At some point, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to believe almost anything that Defendants represent.
– US District Judge Sara Ellis,
commenting on ICE and Border Patrol testimony
contradicted by their body camera footage
This week’s featured post is “The Vibecession and the AI Bubble“.
Ongoing stories
- Trump’s assault on American democracy. A judge found that federal agents in Chicago repeatedly instigated violence against protesters, then lied about it in reports that painted the protesters as violent.
- Climate change. According to Grist, the COP30 conference in Brazil closed with “no new agreements to wind down fossil fuel use or curb deforestation”.
- Gaza. Ostensibly there’s a ceasefire, but there are still attacks and people still die. The famine conditions have abated but “the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) reports that a quarter of households in Gaza are eating just one meal daily”.
- Ukraine. Representatives of Trump and Putin put together a 28-point peace plan, which Trump has given Zelenskyy until Thursday to accept. It comes at a time of internal Ukrainian weakness, and amounts to a demand for surrender. It’s currently being revised in talks with Ukraine and Europe, who were left out of the original formulation.
This week’s developments
This week Trump did a lot to raise your outrage
Maybe it comes from the sting of his defeat on the Epstein Transparency Act, or from worsening dementia limiting his ability to control himself, but Trump has said and done outrageous things recently at a pace that is unusual even for him. It’s hard to know how to cover them. It would be easy to fill the entire Sift with nothing else, and several hour-long news shows I watched on the rechristened MS NOW did precisely that. But I’m torn.
On the one hand, these incidents only reinforce things you already know:
- Donald Trump is a disgusting human being.
- He regularly gets away with outrages that would have ended the career of any previous president, or just about any previous American politician. We’re a long way from the era when Obama could spark outrage by wearing a tan suit or putting his feet up on the Resolute Desk.
Meanwhile, substantive things have been happening in foreign affairs, in the economy, in the courts, and so on. Being drawn into Trump’s Crazytown antics removes us from the world of events that have lasting consequences for our lives and for the future of our nation.
On the other hand, ignoring these persistent outrages makes us complicit in normalizing them. American presidents have never acted like this before, and no one should want this kind of behavior to become acceptable.
So here’s my compromise: I’m going to list the three biggest outrages and link to longer accounts of them, because you should know what happened. But I’m also not going to let them take over and drive out all other news.
- He threatened six Democratic lawmakers with arrest, trial, and death for making a video repeating the standard Defense Department doctrine that soldiers should refuse to carry out unlawful orders. (No one seems to remember the origin story of the right-wing Oath Keepers after President Obama took office: “More specifically, the group’s members, which number in the thousands, pledge to disobey orders they deem unlawful”. Right-wingers considered that position patriotic in 2009.) Trump has since denied that he was making a death threat, but who knows how his more rabid followers might interpret his statements? If somebody actually does shoot at (rather than just threaten) one or more of the Democrats, it will be a textbook case of stochastic terrorism. Notably, one of the Democrats is Arizona’s Senator Mark Kelly, whose wife Gabby Giffords has already survived a shooting.
- He called a female White House reporter “piggy”. A week ago Friday, Catherine Lucey from Bloomberg was part of a press gaggle on Air Force One. She asked the kind of hard, direct question reporters are supposed to put to presidents: “if there’s nothing incriminating in the [Epstein] files”, why was he blocking their release? Trump pointed to her in a threatening way (see photo above) and said, “Quiet, quiet piggy.” The White House press secretary later defended this response as “frank and honest“.
- He justified the murder of a Washington Post reporter and celebrated the murderer. Tuesday, he held a White House banquet for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who (according to US intelligence services) ordered the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post reporter and legal permanent US resident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. At an Oval Office meeting, Trump and the prince were asked about Khashoggi’s death. Trump contradicted the US intelligence assessment and minimized the murder: “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen. But he [the Crown Prince] knew nothing about it.” No one bothered to point out the obvious: A lot of people don’t like Trump either, but I don’t know anyone who calls for his dismemberment.
