Today is Sunday, October 29, 2023. Today more bad news was delivered to the Chump camp when the judge overseeing Chump’s federal election subversion criminal case has reinstated the gag order she issued on the former president earlier this month. This news is contained in an online CNN article by Devan Cole and Hannah Rabinowitz entitled “Judge reinstates gag order on Trump in federal election subversion case.”

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan also denied Chump’s request to issue a long-term stay of the order – which bars the former president from publicly targeting court personnel, potential witnesses, or the special counsel’s team – while his appeal of it played out.

The judge issued the order earlier this month after prosecutors raised concerns that the former president could intimidate witnesses or encourage harm against prosecutors through his public comments. Chump quickly appealed, which is what he always does, and Chutkan temporarily froze the order on October 20 while special counsel Jack Smith’s team and Chump’s attorneys litigated whether it should be paused indefinitely during the appeals process.

The former insurrectionist now faces two gag orders barring him from discussing aspects of his legal cases to the public: One from Chutkan, who is overseeing the case brought by Smith in Washington, D.C., and a second from the judge overseeing his civil fraud case. While the orders are both limited in scope, they mark a measurable limit on the former president’s speech.

Prosecutors from Smith’s office urged Chutkan last week to reinstate the gag order, arguing that almost immediately after she paused the order, the Orange Mouth resumed publishing allegedly intimidating posts about prosecutors and potential witnesses in the case on social media.

Chump continuously has said in court that the gag order infringes on his First Amendment rights and limits his ability to discuss the case on the campaign trail. If Chump were a normal defendant, which he isn’t, he would zip his freaking mouth and never discuss any details of his upcoming cases with the guileless public.

More bad news is about to greet the January 6, 2021, coup architect when his dear children are expected to testify this week in the $250 million New York fraud trial presided over by Judge Arthur Engoron. Thus Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric are all expected to take the witness stand this week, as New York Supreme Court Justice Engoron is expected to demand transparency from the witnesses. As you might recall, the judge has previously found that Chump’s testimony was not credible. So if Chump’s children decide to be evasive or – God forbid – lie on the witness stand when it’s their time to testify, they could easily be looking at a perjury charge. Not a very good week then for Trumpilthinskin, it seems.

Boy, what a difference a day makes, as the song goes. Yesterday was unseasonably warm for a late day in October, while today was rainy and chilly. So Elliot and I had decided to see Martin Scorsese’s harrowing three-hours-and-change epic of Killers of the Flower Moon with our neighbor/acquaintance “Diane” at 2:45 p.m. at the Kew Gardens Cinema. I had an immense interest in seeing the film since, as you might recall, I’ve heard the story first as an audiobook in our Arizona cousin’s car and read the book in paperback form years later. Some years ago, I heard that the film was in production and knew it premiered in Cannes this summer to standing ovations.

After seeing the film, all I can say it’s worth every frame. The movie chronicles the systematic murders of members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s. It’s been adapted from David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction bestseller, and it stars Robert De Niro as cattle rancher William “King” Hale and Leonardo DiCaprio as his deluded nephew Ernest Burkhart who returns to the Osage boomtown of Fairfax after participating in the First World War and is immediately ensnared in his greedy uncle’s plot to steal “headrights” (which amounted to shares in the tribe’s mineral trust) from the Osage by murdering them and marrying into the family. Hale convinces Burkhart to woo and eventually marry Mollie, a neighboring Osage woman who has two sisters and an aging mother. With sickening alacrity, all of Mollie’s sisters turn up dead within a short time. One, Anna Brown, is found shot to death in a ravine. Even her mother falls ill and dies. It will take a decade or so before the plot to murder Osage members is uncovered by the nascent Federal Bureau of Investigation under the aegis of FBI agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) who is sent to the town to investigate the string of murders.

In the role of Mollie Burkhart, Lily Gladstone practically steals the film, with her portrayal of a reserved, but strong Osage woman who finds herself in the center of a sinister scheme to take away her oil rights and even the lives of those closest to her. What follows in the more-than-three-hours length of Scorcese’s Western/crime thriller is one murder after another, as Hale carries out his dastardly plot to enrich himself at the hands of these innocent victims. Toward the end of the film, there are some surprise cameos in the form of Brendan Fraser as Hale’s defense attorney and John Lithgow as the state’s district attorney who prosecutes the influential Hale who has ingratiated himself with the Osage and fluently speaks their language.

In the role of William Hale, De Niro acquits himself very well; he skillfully shows the character’s chameleon-like character. He swivels from displaying kindly interest toward his Osage neighbors to coldly devising a scheme to murder one of Mollie’s sisters and her husband who is investigating the series of murders on his own. (The couple are blown to bits by men recruited by Ernest.) Here De Niro has a softer, quieter drawl that belies his murderous nature.

Throughout the film, the audience is immersed in authentic Osage traditions, vivd pageantry, and spiritual tribal customs. We hear of the Wah’Kon-Tah, which is the mysterious life force that pervades the sun and the moon and the earth and the stars; this is the force that had structured the Osage Nation’s lives for centuries. When the Osage discovered oil on their land, many gave up their traditional beliefs and adopted the materialistic culture of the West, a change that would ultimately lead to innumerable deaths. The film only scratches the surface of how many Osage members were killed by Hale’s gang of murderers. Some accounts put the actual number of people murdered by Hale and his accomplices at around 60.

I read in an online review of the film that DiCaprio was originally set to play the FBI agent, Tom White, but after doing a “table read” of the script, he decided to play the deluded nephew instead. In this role, DiCaprio deglamorizes himself with bad teeth and a bad haircut. His main expression throughout the film is a downward scowl, I thought. He eventually does show some spine when he realizes that he needs to testify against his uncle when both are arrested for the series of murders.

After all of this, I do recommend you see the film and do it now before it’s shown on the small screen. The small theater where we saw it did have more viewers in it than I had initially expected.

Have a good week.

Stay safe and be well.