Another take on the concept of a trickster is to see it as a change agent, as chaos, as potential and creativity. I am TOTALLY ignorant on this topic, but I did read an essay published by one of the Ojibwe nations about the role of Hare who is called a trickster by anthologists. Hare often gets in trouble by trying to be tricky and thus harms himself. This pattern jostles others into actions they might not have taken, often to their benefit.
As a resident of the Puget Sound, I used to meet Korean immigrant women, often married to American servicemen, fairly often. In fact, I worked for the Korean Women's Association. It was noticeable to me how many were Christians in the worst rightwing way.
I remember having one of those get acquainted conversations with some guy--maybe it was a job interview? It was some guy I felt instinctively alienated from, not in a hostile way, but in a "I don't think we are quite the same species" way. I think he had the same instinctive reaction to me because, to form a connection, he asked, "Your husband, which is he? Basketball or football?" I had to say, to our mutual dismay, I think, "Neither. He's into camping, hiking, kayaking, stuff like that."
I don't remember this conversation well except for the sinking feeling that he and I were going to shortly head in different directions due to mutual feelings of incomprehension.
Note: he asked about my husband. He assumed that as a female I wouldn't be into sports. Well, he was right!
Meanwhile, as an anecdote to reality, my husband has started following sports: first college basketball, followed by professional basketball, and recently (out of desperation) soccer, English rugby, and the Seattle's women's rugby team.
What kind of fan is he? I think he likes watching people do something they are good at. He doesn't seem to have heroes though he does get involved in the data about team performance.
I like watching individuals doing something they are good at, rather than teams, so I watch the Olympics track and field, the skating, and the winter sports that involve jumping into the air and doing things while airborne.
My husband I are planning to move to Canada. We qualify under the Canadian great grandparents immigration law. The process of tracing down proof has been frustrating and has glitches; his grandmother's birth certificate has gone AWOL but her sister's exists as does a census record of the family, for example.
I feel guilty about not feeling guilty about leaving. I am very, very committed and have my heart set on it, but I wonder if I should feel a sense that I am betraying all the people who have struggled over the years to make America a better place. My parents are those people. I grew up being politically active and have always been involved in campaigns. Always. The family heroes were people like MLK, Adlai Stevenson, Ann Richards, Cesar Chavez. I mean to the extent that my parents had heroes. They were pretty realistic about no one being perfect and they didn't worship anyone They just admired those who went out and did the work, and they got us kids involved at a young age. I was raised to believe that citizenship meant being actively well informed and actively involved. I have never at any point in my life not been involved in some campaign or activist group.
I am resigning from doing the work. I don't feel guilty. I want to leave so badly that I know I will be crushed if Canada rejects the application.
GftNC, my soul is anything but pure, not compared to someone who spent three days sitting with a person who endangered their happiness for years! I could only manage four hours.
I visit my ex-husband. I left him 25 years ago because I couldn't handle the frustration of living with him. That doesn't mean I don't like him. We just couldn't make decisions together.
Leaving was like getting out of jail. I swear I had PTS about making decisions for a while. However, years went by. We got in touch again through Facebook.
He has Parkinson's and lives in assisted living and is dying very slowly.
I drove out to SPokane to visit last October. It was a painful exercise in not allowing myself to remember too much--nostalgia makes me want to cry and the drive out through the golden wheat fields has good memories for me and was triggering. I used to escape from David and go to Montana on vacations on my own by driving that highway. Each Montana day is like a jewel in my mind: blue sky, wildflowers, roaming around feeling delight. I can remember the days with joy, but for some reason driving out on the same highway just made me feel almost frantic with sorrow.
Anyway, I visited and the only reason I survived is TV. We watched some shows together--his choice because every choice has to be his. I could not engage in a conversation about our shared past, not even when he talked about how much he liked my parents. As I was leaving, he said something about being grateful that we were friends, and I told him that I still loved him. I said that because I thought it might make him a little happier. He doesn't get any visitors.
Then I fled and ran back home. Now I call him about once a month and I am planning to drive out again. I don't want him to die alone. All of his siblings, his parents, etc are dead and he was always too introverted to make friends. I'm it.
My circle is narrowing too, and I can imagine that at some point, when other key people are gone, I will have a hard time staying alive on my own because why? I think relationships are key to me for my life being meaningful.
