Every conversation I’ve had with my MAGA relatives for the last ten years distilled into three sentences.

Michael Ian Black's piece has one observation that cuts through everything else written about the Epstein files this week. The senior officials who gathered in the Situation Room last July - Vance, Wiles, Blanche, Leavitt, Cheung, Patel - spent hours strategizing about how to protect Trump from the political fallout. They workshopped options. They debated whether to call Tucker Carlson or use DOJ lawyers instead. They reportedly discussed nipples in the White House Situation Room. One official described it as "surreal." What none of them apparently did: ask whether the allegations against their boss had merit. Not once. Not raised. Not even Bongino, who is Black's unlikely near-hero for the piece - Bongino's objection was to the botched rollout, not to the underlying situation that made a rollout necessary. The documentable facts now in the record: Trump flew on Epstein's plane at least eight times after claiming he hadn't. Trump denied writing the birthday letter, then the Wall Street Journal obtained it. Epstein's personal secretary testified to Congress this week that she arranged calls between Trump and Epstein shortly before the 2016 inauguration - after Trump claimed he had cut off contact in 2004. These are not allegations about what happened on Epstein's properties. These are documented lies about a documented relationship. The people in that Situation Room knew the relationship existed. They chose to manage the politics instead of asking the question that the people they serve - the American public - would want answered. Black closes with the names of Epstein's accusers who went public. That's the right place to close.

I took care of sick kids at the hospital today.

HE STARTED THE WAR, you stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid motherfucker.

Today is @realDonaldTrump’s 80th birthday—so we wanted to remind him of his favorite card. May every day be another wonderful secret.

Stateside, a gas station. I drank a frozen blue beverage too quickly, and was struck down by a punishment this entire nation knows, and accepts, and has named. The drink is called a slush. Ice, sweetness, and a blue that does not occur in nature. The day was hot. I was thirsty. I drank like a soldier at a river. The pain arrived in my skull like a war horn. Behind the eyes. Above everything. Total. I gripped the roof of my car. I may have made a sound. "Brain freeze," said the cashier through the door, with no urgency whatsoever. It has a NAME. The affliction is so common it has a household name, like a cousin. "Tongue on the roof of your mouth," called a man at the pumps. He did not look over. He prescribed the remedy mid-pump, casually, the way one mentions weather. I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The war horn faded. The healer nodded at his pump, finished, and was gone in a Chevrolet. In my land, punishment follows crime by way of courts and seasons. Here, the sentence is instant. Drink with greed, and the ice strikes the mind directly. No trial. No appeal. Perfectly fair. And here is what moves me. EVERYONE has felt it. The cashier. The healer. Children. Elders. An entire nation united by the same small lightning, all taught the same cure, all passing it on to strangers at gas stations, free of charge. You cannot fully distrust a country once you know it shares one pain. The freeze does not punish thirst. It punishes haste. I finished the slush slowly, like a scholar. Blue tongue. Clear mind. Then at the door I forgot everything, drank deeply, and was struck down again. "Tongue, hon," said the cashier, without looking up. Discipline is a journey.

Trump used the Armed Forces Full Honor Cordon — soldiers who escort fallen heroes and heads of state — to usher UFC fighters past Abraham Lincoln’s statue like they’re celebrities on a red carpet. I am LIVID. And everyone else should be too.

Brewers pick one word to describe the Jacob Misiorowski complete game shutout. Stay for Miz at the end. 😅

This is seriously the cringiest collapse of a nation in real time.

