why the fuck is 60 Minutes even bothering?
in a world of new lows, a newer low
let’s get real.
when a quadrice-indicted twice-impeached once-convicted popular-vote-losing adderall-huffing dead-pedo-bestie-schmoozing rotting-hand-hiding insurrection-leading ear-diapering testimony-ducking judge-threatening lawyer-ignoring debate-avoiding witness-tampering disabled-veteran-dishonoring inheritance-squandering rube-fleecing clown-makeup-smearing language-mangling sneaker-hawking serial-sexual-predating draft-dodging casino-bankrupting butler-bullying daughter-perving hush-money-paying real-estate-scamming bone-spur-faking ketchup-hurling justice-obstructing classified-war-plan-thieving golf-cheating stock-manipulating weather-map-defacing war-criminal-pardoning horse-paste-promoting paper-towel-flinging race-baiting tax-evading evidence-destroying charity-defrauding money-laundering diaper-filling 34-criminal-count 79-year-old fluorescent-tangerine narcoleptic fart factory showed up on our screens last night to lie his big dumb pumpkin face off, nobody was expecting 60 Minutes to commit any journalisms.
certainly not this 60 Minutes, the neutered-lapdog which must now toe the extreme-right-wing line of their new MAGA overlords.
everyone knew that host Norah O’Donnell was going to allow Donny Convict to spew all the fever-swamp fairy tales he cared to — and if there were any push-back from O’Donnell, it was going to be so gentle as to barely make a dent.
still, the question must be asked: what the fuck?
just because we were expecting a shit-show doesn’t make it any less shocking that this dangerously-detached-from-reality, babbling lunatic is our president.
O’Donnell: “[Changpeng Zhao] pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering laws. the government at the time said that he had caused significant harm to US national security, essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. why did you pardon Changpeng Zhao?”
Donny: “are you ready? I don’t know who he is.”
O’Donnell: “his crypto exchange Binance helped facilitate a $2b purchase of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin. and then you pardoned him. how do you address the appearance of pay-for-play.”
Donny: “here’s the thing — I know nothing about it, ’cause I’m too busy doing the other.”
wait, Donny’s too busy doing ‘the other’? tell me, is ‘the other’ in the room with us right now?
not to put a too fine point on this, but if Donny knew nothing about the person he was pardoning, THEN WHY THE FUCK DID HE PARDON HIM?
pardons are supposed to be the result of careful consideration of actual miscarriages of justice. they aren’t supposed to be doled out like swag bags at some Great Fatsby golf motel party.
either Preznit Fuckwit is lying right to our faces about not knowing the guy who helped Donny enrich himself to the tune of billions of dollars though a series of crypto scams, or he just admitted to unquestioningly signing whatever papers some toady puts in front of him.
I’m not sure which is worse.
imagine if a reporter had asked Joe Biden about someone he pardoned, and Joe had answered, ‘fuck if I know. who even is that?’
the entire wingnut outrage-industrial complex would have been howling so loudly that they would have ripped a hole in the space/time continuum.
right now, James Comer Fudd, the rakesteppingest shitwit in Congress, is on a quest to prove that Joe Biden was old and icky and smelled bad and was probably already dead and too demented to know it when he signed all those pardons — and how could a dead guy have been allowed to do that?
the entire Republican party is hell-bent on declaring Biden’s pardons null and void, supposedly because somehow Biden’s autopen achieved self-awareness and signed all those pardons on its own — an accusation based on zero evidence, aside from the shrill barking noises in Dear Leader’s head — even though there’s not one fucking law prohibiting it.
“The Constitution doesn’t even require that the pardon be written, so the idea that the signature is by autopen rather than by handwritten signature seems not relevant to the constitutionality, because Article II just says that the President has the power to pardon,” says Bernadette Meyler, a Stanford Law School professor and constitutional law expert.
but when Donny admits to doling out pardons to people he claims to know nothing about, Republicans just pat him on the head and go ‘what an irrepressible scamp.’
what the fuck?
now, watch this next clip and get ready to pick your jaw up off the floor.
what fucking happened? you just saw that, right? I’m not hallucinating?
to ‘prove’ he ended ‘eight wars,’ Donny pulled a printout of a tweet out of his pocket and brandished it, as if it meant something.
what kind of my-mommy-says-I’m-the-best dumbfuckery is this?
my god, it’s a fucking tweet that some State Department flunky typed out and put up on Elon’s Nazi Bar. it means nothing. it’s as if Donny stuck a gold star onto his own forehead.
I know we were expecting no push-back from Norah O’Donnell — but in this one case, how hard would it have been for her to say something like ‘that’s just propaganda made up by your own government in order to make you feel good about yourself. anyone could post a self-congratulatory tweet about their imaginary accomplishments. so what? it’s meaningless.’
it’s as if Nancy Mace made herself a badge that said ‘bathroom panty inspector’ and started shoving it people’s faces, expecting them to comply.
fuck off, you creepy weirdo.
and we’re supposed to sit here and pretend that all of these lunatics aren’t batshit insane. just perfectly normal stuff.
this is so fucking embarrassing. the entire world is laughing at us.
now, as you were watching those clips, did you notice how heavily edited the interview was?
it was edited, because of course it was edited. pre-taped interviews are always edited. you ask your questions, you let the subject take as much time as they need to answer, and then you edit that shit down to fit the allotted broadcast time.
this is how it’s been done since the invention of recording devices.
in Donny’s case, a 73-minute interview was cut down to 28 minutes.
no big deal, right?
except in this case it’s a huge fucking deal — because last year, Donny completely lost his shit when 60 Minutes aired an edited interview with Kamala Harris.
The edits are notable because, exactly one year before Trump was interviewed by O’Donnell at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday he had sued CBS over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which he alleged had been deceptively edited to help her chances in the presidential election.
While many legal experts widely dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, CBS settled with Trump for $16m in July.
Donny’s cockamamie lawsuit had exactly zero merit, and would have been laughed out of court — yet CBS folded like a pack of cards. why? because CBS fucking sucks.
they’re the network who canceled Colbert in a heartbeat after Dear Leader threw a shit-fit over something he’d said. profiles in cowardice, the whole fucking lot of them.
of course Donny’s own 60 Minutes interview was heavily edited — because without editing, he’s completely fucking incoherent.
here’s a clip that got edited out of last night’s broadcast. O’Donnell asks the perfectly reasonable question, “to people that say they’re struggling with the cost of living expenses, what could you do about that?”
Donny ignores her and starts blithering about eliminating cash bail, and then praises himself for eliminating crime in DC.
what in the actual fuck is this hallucination?
this is nothing new. last year, in an interview with Dr. Phil, the production crew had to paste together four different sentence fragments to make Donny seem almost coherent.
look, no one was expecting Norah O’Donnell to compete in the What The Fuck Is Wrong With You Challenge™ (which is now in its 2,043rd day).
but can’t we just, for once, have a little courage around here?
now here’s a fun thing: Donny has no public appearances on his schedule for today.
since the taping of his 60 Minutes interview Friday afternoon and his Great Fatsby party on Friday night, Donny hasn’t been seen in public. he didn’t even go golfing this weekend.
is Deteriorating Don about to make another week-long disappearance, to undergo god-knows-what medical procedures? it’s been about a month since the last one.
all we know is that he keeps getting creepier.
here’s your daily reminder that I can be found on Blue Sky at this link.
this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
889 / 978
Don Hewitt, Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace are spinning in their graves. Even Andy Rooney.
There's no bottom. CBS is bought and paid for.