This wasn’t an action of Trump himself, but falls into the same outrage category: The Coast Guard briefly considered reclassifying swastikas and nooses as “potentially divisive” rather than hate symbols. Public outcry made them walk that back.
Meanwhile, we still haven’t seen the Epstein files. The Epstein Transparency Act gives the Justice Department 30 days to produce the files. Trump says his DoJ will because there’s nothing to hide, but we’ll see what happens.
The Trump-ordered sham investigations into Epstein’s links to prominent Democrats opens the possibility that DoJ will claim it can’t release information related to an ongoing investigation.
It bears repeating that Trump could have ordered the files released at any time and still could. He didn’t need an act of Congress to force his hand. It’s absurd to claim that you support doing something that you could have done a long time ago and chose not to do.
The best people to deal with absurdity are comedians, so here’s The Daily Show’s take on the situation, where Jordan Klepper applies “Occam’s Giant Fucking Machete“. The whole routine is amusing, but if you’re pressed for time skip ahead to about the 12:30 mark.
and Marjorie Taylor Greene
It’s been interesting these last few months watching MTG become estranged from the Trump regime on issues like Medicaid, ObamaCare subsidies, and the Epstein files. In every case, she has taken the path consistent with Trump’s base and the promises he made them, while Trump has done something else. Just before he flipped back to the release-the-files side (sort of), Trump branded MTG as “Marjorie Traitor Greene”, which MTG claimed (believably) resulted in death threats.
Sadly, like Jeff Flake, Adam Kinzinger, and others before her, MTG decided not to stand and fight. Friday night she released a video announcing that she will resign from Congress on January 5 (coincidentally, just after her pension vests).
Her video is worth watching, mostly because of how well she describes the people she claims to represent. There’s some Christian-right stuff in there about abortion and trans rights, but mostly she’s talking about working-class people who have seen their prospects diminish and who have little hope for their children to have a better life. She’s not wrong about that, and Democrats have to figure out how to speak to and for these people.
Two places in the video stand out for other reasons. Around the 6:30 mark, she has just finished outlining all the ways she has fought for Trump and the Trump agenda in Congress before differing with him on a few issues. But then she says:
Loyalty should be a two-way street, and we should be able to vote our conscience and represent our district’s interests, because our job-title is literally “representative”. … Standing up for American women who were raped at 14 years old, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the president of the United States, whom I fought for.
Around 9:15, she compares her relationship with Trump to a broken marriage:
I refuse to be a battered wife, hoping it all goes away and gets better. If I am cast aside by the President and the MAGA political machine and replaced by neo-cons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, military-industrial war complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can never ever relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well.
But there was real news about Ukraine
Thursday, Axios published a leaked draft of a 28-point peace plan worked out by representatives of Trump and Putin, without input from either Ukraine or its European allies. The plan is shockingly one-sided. Ukraine gives in to Russia’s demands: limiting the size of its army, rewriting its constitution to outlaw NATO membership, and even surrendering more territory than Russia has conquered. In exchange it gets only nebulous commitments without clear enforcement mechanisms. Timothy Snyder goes through the proposal point-by-point.
Snyder points to something others have noticed: The plan’s curious phrasing suggests that it was translated from Russian. In other words, Trump’s peace plan was really just Trump’s name attached to Putin’s demands. Much of the plan is in the passive voice, like “Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed.” Exactly who is doing this confirming is never specified. Treaties and other agreements are not written like this.
At first it wasn’t clear whether this was a final product, but Trump quickly got behind it and insisted that Ukraine accept it by Thanksgiving. “He’s going to have to approve it,” Trump said of Zelensky, who is politically weak right now because of a corruption scandal in his administration.
Europe pushed back, and Trump fumed. But today it looks like a second draft will happen after consultation with Europe and Ukraine. Probably Russia will reject this, and we’ll be back to square one.
and the AI bubble
That’s covered in the featured post.
and the regime’s bad week in court
Thursday, US District Judge Sara Ellis ordered ICE and Border Patrol thugs to stop brutalizing the people of Chicago. But an appeals court stayed her order, claiming it was too broad. Then she released 233 very damning pages of her findings. Specifically, federal agents and their leader Greg Bovino repeatedly lied, submitting reports that didn’t match what their body cameras recorded.