I thought the writer intended to be generic rather than specific. The purpose is to speak to all of us old people so we can fill in the details from our own lives.
I don't care what the autopsy report says because it focused on the wrong stuff; providing fodder for blame games. My guess is the that autopsy report was held up to avoid the pointless circular firing squad behavior Dems are so prone to. There's too many people who focus their energy on trying to find fault with other Dems and any report will have data pts to cherry-pick out for that purpose.
I am interested in leadership from the party on how to exploit social media effectively, how to build grassroots support on campuses and high schools, how to work around the lazy and partisan msm, how to build outreach to Latino communities, and other practical and tactical matters.
I understand that the history of ideas is interesting. (IMHO, there's a lot of Great Chain of Being in contemporary American conservativism and especially in the Ayn Rand kind with its worship of wealthy people). BUT, apart from the fun of learning and discussing, how important are historical understandings of words like "liberal" or "conservative"? It seems to me that we serve the challenges of today better if we figure out what those words mean now.
Here's an example of why I think we need to focus on what words mean now: I have the impression that there is a certain kind of self-identified progressive who hates Democrats because of equating the party with the liberalism of oh, say, two hundred years ago? They see liberalism as aligned with unregulated capitalism and capital. From that perspective, any Democrat who has any connection, no matter how remote, to a business is a corporate sell out and they start paraphrasing Marx. Actually, they don't need to know of a corporate connection. They just assume that all Dems are sell outs due to not being whatever they are. I've learned from convos that some of these people are actually dumb enough to be communists. I don't think most are. They speak in catch phrases they picked up somewhere. Many of the catch phrases are about liberalism as it existed historically in the context of a time when slavery existed and unions didn't.
So, I'd rather we figured out what "liberal" and "conservative" mean now. I'd also like to know what the fuck "progressive" means that's substantially different from just plain old "Democrat". I've read the party platforms of both the Democrats and the Democratic Socialists and there really isn't a substantive difference in terms of domestic policies. There's a style difference; the Dem platform is detailed and extensive, while the DSA platform reads like it was written by a college sophomore who is trying to sound like a member of the IWW. The Dem platform has more specifics while the DSAs platform doesn't get past the slogan stage.
David Brooks is an exemplar of that person who believes he stands for order and principle in a crazy world when actually he stands for the established power structure because he sees himself as part of it--in other words, he stands for himself.
My husband made the comment a couple nights ago that his great-grandparents were from Quebec and we might be eligible under the new Canadian law to emigrate. I felt such a lift in my heart.
He did the research and, yes, all you need is a great-grandparent. I can tag along and get permanent resident status. Further research revealed that he has THREE great-grandparents who were born in Quebec. Sadly, he is one generation away from citizenship in Ireland, or we would be long gone.
We are going to go through the application process. He has contacted the relevant officials in Quebec to get the long form birth certificates required. We are checking into other factors such as British Columbia taxes and housing costs. We live just down the highway from BC, so that's the logical place to go although I could easily be persuaded to head for the Maritimes. Or even Quebec or parts of Ontario. Not Alberta which is infested with Canadian MAGGOTs.
It will not be easy to make the final decision, but not because of any feeling about the US. I've been disgusted for a long, long time. The biggest regret of my life is that I didn't emigrate somewhere when I was fifty years younger. The only thing I will miss is the wilderness and that is being so thoroughly trashed that most of it is either gone or will be soon.
I'm 73 so don't have much longer to live. I'd like my life to get wider as I get older, not narrower. Also, like Gore Vidal, I am thinking about where to be to watch the end of the world. (He picked Rome.)
Well someone explained to me that the incident was fake in the sense that the SS was tipped off, knew he was coming and allowed it to happen so the fake victimhood etc could go on--on the assumption that they could kill or arrest him before there was any actual threat to King Pussygrabber.
I guess I think it was real mostly because the shooter has sacrificed his freedom and risked his life. WOuld anyone do that just to give Trump a chance to play the martyred victim? I think the other one was real too for the same reason. I don't understand how someone could be talked into shooting at a president (and deliberately missing) as a false flag operation when being arrested or shot was guaranteed. What am I missing?
I think that it is clear that Dems are anti-THIS war and I've seen/heard many put that in the context of wasted money better used here. This is a different time than Viet Nam and the war in Iraq. It doesn't seem like there's much "You must support the war or you are an unpatriotic pacifist wimp" as I remember. Is it possible that some learning has occurred in the general population? It just doesn't seem like jingoism has much support this time.
