Why did Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick lie about his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein?

 Lutnick and Epstein were in business together, Epstein files show

... Lutnick, the former chairman of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald who at one point lived next door to Epstein, told the New York Post in October that he and his wife Allison had cut ties with Epstein in 2005, deciding after taking a tour of Epstein's New York townhouse, "I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again."

However, it appears Epstein and Lutnick continued to maintain contact and emails show they arranged calls and planned to have drinks in 2011. 

The following year, the couple and their four children planned a visit to Epstein's island, Little St. James, emails show. Lutnick was invited for lunch on Dec. 24, 2012, and later, Epstein's assistant wrote on behalf of Epstein, "it was nice seeing you."

Their Adfin deal was signed four days later. ... 

By the time Epstein and Lutnick agreed to buy stakes in Adfin, it had been more than four years since Epstein agreed to enter a guilty plea to Florida state charges of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute. The case brought forth allegations of far broader sex trafficking and victimization of girls, but it wasn't until 2019 that Epstein was charged with federal felonies including trafficking. He died in jail in the weeks after his arrest. ...

Epstein files: Congressional lawmakers call for Trump Commerce chief Lutnick to resign, or be fired

... Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., urged Lutnick to step down after The New York Times reported the Trump ally interacted “regularly” with Epstein, according to files released by the Department of Justice relating to the notorious sex offender. Massie was the lead Republican on the Epstein Files Transparency Act that compelled the release of the Epstein files.

“He should just resign,” Massie said on CNN’s “Inside Politics Sunday.” “Howard Lutnick clearly went to the island if we believe what’s in these files; he was in business with Jeffrey Epstein, and this was many years after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted.”

He added: “He’s got a lot to answer for, but really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.” ...

Paper tiger Trump in the news

 

 

Trump says India won’t buy Russian oil. Shadow fleet vessels are still unloading crude at its ports

 

Vladimir Putin violates Trump’s temporary winter truce, killing 5 Ukrainians in overnight airstrikes 

 

 

 

 

The biggest number in this story is $293.6 million

 Wake me when the New York Post writes a story entitled:

 

Trump's $75 billion ICE Police State rammed through right-wing Congress at taxpayer expense under phony reconciliation rules

 

‘Grassroots’ anti-ICE campaigns funded by left-wing billionaire donors: sources 

Lying New York Post reporter with a BA in English says Pretti's crime against the state was attempting to separate the ICE agents from the demonstrators (!) using a firearm (!)

 

 ... Protester Alex Jeffrey Pretti was part of the street-side struggle, according to video, and became the center of a scrum of roughly six officers who tackled the 37-year-old after he attempted to separate ICE agents from demonstrators. ... Bovino claimed Pretti approached officers with the weapon and “violently resisted” agents when they attempted to wrestle the gun from him, he said in a news conference.

More. 

A more cruel bunch has never occupied the White House

 

Update:

Kyiv only getting 4-6 hours of electricity day after relentless Russian strikes...
 

Some of the commenters on this video snarl over the absence of such protests in Minnesota over the $9 billion fraud schemes, not realizing that this street theatre is costing them $75 billion

The ICE agents in this video twice fail to find open doors on their own vehicles to dump their detainees in, the incompetence being a metaphor for the ultimate failure all this sound and fury will turn out to be, when in the end ICE will be lucky to have deported only 2.4 million of the now 25 million illegal aliens Trump says are present in the United States.

The rapidity with which one man has turned the relatively quiet streets of America into a heretofore only imagined police state exposes yet another failure of the American system of government to prevent the abuse of power.

If it were not so, this would not be happening. 

  

Now I get it: The liberal Republican who now runs Trump's Department of Labor likes to get drunk at the office and shitpost Nazi stuff like Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer

 And CNBC finally notices Jan. 16th:

Labor Dept. accused of echoing Nazi slogan in social media post

 

 

Not with my money dammit

 $3,000 to Illegal Immigrants If They Self-Deport by December 31

Trump to Ukraine: You should be more grateful I'm destroying your country instead of the Russians destroying your country

 

Trump accuses Ukraine of ingratitude as officials meet in Geneva to discuss U.S. peace plan

 

Trump slams Ukraine’s lack of ‘gratitude’ in wake of White House-backed peace plan to end war with Russia

 

 

 

Miranda Devine, NY Post: Democrats opened the jails

They sure did.

 

Nissan Leaf EV comes down with a bad case of thermal runaway at the grocery store in Littleton Colorado

 

Charlie Gasparino for The New York Post admits Kimmel is profitable for Disney, but the Nexstar and Sinclair stations which banned Kimmel stupidly took the hit last night

 ... But Disney, the parent of ABC, where “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” airs, squeezes a lot of juice out of Kimmel, people there tell me. There are affiliate fees for networks that pick up Kimmel’s programming, online ads and sponsorship deals. He hosts the Oscars, which helps with brand building. 