After reviewing all the evidence submitted to the Court and listening to the testimony elicited at the preliminary injunction hearing, during depositions, and in other court proceedings, the Court finds Defendants’ evidence simply not credible. … Defendants specifically directed the Court to certain videos and timestamps “to aid the Court in its review of those videos.” Presumably, these portions of the videos would be Defendants’ best evidence to demonstrate that agents acted in line with the Constitution, federal laws, and the agencies’ own policies on use of force when engaging with protesters, the press, and religious practitioners. But a review of them shows the opposite—supporting Plaintiffs’ claims and undermining all of Defendants’ claims that their actions toward protesters, the press, and religious practitioners have been, as Bovino has stated, “more than exemplary.”
Quite the opposite, the videos repeatedly show federal agents as the provocateurs, introducing violence into otherwise peaceful protests:
For example, Defendants directed the Court to two videos of agents outside the Broadview facility the evening of September 19, 2025. In those videos, agents stand behind a fence preparing to leave the facility’s gates and disperse what Defendants described as an unruly mob. The scene appears quiet as the gate opens, revealing a line of protesters standing in the street holding signs. Almost immediately and without warning, agents lob flashbang grenades, tear gas, and pepper balls at the protesters, stating, “fuck yea!”, as they do so, and the crowd scatters. This video disproves Defendants’ contentions that protesters were the ones shooting off fireworks, refusing orders, and acting violently so as to justify the agents’ use of force.
Or this:
Defendants also highlighted an October 3, 2025 video, presumably to show that agents driving the streets faced constant danger from cars ramming them on purpose. But instead of leaving this impression, the video … suggests that the agent drove erratically and brake-checked other motorists in an attempt to force accidents that agents could then use as justifications for deploying force.
After listing other examples and alluding to many others, Ellis conclude:
[A]t some point, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to believe almost anything that Defendants represent. … Overall, after reviewing all the evidence, the Court finds that Defendants’ widespread misrepresentations call into question everything that Defendants say they are doing in their characterization of what is happening at the Broadview facility or out in the streets of the Chicagoland area during law enforcement activities.
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern quotes Skye Perryman to respond to the objection that none of this matters because the Supreme Court will knuckle under to Trump anyway:
Listen, this is why we’re doing what we’re doing in the district courts. We are fully aware that somewhere down the line we can lose. But this is the place where the fog of war doesn’t enter the room. What enters the room is people telling the truth and the judge making findings. That is the story we tell, and it’s what we can do to hold the line right now. … [I]t’s frustrating that this order has been stayed. In other words, this changes nothing on the ground. But it is important to have the judge who ordered agents to wear bodycams now make findings in which she says: You just lied. And I think that is the value of all this.
Also Thursday, US District Judge Jia Cobb ruled that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to DC was probably illegal. Her preliminary injunction gives the government until December 11 to get the troops out of DC.
And the prosecution of James Comey continues to be a comedy of errors. Recall: The career prosecutors found no case worth bringing to a grand jury, so Trump fired the US attorney and brought in Lindsey Halligan, his former personal lawyer. She couldn’t get any other lawyers in her office to accompany her, so she went to the grand jury alone. Having never prosecuted a case before, and trying to move quickly before the statute of limitations ran out, she made a botch of it.
Law-fare’s Benjamin Wittes comments:
It is actually hard to keep up with the pace of developments. Multiple times a day, documents land on this docket that contain new inanities, new abominations in the sight of the law, new factual revelations, new reasons to wonder not whether this case will collapse but only how. At the hearing the other day, Judge Michael Nachmanoff seemed to be struggling with exactly this question, asking an attorney for Comey—in effect—which motion he wants the judge to dismiss the case based on.
