A Daily Reid: D-Day with the Trump regime, a war criminal parades in NYC, and would Drowsy Donald dynamite the Statue of Liberty?

Trump's lawless administration argues it can tear down our lady of liberty, the rule of law, and anything else our would-be king desires

Donald Trump does not believe the Statue of Liberty has a right to exist.

Statue of Liberty Trump caricature. Illustration by Rstudio

In fact, according to his attorneys, if he chose to “move fast and break things” by putting a stick of dynamite under it and bringing it down like the Twin Towers, he could do it. And no one could stop him.

And that’s their legal argument…

A federal appeals court panel expressed skepticism Friday about the Trump administration’s view that courts are powerless to stop the construction of the White House ballroom now that the East Wing had been demolished.

Two members of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit repeatedly pressed administration lawyers about its argument that President Donald Trump’s pet project — now well underway — could not be stopped by the courts even if it was found to be illegal, because it was too far along and involved significant national security interests.

When did it become a fait accompli?” Judge Patricia Millett asked. “If this were complete lawlessness by the government … it couldn’t be stopped?”

“On these theories, I think that’s right,” replied Yaakov Roth, a Justice Department attorney.

Millett, an Obama appointee, peppered Roth with questions about the extent of the Trump administration’s view of its power to “move fast and break things” without being subject to legal challenge.

“If the government decides, very quickly, to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty — the people whose ancestors that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the government moved too fast — nothing can be done?” the judge asked.

“I think that’s right, yes,” Roth responded.

A federal judge in March halted construction on the ballroom during the legal battle, but the D.C. Circuit quickly paused the ruling, allowing construction to continue while the litigation is ongoing.

Just take that in. And pray that the fool in the White House doesn’t decide to rip out the great lady of New York Harbor and replace her with a giant, golden statue of himself.

Preferably awake…

Meanwhile, you know who needs more naps? The J6ers, a frighteningly large percentage of whom took their janky Trump pardon and gone on to commit more crimes including child rape. Kind of what you’d expect when you pardon a bunch of freaking criminals.

Hegseth’s D-Day message

So…. Secretary of War Crimes Pete Hegseth had some thoughts on D Day … and it was giving Camp of the Saints…

So basically … Make Europe and America White Again. Got it. Meanwhile, Nazi-style overcoat enthusiast Greg Bovino has gone full Trumpenwaffen … giving a well-received speech at a far right conference in Europe and embracing his inner Himmler:

HUO JINGNAN, BYLINE: The conference held in Portugal is called the Remigration Summit. One of the organizers is Martin Sellner, an Austrian white nationalist widely credited with popularizing the term remigration. Sellner, a former neo-Nazi, calls for expelling most people of color from Europe, including legal residents and citizens. He bills remigration as a solution for the so-called great replacement, which falsely claims that there is a deliberate effort to encourage immigration from non-white countries to dilute the identity and culture of Western countries. That conspiracy theory has inspired multiple terror attacks in the U.S. and around the world.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

GREG BOVINO: Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

HUO: Bovino was a headliner at the summit. The recording of his speech was shared with NPR by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a nonprofit that researches transnational far-right extremist movements. In his speech, Bovino thanked Sellner for inviting him and addressed him directly.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BOVINO: Your ideas - we talked a lot on that. And again, those ideas mirror each other. It’s almost - it’s very suspicious how we’ve never talked before - face to face, that is - until yesterday, and we were on the same sheet of music almost immediately.

HUO: Bovino has echoed some of Sellner’s talking points on social media, such as emphasizing how culturally unfit some immigrants are. Bovino did not respond to an interview request, and Sellner was not available before this story’s deadline. Bovino has left the Department of Homeland Security, and the department’s new head, Markwayne Mullen, recently said he is irrelevant. However, Bovino’s endorsement of remigration still carries weight, says Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

Not that he has ever been shy about who he is, or at least who he wants to be perceived to be…

And just so we’re clear on what ideology people like Hegseth — who recently ensured that only white men would be promoted to 1 Star General in the U.S. military; no women, no people of color — are pushing…

Achtung, baby.

A few notes

I’ve gotten a lot of attention for my comments on Jaxson Dart, the Giants player who gushed that he was “pleasured” to meet Donald Trump during a Trump rally. Well if I can succinctly reiterate: hush up, Jaxson Dart. Most Americans despise Donald Trump, and we always will. And chalking your praise up to the military veterans in your family actually makes it worse, since Trump is a whole draft dodger who was said by his own former chief of staff to have disparaged U.S. servicemen. Go away, now, and play foosball or something. You’re ruining the Giants.

California, New York and other states are preparing to sue to try to stop the Ellisons from devouring Warner Bros. and CNN.

Israel is still spying on us … and actually escalating their activity.

CBS is about to make it rain on Scott Pelley.

A wanted war criminal freely paraded through New York City for the annual Israel Day Parade, with a slew of elected Democrats including Chuck Schumer, Governor Kathy Hochul, a bunch of congress members, former New York mayors Eric Adams and Michael Bloomberg present, as well as Attorney General Letitia James and a cardboard cutout of current New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (like that was totally normal) who declined to attend on principle.

Of course, all that the media cared about is that Mamdani skipped it. I mean, why would he want to march beside a man who believes, like Golda Meir did from the birth of the Israeli state, that the Palestinian people don’t actually exist. Mamdani explained, as if it needed further explanation — did I mention the wanted war criminal??? … why he wasn’t there.

Curiouser and curiouser …

Had FBI veteran Frank Figliuzi not flagged it, I might have ignored right wing gadfly group Judicial Watch’s latest victory — getting the government to offload heavily redacted documents showing that a public official had some form of correspondence with the alleged attempted Butler, PA Trump assassin…

Inquiring minds want to know: why is the document so heavily redacted? If the explanation for the communication is benign, why not just come out with it? However you look at it, the Butler “assassination attempt” just looks curiouser and curiouser…

A modern history of autocratic "assassination" attempts

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