can’t ignore Trump much longer.

Trump isn’t even a party in the Elster case—it just includes his name. But Trump himself is facing down a barrage of legal issues that will likely reach the level of the nation’s highest court.

Trump’s legal team may appeal the gag order recently imposed by Judge Tanya Chutkan in his trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has also repeatedly argued that he has presidential immunity from prosecution, and the Supreme Court may need to weigh in on that matter. Two lawsuits seek to bar Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot, and both are expected to reach the Supreme Court, as well.

The Marine Corps’s chief officer has been hospitalized after suffering a heart attack, leaving the military branch scrambling to fill gaps in leadership caused by Senator Tommy Tuberville’s block on military promotions. And no, the Republican senator won’t let up.

General Eric Smith collapsed while jogging Sunday and has been hospitalized, The New York Times reported. The Marines announced the following day that Lieutenant General Karsten Heckl would serve as acting commandant while Smith is out of commission.

The Marines then corrected their own announcement, saying that Heckl would only be “performing the duties” of commandant.

Part of the reason for the confusion is that Tuberville’s blockade on military promotions has prevented the Marines—and all branches of the military—from filling many leadership positions. Smith is one of just three generals who has been confirmed to a new position since February. He has been working as both commandant and his own assistant commandant since mid-September because the Senate has been unable to confirm an official deputy for him. There is no indication that his workload contributed to his heart attack, but working two jobs likely didn’t help.

Heckl has also been working multiple jobs due to Tuberville’s blockade. This is likely why he is only performing the commandant’s duties instead of completely taking over the role until Smith returns: He already has several balls he needs to keep in the air.

Tuberville has blocked more than 300 promotions since March in protest over the Defense Department’s policy of reimbursing travel costs for service members who have to go out of state for an abortion. The department has repeatedly warned that the blockade, which at one point left three branches of the military without official leaders, harms U.S. national security.

Smith’s health crisis is the clearest sign yet of how much damage Tuberville is causing. The Marines are technically without an official leader for the foreseeable future. This will make it that much more complicated for the military branch to do anything.

If there was any hope that Smith’s heart attack would force Tuberville to admit he is wrong, there is no such luck. Tuberville told reporters Tuesday that he is considering calling for a floor vote on Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney’s nomination for Marine Corps assistant commandant.

But he still refuses to budge on any of the other hundreds of nominations that he is holding up. “If they move the policy back, then we’ll drop ’em all,” he said, referring to the abortion policy.

The Pentagon, however, says the policy isn’t going anywhere. “That just would be an egregious violation of the covenant that we make, the military makes, with the people that sign up and volunteer,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said earlier this month when asked why the department doesn’t drop the policy.

“When they volunteer for that duty, they have every right to expect that they’re going to get the health care they need.”

A director of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights has resigned, issuing a lengthy letter condemning the organization, the U.S., and Western media companies for their positions on the war between Israel and Hamas, which he described as a “text-book case of genocide.”

“Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it,” wrote Craig Mokhiber, the group’s New York office director, who had worked with the U.N. for more than three decades.

“The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt.”

In the four-page letter announcing his departure, Mokhiber also called for the U.N. to adopt a 10-point plan focusing on things like: the abandonment of the two-state solution; acknowledgment of Israel’s effort to colonize and dispossess “an indigenous population on the basis of their ethnicity”; fighting apartheid; the return and compensation of displaced Palestinians; a full-scale U.N. investigation; the issuance of a “protection force” for Palestinians; the disarmament of Israel, including its nuclear capabilities; and an end to the “flow of Israel lobbyists to the offices of UN leaders.”

In place of the two-state solution, Mokhiber called for the support of a single, secular democratic state for all the people of historic Palestine.

“What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault,” Mokhiber wrote, lambasting the countries for “refusing” to meet their treaty obligations with respect to the Geneva Conventions, and instead “arming the assault” while providing economic and intelligence support to Israel and providing it cover for its atrocities against thousands of innocent civilians and refugees.

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer was left stunned on Tuesday as an Israel Defence Forces spokesman confirmed that Israel was responsible for the bombing of a refugee camp in Gaza.

Blitzer was doing an interview with IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht on the bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp earlier in the day. The IDF said the airstrike on the refugee camp killed Hamas’s central Jabalya battalion, Ibrahim Biari, as well as a few other Hamas militants. The director of a nearby hospital estimated that at least 50 people were killed.

Blitzer pressed Hecht on the logic involved in Israel’s decision to target the refugee camp.

“But even if that Hamas commander was there amidst all those Palestinian refugees who are in that Jabalya refugee camp, Israel still went ahead and dropped a bomb there attempting to kill this Hamas commander knowing that a lot of innocent civilians—men, women, and children—presumably would be killed?” Blitzer asked. “Is that what I’m hearing?”

“That’s not what you’re hearing,” Hect replied. “This is a very complicated battlespace. There could be infrastructure there, there could be tunnels there. We’re still looking into it.”

“But you know that there are a lot of refugees, a lot of innocent civilians—men, women, and children—in that refugee camp as well, right?” Blitzer asked again.

“This is the tragedy of war, Wolf. We as you know, we’ve been saying for days, move south. Civilians who are not involved with Hamas, please move south.”

“Yeah I’m just trying to get a bit more information. You knew there were civilians there, you knew there were refugees, all sorts of refugees, but you decided to still drop a bomb on that refugee camp attempting to kill this Hamas commander.”