US District Judge James Boasberg will hold hearings next week to determine whether contempt charges are justified in the case where administration officials refused to turn around a plane deporting detainees to El Salvador.
and you also might be interested in …
One of the week’s great mysteries is why Trump’s Oval Office meeting with NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani was such a love-fest. In the photo above, Trump is wearing the expression that South Park uses when Trump looks at his lover Satan.
The NYT is staying with the Kash Patel abuse-of-government-perks story. There are two pieces of it: use of his government jet for personal travel (something he criticized previous FBI Director Christopher Wray for), and assigning FBI SWAT agents as a protection team for his country-singer girlfriend.
and let’s close with something to be thankful for
I’ve long thought that the Fox News canard of a “war on Christmas” had it backwards: Christmas is the aggressor and is rapidly advancing against all our other holidays. As soon as Halloween was over, Christmas decorations started appearing, and the deluge of Christmas music can’t be far behind.
If you want to try to hold the Thanksgiving line, though, Country Living has a playlist of Thanksgiving songs you can use.
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
You are being unfair to the Obama critics by citing only the most trivial of their complaints. Are you forgetting the whole Dijon mustard debacle. That one truly deservesd all the criticism it received.
The Reformation did not liberate Europe from the Church; it exported the Church’s theological hatred and intolerance into multiple competing sects which promoted Supersessionism, Demonization of Jews, Replacement theology, and Sanctification of violence for ideological purity. Calvin’s Letter to Bullinger, About Luther, on 25 November 1544
In a letter to Bullinger, dated November 25, 1544, he adjured him to treat the great man, meaning Luther, with respect. A lot of good that letter had! Both Calvin and Luther together with the Poop of Rome all directly contributed to the 30 year war blood bath. The theological absolutism of Xtianity became the political absolutism of the modern European nation-state.
The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), a political earthquake. This devastating conflict in Europe, involving numerous states and religious factions. Indeed, the theological and political tensions fostered by figures like Calvin, Luther, and the Papacy played significant roles in its escalation. The Protestant Reformation, led by Calvin and Luther, splintered Xtianity in Europe. This division created deep-rooted animosities that fueled the 30 years Civil War between Protestant and Catholic states.
Only the WWI and WWII Civil Wars slaughtered such a gross and disgusting blood bath. The Catholic Church, being a central institution during this period, sought to maintain its power against the growing Protestant movements. Actions taken by the Papacy often intensified the conflict. Religious Intolerance branded Europe just like as did Nazi racism. This inherited, perhaps genetic intolerance, perpetuated by leaders across Europe. Proved and validated: scratch a European and find a barbarian; 2023–2024: Europe slanders Israel and enables pogrom mobs on University Campuses while pretending moral authority.
Calvin and Luther contributed to the intense hatred, matched only by the Nazi hatred of Jews! Their legacies directly responsible for the 30 years war where Xtianity as a religion proved itself as worthless tits on a boar hog avoda zarah. UN Hypocrisy as the Direct Inheritance of European Xtian Super-sessionist Ideology. Palestinian Nationalism as a Post-1964 European-Framed Gospel mythology!
Calvin and Luther did play roles in shaping the religious landscape of Europe. The context in which they worked, marked by significant corruption within and across the church Av tuma avoda zarah. Goyim throughout European history – utterly barbaric in their violence. The Crusades stand out as but just one example of this Dead God religion, an expression of the nadir of the barbaric animal soul of European sub-human man. Europe Has No Moral Standing Over Israel.
The violence witnessed in the Thirty Years’ War, the World Wars, and other conflicts certainly reflect a human propensity for brutality, especially when ideologies at stake. The capacity for intolerance and hatred has shadowed many aspects of human history, leading to tragic outcomes. Herzl wrote his “Jewish State” because he argued that Europeans, impossible for them to heal themselves from their anti-Semitism cancer infected minds.
Europeans utterly addicted to ideology in shaping human behavior and societal structures. Honest discourse and acknowledgment of past atrocities immediately flies out the window whenever mob Jew hating protests condemn Jews. The disgrace of Europe during the anti-Jewish Oct 7th massacre by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and UNWRA stands proves that Europeans memory of their past crimes “forgotten” in their Holocaust Denial where the ICC assumes it has jurisdiction over Israel despite Israel’s rejection of the Rome Accords!