I think we can condemn the parts of a historical person that deserve condemnation and applaud the parts that deserve applause. After all, the historical person is dead and gone and the only effect he/she has on us is their legacy--so we benefit from remembering and promoting the good parts, while remembering the bad as a warning about human fallibility.
I think that it is more appropriate to be harsh with people currently alive. If Jefferson lived now and presented himself as an intellectual champion of liberty while being an obvious racist (and cheating on his wife) I'd say go ahead and condemn him loudly and let the condemnation outweigh anything good he said. There's the possibility that negative feedback would get him to change and would provide context for anyone likely to hero worship him.
Unlikely that a “25th Amendment commission” goes anywhere, and even if it did, I’d fully expect that the current totally-corrupt Supremely Deplorable Court to ignore the plain text of the Amendment and toss the law, with some crisp legal reasoning, such as “yur doon it rong”
I think Snarki is right. However, I don't think the point is to actually get him removed. I think the point is to shut up all the snipers and gripers who keep screaming on social media that the Dems aren't doing anything, to keep stories about his dementia in the msm, to put Republicans on record, and to make his dementia an issue in the midterms.
The best option for the Middle East, in terms of American involvement, is for King Pussygrabber to declare victory and turn his attention to tariffs and rants on social media. Then let the regional players work it out. (Yes, I know, the regional players will have a job working it out, esp. with Netanyahu, but getting Trump out of the talks is essential. If he sends Kushner over to be the diplomat, he'll support whoever gives him the biggest bribe.)
I'm not sure that taking to the streets is the right response to the Mad King, given that we were out there just recently. Dems can't kick him out through the Senate and only the Cabinet can 25th A him. Also he most likely will not get additional military money. Many Dems are calling for Congress to be re-convened.
MANY elected Dems are saying very blunt statements about his mental decline and unfitness--which is historic. At this point, I think that establishing in the population the fact that he is a depraved wacko with mental problems is pretty essential and the Dems are on it. That's really the only way to shame Republicans into asserting their legislative responsibilities.
We need to brand the Republican party with Trump, make the whole party repugnant because the Republicans will still be Trump when he is gone. They created him, they elected him, they enabled him, and in terms of policies and style of governance--the corruption and disregard for the rule of law--they reflect his values and behavior. There is no respectable, responsible, Main Street Republican party anymore. (Hasn't been for years, really.)
"that sense of spooky aliveness that might lead to wondering what an object might have to say for itself."
In other words, delight.
At least, for me. I get this from the natural world and especially from those landscapes that force you to think from the perspective of death and eternity--places like the cold, blue heaven of the Yukon or the raw geology of southern Utah. It's the closest thing I have to a religion.
I think she got fired for failing to keep the Epstein files hidden. If she had kept them hidden,
That too, of course! And you are right; Trump and his inner circle aren't capable of shame.
They can be humiliated, though. And both Bondi and Neom left their respective hearings in tatters, having been thoroughly exposed. Yes, they stuck their chins in the air and took no responsibility or signaled no remorse--but it was obvious in both cases that they were rattled to the core, basically run off with tar and feathers. As soon as she got out of the room, Neom started screaming at her entourage so loudly it was audible on videos of the hearings. And she got caught giving money in an obvious scam--which she claimed had been okay'd by Trump! Both women let Trump down publicly.
I think that Trump does want to sideline people who get caught publicly doing things that reflect badly on him if there's enough jeering and laughing at him involved.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Monkey business”
Another take on the concept of a trickster is to see it as a change agent, as chaos, as potential and creativity. I am TOTALLY ignorant on this topic, but I did read an essay published by one of the Ojibwe nations about the role of Hare who is called a trickster by anthologists. Hare often gets in trouble by trying to be tricky and thus harms himself. This pattern jostles others into actions they might not have taken, often to their benefit.
On “A future so bright”
As a resident of the Puget Sound, I used to meet Korean immigrant women, often married to American servicemen, fairly often. In fact, I worked for the Korean Women's Association. It was noticeable to me how many were Christians in the worst rightwing way.
On “Sports fandom”
It seems to be a recurrent issue that dogs enter soccer games with an "ooooooohhh" response from the audience. One dog became a team mascot.
