Today is Friday, April 26, 2024. Today marks Day 8 of the Donald Duck trial here in Manhattan and I’m happy to give you the gist of an online CNN opinion by Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, and who is now a world affairs columnist, entitled “Opinion: Truth takes its revenge on Trump and his team.”

She begins her reflective piece by saying that we used to believe that “truth is more powerful than lies” and then she segues right into the devastating Trump years where it was routine for the most powerful man in the nation to tell “lies in such prodigious quantities” that they overpowered the “army of frantic fact checkers who simply couldn’t keep up.” How, she wonders, was it possible for such a man to not face any negative consequences from his relentless assault on the truth?

What was worse about the lies, Ghitis writes, is that Dump bamboozled so many of his followers into believing these falsehoods while “penetrating the national psyche.”

What was just as incredible was that most Republicans believed former president Donald Duck’s most pernicious lie, that he won the 2020 election.

Ghitis writes that “Lies, denial of reality, weren’t supposed to succeed with such ease.”

But now, in recent days, she acknowledges, those deceivers have been put on the defensive. She also admits that “it’s not good luck for that class of people whose misleading ways so often come dressed in supreme arrogance.”

The opinion writer then references the image of Chump sitting in a New York courtroom, “seething, looking angry, diminished,” while listening to witness testimony against him day after day.

What Dump was hearing was the confession of one of his facilitators admitting to alleged criminal tactics, designed to have him win the White House in 2016. That facilitator was David Pecker and he has admitted to the plot which he coordinated with the Dump team to smear Drumpf’s opponents with stories that he knew to be false, while hiding truthful news about Drumpf’s misdeeds from the public.

This plot obviously included the story of adult film star Stormy Daniels at the center of the case, who has yet to testify, in which Pecker claims Drumpf paid her off to keep the story of their alleged affair out of the media because it could harm his presidential prospects in 2016.

The revelations, though they may not be surprising, are appalling, she says. Here a national publication knowingly, deliberately engaged in deceiving its readers, though it never was a legitimate news outlet like The New York Times or The Washington Post. This is the magazine that you would see in supermarket lines on the way out of the store. But now Pecker has admitted that he engaged in unethical practices to deceive American voters.

While the presumptive repugnican candidate for president (how crazy is that?) has to sit and listen while his trial goes on to its inevitable end, other alleged accomplices of his in his effort to overthrow the U.S. election faced an unhappy truth of their own. It’s taken much too long, “but the lies about the 2020 election – all of them found to be false by dozens of courts across the country – are now turning into prosecutions.”

This week, Arizona indicted multiple people in connection to the plot to declare Drumpf the election winner, despite the results to the contrary. Among those people charged, as I indicated earlier, were Dump consigliere Rudy “Ghoul”-iani and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

While his acolytes faced the prospect of prison sometime in the near future, Dump’s legal team went to the Supreme Court to argue the former president enjoys absolute immunity for just about anything, including to weaponize his lies. But everyone knows this argument is bullshit. The “Extreme” Court doesn’t know that, as it wasted close to 3 hours yesterday sparring with Jack Smith’s surrogate and practically gave the wheelbarrow away to the criminal defendant. But it was liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor who put her finger on the absurdity of the argument, when she opined, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military . . . to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” The lawyer for Dump, speaking in a weird voice, D. John Sauer, actually had the balls to answer, “That could well be an official act.” Someone should have said at that point, “What the fuck!”

Ghitis notes that this week also marked the first anniversary of another moment in the battle between truth and lies. A year ago, Fox News, a purveyor of election lies and far-right conspiracy theories, fired “Fucker” Carlson, a host who spewed conspiracy theories.

If you recall, Fox also faced consequences for its mendacity. The right-wing network settled with Dominion Voting Systems for a whopping $787 million settlement after letting hosts and guests relentlessly claim that voting machines had thrown the 2020 election. Then it fired Carlson.