The slander accusations which call Israel a genocide state matched only by the violence of Nazi inferior race propaganda that reached a pre-War cracindo during the pogrom “Night of Shattered Glass”. Long-standing struggles with intolerance and hatred define the corrupt European soul. The Thirty Years’ War illustrates how religious divisions, combined with political ambitions, lead to catastrophic violence and suffering, with devastating impacts on civilian populations. The persistent presence of anti-Semitism in European history reflects deep-seated biases that have manifested in various forms of violence and discrimination.
UN accusations of genocide, despite the UNWRA participation in the Oct 7th massacre, never presented by the reactionary propaganda MSM press as accusations – but rather as cold proven facts. This reality proves the mental insanity that Europeans pass down from generation to generation. The Palestinian “Passion Play” over made up imaginary facts. Palestine ceased to exist as a UN protectorate territory the instant Ben Gurion declared Jewish national independence in 1948. Goyim hatred of Jews who defeated Arab Armies – dedicated to throw the Jews into the Sea and fulfill like Jesus did the words of the prophets, the Nazi Shoah across Europe; despite the PLO charter explicitly declaring that only ’48 Israel qualified as “Occupied Territories”, the UN declared post ’67 that Samaria and Gaza as “Occupied Territories”. Yet Goyim mental insanity fails to catch the UN lie.
The empty platitude: An honest and thorough examination of the past is essential for creating a more tolerant future. Tits on a boar hog empty drum noise. Recognizing the role ideologies play in shaping societies and the harm they can cause, this the diseased minds of European governments simply cannot do. Not in the days of Calvin and Luther and not today. The common denominator which ties all European society together … their cold dead religion of Xtianity’s rabid hatred of Jews.
Post WWII Jews say Never Again. Meaning Never Again shall European governments dictate any other “solution” for “the Jewish problem” post Shoah. Israel’s response to UN Resolutions 242, 338, 446, 2334 etc … NEVER AGAIN. The longstanding strains of anti-Semitism in Europe, indeed intertwined with historical events, creating cycles of prejudice that Europeans – without fail – always ignore or minimize every time that mobs rage across European cities. This persistent hatred has roots in religious, economic, and social contexts. UN accusations and resolutions reflect broader political agendas of biased assessment of reality, leading to distorted perceptions and narratives. Israel has washed its hands of Europe like Pontius Pilate washed his hands over the false messiah JeZeus. Jews, post Shoah, no longer accept responsibility for Blood Libels, or poisoning the wells etc.
Anti-Semitism in Europe has no cure other than Jews breaking all diplomatic relations with European governments as possible allies in international relations. The instances of mob behavior and anti-Semitic sentiment in cities across Europe reveal a consistent repeated pattern of Jewish hatred and historical biases, specifically that Ottoman Greater Syria never referred to by the name Palestine other than in European made maps which the “Sick Man of Europe” bought and acquired after Napoleon.
The role of the UN, a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration/League of Nation Palestine Mandate to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine. UN revisionist history which promotes the Arafat lie that Arabs lived as Philistine boat-people who originally invaded Gaza from the Greek Islands, yet fails to confront the inconvenient fact that Arab people never originated from European countries. Ignored that not till 1964 did Arab propaganda opportunistically embrace the name Palestine! Yet amazingly European and Arab propaganda promotes the lie that Jews occupy Palestine mandate lands of Samaria despite England’s separation of the Palestine Mandate territory from Trans-Jordan at the Jordan River in 1923.
The reference to “Palestine” in historical contexts reflects colonial influences rather than indigenous identity. The narrative that Arab identity shifted around the name “Palestine” post-1964 a political maneuvering that utterly distorts and perverts history. This revisionist history denies the Balfour Declaration and the League Palestine Mandate and substitutes UN 3379 Zionism is Racism slander only matched by the recent Israel commits genocide slander.