Tunita the Stray Dog Crashed a Soccer Game – So the Home Team Adopted Her as Their Mascot! - Celebrity Pets
This is a baseball story: Stray dog Hank becomes Milwaukee Brewers' unofficial mascot | Daily Mail Online
"
I remember having one of those get acquainted conversations with some guy--maybe it was a job interview? It was some guy I felt instinctively alienated from, not in a hostile way, but in a "I don't think we are quite the same species" way. I think he had the same instinctive reaction to me because, to form a connection, he asked, "Your husband, which is he? Basketball or football?" I had to say, to our mutual dismay, I think, "Neither. He's into camping, hiking, kayaking, stuff like that."
I don't remember this conversation well except for the sinking feeling that he and I were going to shortly head in different directions due to mutual feelings of incomprehension.
Note: he asked about my husband. He assumed that as a female I wouldn't be into sports. Well, he was right!
Meanwhile, as an anecdote to reality, my husband has started following sports: first college basketball, followed by professional basketball, and recently (out of desperation) soccer, English rugby, and the Seattle's women's rugby team.
What kind of fan is he? I think he likes watching people do something they are good at. He doesn't seem to have heroes though he does get involved in the data about team performance.
I like watching individuals doing something they are good at, rather than teams, so I watch the Olympics track and field, the skating, and the winter sports that involve jumping into the air and doing things while airborne.
On “What’s wrong with liberalism?”
My husband I are planning to move to Canada. We qualify under the Canadian great grandparents immigration law. The process of tracing down proof has been frustrating and has glitches; his grandmother's birth certificate has gone AWOL but her sister's exists as does a census record of the family, for example.
I feel guilty about not feeling guilty about leaving. I am very, very committed and have my heart set on it, but I wonder if I should feel a sense that I am betraying all the people who have struggled over the years to make America a better place. My parents are those people. I grew up being politically active and have always been involved in campaigns. Always. The family heroes were people like MLK, Adlai Stevenson, Ann Richards, Cesar Chavez. I mean to the extent that my parents had heroes. They were pretty realistic about no one being perfect and they didn't worship anyone They just admired those who went out and did the work, and they got us kids involved at a young age. I was raised to believe that citizenship meant being actively well informed and actively involved. I have never at any point in my life not been involved in some campaign or activist group.
I am resigning from doing the work. I don't feel guilty. I want to leave so badly that I know I will be crushed if Canada rejects the application.
Oh Canada! I want that maple leaf flag.
On “The quiet grief of adult friendship”
GftNC, my soul is anything but pure, not compared to someone who spent three days sitting with a person who endangered their happiness for years! I could only manage four hours.
Regards, Laura
"
I visit my ex-husband. I left him 25 years ago because I couldn't handle the frustration of living with him. That doesn't mean I don't like him. We just couldn't make decisions together.
Leaving was like getting out of jail. I swear I had PTS about making decisions for a while. However, years went by. We got in touch again through Facebook.
He has Parkinson's and lives in assisted living and is dying very slowly.
I drove out to SPokane to visit last October. It was a painful exercise in not allowing myself to remember too much--nostalgia makes me want to cry and the drive out through the golden wheat fields has good memories for me and was triggering. I used to escape from David and go to Montana on vacations on my own by driving that highway. Each Montana day is like a jewel in my mind: blue sky, wildflowers, roaming around feeling delight. I can remember the days with joy, but for some reason driving out on the same highway just made me feel almost frantic with sorrow.
Anyway, I visited and the only reason I survived is TV. We watched some shows together--his choice because every choice has to be his. I could not engage in a conversation about our shared past, not even when he talked about how much he liked my parents. As I was leaving, he said something about being grateful that we were friends, and I told him that I still loved him. I said that because I thought it might make him a little happier. He doesn't get any visitors.
Then I fled and ran back home. Now I call him about once a month and I am planning to drive out again. I don't want him to die alone. All of his siblings, his parents, etc are dead and he was always too introverted to make friends. I'm it.
My circle is narrowing too, and I can imagine that at some point, when other key people are gone, I will have a hard time staying alive on my own because why? I think relationships are key to me for my life being meaningful.
"
I thought the writer intended to be generic rather than specific. The purpose is to speak to all of us old people so we can fill in the details from our own lives.
On “What’s wrong with liberalism?”
I don't care what the autopsy report says because it focused on the wrong stuff; providing fodder for blame games. My guess is the that autopsy report was held up to avoid the pointless circular firing squad behavior Dems are so prone to. There's too many people who focus their energy on trying to find fault with other Dems and any report will have data pts to cherry-pick out for that purpose.