I wud but im not an underage girl

To everyone so eager to cancel someone for a tattoo they got at age 22, a drunk text, a selfie they took in the middle of a mental health crisis: Show us your laptop. Show us your iCloud. Open your entire digital life to your worst enemy. No context. No filter. No explanation. You won’t. You won’t because you know what I know. Any one of us, frozen at our worst moment, photographed in our lowest hour, looks like a monster. Looks like a stranger. Looks like someone who deserves to be cast out. That is not who we are. My mom and baby sister were killed in a car accident when I was just a kid. Cancer took my brother Beau, my best friend and my rock. I battled alcoholism. I battled addiction. I chose the coward’s way out more times than I can count. For years I believed the defining chapters of my life were written by tragedy, loss, and shame. I no longer believe that. Pain can shape us. Loss can humble us. Failures can leave scars that never fully fade. But none of them have the authority to define us. And it sure as hell ain’t the critic that counts. That authority belongs to us alone-the person in the arena. Every setback presents a choice. Play the victim, or cut the bullshit and take ownership for who we become next. Life does not determine our character. It reveals it. Again and again we are asked the same question. When shit happens, what next? We are not defined by what happened to us. We are not defined by the worst photo, the worst text, the worst tattoo, the worst night. We are defined by the person we choose to become. And by the courage to choose that person, every single day. So before you reach for the gavel - show us your laptop. You won’t. The whole world saw mine. And I am still here. Still becoming. Still choosing. Still standing. That is the only definition that matters.

I believe it. When Trump hates something or someone, he posts about it forever. He's still raging about 2020. He's still fighting Obama. Yet not a word about Butler. Like it never happened. This has Trump's tiny orange fingerprints all over it.

All of it.

This is Epstein survivor and Trump's "ex-girlfriend" Anouska De Georgiou. She is a British woman who was groomed and raped by Epstein as a teen. In 1997, Ghislaine Maxwell gave 20yo Anouska to 51yo Trump who immediately moved her into one of his apartments and publicly introduced her as his new girlfriend.

The Spurs know how to TAKE the lead, they just don't know how to HOLD the lead. And that's really the most important part of the lead: the holding

After ignoring repeated warnings a DHS Border Wall Contractor just bulldozed a 1000 year intaglio (giant figure carved into the ground) that was an archeological wonder and one of the oldest surviving in the SW

It’s not about arguments. It’s about facts. I know one great fact about American elections, and I know it because the Republican Party has proved it to me: There is no election fraud of any consequence anywhere in the United States. The Republican Party and its allies, FOR DECADES, have been searching high and low, in every corner of our country, for evidence of election fraud. This effort has been made with vast sums of money and other resources, and with some of the greatest powers in our nation at the party’s disposal: A presidential commission under President Donald Trump. The Department of Justice under President Donald Trump, armed with the resources of the FBI, and the powers of subpoena. Committees of Congress under Republican control, also armed with the powers of subpoena and the investigative resources of the first branch of government. State legislatures under Republican control, also with subpoena powers, have launched similar efforts to find evidence of election fraud. Republican-controlled states have set up special commissions and task forces, some with subpoena powers, all well-funded and with access to the state’s electoral systems. Conservative academics and think tanks have launched projects seeking out evidence of election fraud. Fox News and the rest of MAGA media have dedicated significant resources to finding evidence of election fraud. What is the result of this enormous Republican effort to find election fraud? Ask The Heritage Foundation. For nearly a decade, Heritage has maintained an “Election Fraud Database.” The database contains “proven instances of election fraud.” It covers elections going back nearly fifty years. That’s billions and billions of American votes. Right now, the total number of proven instances of election fraud that Heritage can document is: 1620. That’s an infinitesimal number, vanishingly small, and it is solid proof of two things: 1. Some individuals commit election fraud. 2. There is no evidence at all of systemic or even widespread election fraud anywhere in the USA. The election-fraud panic is the Big Lie of our time. It is peddled by people who know better. Their own investigations over decades demonstrate that. Stop trying to subvert our democracy. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸

Here’s another video of all these MAGA that thought they could take a road trip to California and vote for Spencer Pratt illegally because they’ve been told that they didn’t need ID to vote and they found out they were wrong and now some will likely be charged for it.

"A few days before the attack on the Capitol, Kirk wrote in a now-deleted tweet that TPA would be sending more than 80 buses of Trump supporters to Washington, D.C., to "fight for the president."" newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-pl…