The persistence of anti-Semitic actions and sentiments in Europe, a cyclical and deeply rooted mental insanity, invariably ignored or minimized by those in power for the entire Easter period passion play. European Xtians prioritize “I am saved” stupidity which they drum into the heads of their fellow believers to remain oblivious to their blood soaked, cruel and puke history as a people. Anti-Semiticism morphed into Colonialism and later into imperialism. Dominant European states addicted to ruling the roost of the balance of power across the major regions of the Planet Earth.
After the fact, Spanish sincere apologies for expelling the Jews from Spain in 1492 compare to a screen door on a submarine German sorrow over the slaughter of 75% of Western European Jewry and Rome’s most sincere remorse over the post WWII Nazi Rat lines or Poland’s anti-Jewish pogroms! Europeans lie, just that simple. They do not possess a shred of human sincerity simply because as soon as the immediate disgrace of their inhumanity to man gets passed over through the passage of time, European behave like dogs who return and eat their own vomit again and again and again.
The complexities of Jewish identity, historical narratives, and the struggles against Amalek/anti-Semitism resonate deeply in contemporary discourse. Propaganda narratives around “Palestine”, influenced by colonial European motivations emphasizes the impact of power dynamics in shaping identity and historical memory. The idea of post-1964 Arab identity being a political maneuver underscores the contested nature of history in this context.
Hostile pro Arab narratives touching “Palestine”, in essence seek to deny both the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Palestine as the establishment of a Jewish National Home. All Arab wars fought, including the 1948 Independence War, the Arab rejection that dhimmi refugee Jews have equal rights to achieve self determination in the Middle East. UN Resolution 3379 – Zionism is Racism, and current chants: From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free reject the European red herring “Land for Peace”. Arafat offered East Jerusalem and 98% of Samaria and Gaza as a Palestinian State. Hamas took over a Gaza independent state and immediately made repeated wars that culminated in the Oct7th Abomination 2023 War.
The British French propaganda expressed in post ’67 UN Resolution 242 exposed as revisionist history. Russia and Poland occupy Prussia to this day! The Allies made a forced 14 to 20 million population transfer of Germans living for generations in Prussia and the Czech Republic. The Indian/Pakistan mass population transfer Britain and other Western Powers praised to achieve “peace”. Such revisionist history never to this day denounced as a blaggard lie. European imperialist vs. Israel follow the rule: Do as I say but not as I do.
The reason Trump and Mamdani get along so well is because they’re both populist extremists who blame a specific group for the country’s ills. Trump blames immigrants and Mamdani blames Zionists. Also, both engender either adulation or hatred, and neither is qualified for the position he holds. Both also won their elections by a razor-thin margin, but act like they have a mandate.
If you were wondering what a left-wing version of Trump would look like, it’s Mamdani.
Hmmm. For most of us, the conspicuous criminal and pathological behavior of Trump kind of negates your tenuous false equivalence…
I can’t claim to have followed Mamdani’s campaign in great detail, but I did watch a speech or two. His main issue was that New York has become unaffordable. I don’t recall hearing him blame Zionists for that.
The Billboard Hot 100 for November 7th had Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” at #10, a residual from Halloween…and it had “All I Want for Christmas is You” at #32. Aaargh.
And this week it‘s back… along with “Last Christmas I gave you My heart” Just shoot me.
Of interest, the “holiday” music flooding most conspicuously the stores, is most decidedly secular. Frosty, Rudolph, Santa, Winter Wonderlands, and Giving of Hearts. No Carols, no Hymns, and absolutely no Jesus. Maybe a polite instrumental version of ”Silent Night”. They don’t want us in church, we need to be SHOPPING.
Despite Christmas’ origins as a Pre-Christian European celebration of Solstice – imagine not being invited to your own birthday party? “Mass of Christ”, hello? But nope, SANTA, quasi-deified, is in charge of this party.
Christmas, in America, has become an essentially secular and commercial holiday.
So from a Zen Pagan Nativst – Peace on Earth and Good Will to All.
Trackbacks
[…] Doug Mouder at The Weekly Sift: “Don’t Believe It“ […]
[…] Don’t Believe It […]