I am interested in leadership from the party on how to exploit social media effectively, how to build grassroots support on campuses and high schools, how to work around the lazy and partisan msm, how to build outreach to Latino communities, and other practical and tactical matters.
"
I understand that the history of ideas is interesting. (IMHO, there's a lot of Great Chain of Being in contemporary American conservativism and especially in the Ayn Rand kind with its worship of wealthy people). BUT, apart from the fun of learning and discussing, how important are historical understandings of words like "liberal" or "conservative"? It seems to me that we serve the challenges of today better if we figure out what those words mean now.
Here's an example of why I think we need to focus on what words mean now: I have the impression that there is a certain kind of self-identified progressive who hates Democrats because of equating the party with the liberalism of oh, say, two hundred years ago? They see liberalism as aligned with unregulated capitalism and capital. From that perspective, any Democrat who has any connection, no matter how remote, to a business is a corporate sell out and they start paraphrasing Marx. Actually, they don't need to know of a corporate connection. They just assume that all Dems are sell outs due to not being whatever they are. I've learned from convos that some of these people are actually dumb enough to be communists. I don't think most are. They speak in catch phrases they picked up somewhere. Many of the catch phrases are about liberalism as it existed historically in the context of a time when slavery existed and unions didn't.
So, I'd rather we figured out what "liberal" and "conservative" mean now. I'd also like to know what the fuck "progressive" means that's substantially different from just plain old "Democrat". I've read the party platforms of both the Democrats and the Democratic Socialists and there really isn't a substantive difference in terms of domestic policies. There's a style difference; the Dem platform is detailed and extensive, while the DSA platform reads like it was written by a college sophomore who is trying to sound like a member of the IWW. The Dem platform has more specifics while the DSAs platform doesn't get past the slogan stage.
On “It’s funny what gets left out”
The breaking point for me is the destruction of our public lands. I don't have anything to love about America anymore. So I think I want to go.
"
David Brooks is an exemplar of that person who believes he stands for order and principle in a crazy world when actually he stands for the established power structure because he sees himself as part of it--in other words, he stands for himself.
My husband made the comment a couple nights ago that his great-grandparents were from Quebec and we might be eligible under the new Canadian law to emigrate. I felt such a lift in my heart.
He did the research and, yes, all you need is a great-grandparent. I can tag along and get permanent resident status. Further research revealed that he has THREE great-grandparents who were born in Quebec. Sadly, he is one generation away from citizenship in Ireland, or we would be long gone.
We are going to go through the application process. He has contacted the relevant officials in Quebec to get the long form birth certificates required. We are checking into other factors such as British Columbia taxes and housing costs. We live just down the highway from BC, so that's the logical place to go although I could easily be persuaded to head for the Maritimes. Or even Quebec or parts of Ontario. Not Alberta which is infested with Canadian MAGGOTs.
It will not be easy to make the final decision, but not because of any feeling about the US. I've been disgusted for a long, long time. The biggest regret of my life is that I didn't emigrate somewhere when I was fifty years younger. The only thing I will miss is the wilderness and that is being so thoroughly trashed that most of it is either gone or will be soon.
I'm 73 so don't have much longer to live. I'd like my life to get wider as I get older, not narrower. Also, like Gore Vidal, I am thinking about where to be to watch the end of the world. (He picked Rome.)
I'd prefer Ireland, but BC works for me.
On “Clusterfucks r us”
I agree. The faux outrage and faux victimization and theatricals by Republicans who are enjoying it are all fake, but he was a real wannabe assassin.
"
Well someone explained to me that the incident was fake in the sense that the SS was tipped off, knew he was coming and allowed it to happen so the fake victimhood etc could go on--on the assumption that they could kill or arrest him before there was any actual threat to King Pussygrabber.
"
I guess I think it was real mostly because the shooter has sacrificed his freedom and risked his life. WOuld anyone do that just to give Trump a chance to play the martyred victim? I think the other one was real too for the same reason. I don't understand how someone could be talked into shooting at a president (and deliberately missing) as a false flag operation when being arrested or shot was guaranteed. What am I missing?