The segments featuring his sidekick, Guillermo Rodriguez, are also a draw for advertisers, these people say. Taken together, all this means Kimmel, despite his annual salary of $16 million (nearly as much as his ad-revenue losses), a massive staff (200 people working on the show) and falling ratings, is profitable, my sources at Disney say. ...

More. 

It's pretty wild how they don't see that their guy is the leader of a heartless America

A president for all the people, the bi-partisanly hateful public!

 

Dems Show America How Heartless They've Become

Michael Goodwin, NY Post

 

Trump last night, on the eve of the Charlie Kirk memorial, pre-celebrating the death of Joe Biden from cancer: 

 

 

What a pussy

What part of "Russia invaded Ukraine and keeps bombing the shit out of it" don't you understand? 

White House: Trump-Putin Summit in Alaska Will Be 'Listening Exercise'

Komrade Karoline: ... this is for the president to go and get a better understanding ...

 

The EU spent more on anti-carbon lunacy in 2024 than on defense

... the EU is now promising to cut carbon emissions by 90% in just 15 years. This goes even further than its already foolhardy promise of a 55% cut by 2030. ...

The EU splurged $381 billion just in 2024 on solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars and the like — more than its entire spending on defense. This is delivering skyrocketing electricity bills — last year they were two times higher than in the US. ...

... the climate impact from the EU’s policies will be next-to-nothing. Run the promised 90% by 2040 and net-zero by 2050 in the United Nations’ own climate model and compare the temperature outcome with the current policy. Because the EU matters little in global emissions and because it has already cut emissions significantly, it will only reduce global emissions through the 21^st century by a small 3%. The temperature difference in 2050 is a vanishing 0.02°F and even by 2100 the impact will be impossible to measure at 0.07°F.

All while models show that the cost for the EU by mid-century could be more than $3 trillion every year — more than all current public spending in the EU. ...

More. 

This report sounds like there's wiggle room for Israel to take out Iran's Supreme Leader after missile strike on Israeli hospital

 Dozens of Iranian missiles strike major Israeli hospital and residential buildings — as Israel hits nuclear sites 

... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to hit back even harder at Iran following the strike.

“We will exact the full price from the tyrants in Tehran,” he vowed in an X post.

Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, backed up Netanyahu’s threat.

“These are war crimes of the most serious kind — and [Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei will be held accountable for his crimes,” he tweeted.

“The Prime Minister and I have instructed the IDF to increase the intensity of attacks against strategic targets in Iran and against government targets in Tehran in order to remove threats to the State of Israel and undermine the ayatollahs’ regime.” ...          

And there it is:

 

 

The complaisance is amazing, we are the French

 Yes mon ami, there are Muslim-controlled no-go zones in gay Paris, but what can we do? 🤷

2 Cheers for Passing Tax Bill. Too Bad Spending's Still Out of Control

NY Post

 

... Federal outlays are up more than $2 trillion a year over the prepandemic level, from $4.4 trillion in 2019 to $6.8 trillion in 2024. ...

Yet the Republicans blinked at rolling back practically any of it, let alone all. ...

 

Only Trump can do it

 hehe

No One Person Can Pull Dems Out of the Ditch

Michael Goodwin, New York Post

 

... Although there’s obvious appeal to finding a star headliner, no one person can pull the Dems out of the ditch. ...

 

  

 

Methinks 'twas lefty Elon who did the turning

But of course the turncoat liberal poofter would miss that.

  

Tesla Attacks Are Proof That the Left Is Turning on Itself

Chadwick Moore, NY Post

Imbeciles Trump and Musk claim millions over the age of 100 get Social Security when it is 89,106 people in December 2024 lol

Trump loves Whoppers.

Smell the farts of nothing has changed.

In 2015 Trump used Rush Limbaugh Math and came up with 42% unemployed lol. "Not in labor force" is not a measure of unemployment.

These Social Security claims are loonier than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris saying 200 million and more had already died of COVID in the United States during their campaign for president-vice president in 2020. Joe corrected himself eventually. Trump and Musk WILL NOT.

... The [Social Security] issue has been repeatedly identified by inspectors general at the agency, but the Social Security Administration has argued that updating old records was costly and unnecessary.

Per the agency’s online records, just 89,106 people — not tens of millions — over the age of 99 received retirement benefits in December 2024, out of the more than 70 million people who receive benefits each year.

It’s a “humiliating mistake for anyone else to make, but they’re doubling and tripling down on it,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank that addresses government spending. ...

More.

Meanwhile the US population 65 years old and older was only about 59 million in 2023. Hello.