Thank God, Carlson is losing in his efforts to retain his outsized influence while he was on the Fox “Entertainment” network. At the height of his fame, he could make or break Republican politicians. His show was getting four million viewers a night. Now his “network” TCN has half a million followers on Elon Musk’s limping platform, X, as opposed to four million. He also sounds more like a Putin-loving conspiracy theorist baying under a Russian moon. Even despised Senator “Bitch” McConnell blasted him, blaming him for the “demonization of Ukraine,” which is quite unusual for this old Kentucky cur.

Another ray of hope in the atmosphere of lies fostered by the far right all these years is the downfall of the Gateway Pundit, home to wild inventions and a mainstay of MAGA falsehoods, including about the 2020 election, which has announced this week that it filed for bankruptcy. The website, like others in its realm, is facing expensive lawsuits.

One of the lawsuits against the Gateway Pundit came from Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who became well known when they testified during the January 6 hearings in Congress about how their lives had turned into a nightmare following lies about their role in the vote count.

Also facing consequences of their lies is another far-right “news” outlet, One America Network, or OAN. This network spread fantasies about voting machines playing a role in a supposedly fraudulent election as well. Last week, the network and Smartmatic, another election machine company, announced they had reached a settlement in the company’s lawsuit. The amount has not been disclosed.

These days it appears that the courts have become the place of reckoning for malignant liars, as in the case of Alex Jones, who was forced to pay nearly $1.5 billion to the parents of children massacred by a gunman at Sandy Hook in 2012 after he claimed the incident was all staged. He has so far filed for bankruptcy, but court documents claim he continues to “enjoy an extravagant lifestyle.”

“Still, there is a certain satisfaction in seeing enemies of the truth, perennial manufacturers of deceptions, at last face strong and potentially effective pushback.”

In these instances of reckoning against such purveyors of lies and deception, what is foundational about them is that they uphold the “fundamental, necessary law of the universe that truth must be stronger than lies.”

Testimony in Donald Duck’s hush money (or, more accurately, “election interference”) criminal trial has concluded for the week. Three of the prosecution’s witnesses took the stand today: ex-tabloid publisher David Pecker, Drumpf’s longtime assistant Rhona Graff, and Michael Cohen’s former banker Gary Farro. The trial will resume next Tuesday.

Farro testified about working with Cohen and banking arrangements that were made to pay the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, which is at the focus of the case.

Jurors heard a short testimony from Graff, who said two contacts she maintained at the Trump Organization were for Karen McDougal and Daniels.

As you know, Pecker testified over four days about the deal he helped broker with Daniels and the National Enquirer‘s efforts to suppress stories that could have harmed Drumpf’s campaign.

So far, we haven’t heard anything about defendant Drumpf violating that gag order from Judge Juan Merchan.

Today was notable for my run-in with an outward MAGA supporter in a Dunkin’ Donuts near my gym, on Queens Boulevard, and 67th Avenue. I went there after spending a little time at NYSC after walking there in the cool sun.

My encounter with this total stranger started when I called a friend, “Patricia,” on my cell phone and our conversation focused on yesterday’s Supreme Court debacle. I think I was loudly advocating for the removal of both Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. All of a sudden, a man sitting next to me suddenly glared at me, which was quite uncomfortable. I immediately sensed why. When I got off the phone with Patricia, this stranger began raising his voice to me and saying such nonsense about destroying this country or the like. I should have upbraided him for intruding into a private conversation, but I didn’t. I just got up and walked out of the store, as he stormed out of the coffee place and shouted the same thing. I might have countered his claim by shouting “It’s you who is destroying the country, buddy,” or something to that effect, but I don’t think he heard me at that point. Now I have learned from this unsettling encounter that you can’t even discuss politics on the phone with a friend; it’s better to also lower your voice, actually, or to wait until everyone is not present around you. Sheesh, look how fraught the times are and what we must do to not create a scene with those who disagree with your politics. This was not the situation years ago; I dare say this became apparent in the era of Drumpf who has been a monumental figure of polarization in this country since he became president. So sad!

Have a good weekend.

I just remembered: I won’t be here tomorrow night since I’ll be hosting my Long Island friend, “Jake,” all day. We haven’t seen one another since the middle of December, and there’s a lot to discuss. Jake generally doesn’t leave me until after midnight anyway, so I will see you on Sunday then. Have a good Saturday.

Stay safe and be well.