On “Your choice: an open thread”
I think that it is clear that Dems are anti-THIS war and I've seen/heard many put that in the context of wasted money better used here. This is a different time than Viet Nam and the war in Iraq. It doesn't seem like there's much "You must support the war or you are an unpatriotic pacifist wimp" as I remember. Is it possible that some learning has occurred in the general population? It just doesn't seem like jingoism has much support this time.
On “Jefferson’s shadow”
I think we can condemn the parts of a historical person that deserve condemnation and applaud the parts that deserve applause. After all, the historical person is dead and gone and the only effect he/she has on us is their legacy--so we benefit from remembering and promoting the good parts, while remembering the bad as a warning about human fallibility.
I think that it is more appropriate to be harsh with people currently alive. If Jefferson lived now and presented himself as an intellectual champion of liberty while being an obvious racist (and cheating on his wife) I'd say go ahead and condemn him loudly and let the condemnation outweigh anything good he said. There's the possibility that negative feedback would get him to change and would provide context for anyone likely to hero worship him.
On “Imagining a mad king”
Unlikely that a “25th Amendment commission” goes anywhere, and even if it did, I’d fully expect that the current totally-corrupt Supremely Deplorable Court to ignore the plain text of the Amendment and toss the law, with some crisp legal reasoning, such as “yur doon it rong”
I think Snarki is right. However, I don't think the point is to actually get him removed. I think the point is to shut up all the snipers and gripers who keep screaming on social media that the Dems aren't doing anything, to keep stories about his dementia in the msm, to put Republicans on record, and to make his dementia an issue in the midterms.
"
House Democrats File Bill to Form 25th Amendment Commission to Assess Trump’s Mental Fitness
"
A 14 yo going to prison? He's 20 now. He also seems to be genuinely self-aware and fully takes responsibility.
Not only is Trump incapable of that, but I don't think anyone in his family, his Cabinet, or any supporter in Congress is capable of it.
On “That beacon of peace, China, errr, I mean Pakistan…”
The best option for the Middle East, in terms of American involvement, is for King Pussygrabber to declare victory and turn his attention to tariffs and rants on social media. Then let the regional players work it out. (Yes, I know, the regional players will have a job working it out, esp. with Netanyahu, but getting Trump out of the talks is essential. If he sends Kushner over to be the diplomat, he'll support whoever gives him the biggest bribe.)
On “Materialism, rights and Japan”
I'm not sure that taking to the streets is the right response to the Mad King, given that we were out there just recently. Dems can't kick him out through the Senate and only the Cabinet can 25th A him. Also he most likely will not get additional military money. Many Dems are calling for Congress to be re-convened.
MANY elected Dems are saying very blunt statements about his mental decline and unfitness--which is historic. At this point, I think that establishing in the population the fact that he is a depraved wacko with mental problems is pretty essential and the Dems are on it. That's really the only way to shame Republicans into asserting their legislative responsibilities.
We need to brand the Republican party with Trump, make the whole party repugnant because the Republicans will still be Trump when he is gone. They created him, they elected him, they enabled him, and in terms of policies and style of governance--the corruption and disregard for the rule of law--they reflect his values and behavior. There is no respectable, responsible, Main Street Republican party anymore. (Hasn't been for years, really.)
"
"that sense of spooky aliveness that might lead to wondering what an object might have to say for itself."
In other words, delight.
At least, for me. I get this from the natural world and especially from those landscapes that force you to think from the perspective of death and eternity--places like the cold, blue heaven of the Yukon or the raw geology of southern Utah. It's the closest thing I have to a religion.
On “Technically, it is called gastroesophageal reflux”
Bible Barbie might be next. Trump makes sinister threat over Karoline Leavitt's job after blaming her for bad press
"
I think she got fired for failing to keep the Epstein files hidden. If she had kept them hidden,
That too, of course! And you are right; Trump and his inner circle aren't capable of shame.
They can be humiliated, though. And both Bondi and Neom left their respective hearings in tatters, having been thoroughly exposed. Yes, they stuck their chins in the air and took no responsibility or signaled no remorse--but it was obvious in both cases that they were rattled to the core, basically run off with tar and feathers. As soon as she got out of the room, Neom started screaming at her entourage so loudly it was audible on videos of the hearings. And she got caught giving money in an obvious scam--which she claimed had been okay'd by Trump! Both women let Trump down publicly.
I think that Trump does want to sideline people who get caught publicly doing things that reflect badly on him if there's enough jeering and laughing at him involved.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.