I noticed Deplorable America objected to the way Roger Stone was arrested — dark and early Friday morning, with the usual phalanx of big dudes with guns. Shameful! and so on. Why, he’s an old man.
As though, if the target were Hillary Clinton, they wouldn’t settle for less than a flash-bang fired directly into her bedroom at 2 a.m., then one of those battering-ram vehicles flattening the front door.
Anyway, that was good Friday news. A friend of mine said her husband woke her up with the news. “Honey, good morning. Roger Stone was just arrested.” Not a bad way to start the day.
If you’re of delicate constitution, I don’t recommend googling “‘Roger Stone’ + swinging + 2006,” lest you turn up the text of a couple of his personal ads that will make you somewhat nauseous. It seems ol’ Roger is an enthusiastic cuckold, which is kind of funny, all things considered.
Of course, by the time this lot is driven from office, we’re going to learn a lot more. That Stone is a p.o.s. is widely known, of course. Widely, widely known:
There were two ways Roger Stone’s morning arrest could have played out.
The first scenario is the one Roger rehearsed in his mind a hundred times; his attorney would have been notified well in advance, giving America’s number one parody cartoon supervillain time to assemble some typically foppish confection: perhaps a purple morning coat, spats, hand-tooled lemur-skin calf boots, a jaunty top hat, a monocle, and an exotic cravat tied in a knot typically used only in vigorous German fesselspiele games. He would stride toward the waiting federales with a louche swagger, his bejeweled walking stick in hand. He would smile for the assembled cameras and toss off some bon mot that communicated both searing contempt and breezy insouciance.
Instead, a second, real-world scenario obtained. A frowzy, shocked Roger Stone woke to the sound of “FBI, WARRANT! OPEN THE DOOR!” in the predawn hours. The FBI may not be getting paid, but that didn’t stop them from rolling hard on Stone’s lair, arresting him, and booking him into the Broward County jail. Stern but polite FBI agents arrested Stone on seven counts of lying to Congress and Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
So now it’s Sunday. I’m still sick. We had about three inches of snow overnight, and will get five more tomorrow, followed by the worst cold of the season. And I’m coughing about every 45 seconds, so you can imagine how much I’m into this right now. So let’s go to bloggage, and hope I feel better in a day or two.
Let’s look at this story: Why does the president keep talking about women and duct tape on the border?
There have been no credible reports of women being duct taped there, but…
Nevertheless, there was Trump on Jan. 4, dramatizing the traffickers who “have three or four women with tape on their mouths and tied up, sitting in the back of a van or car.” There he was on Jan. 6: “They nab women, they grab them, they put tape over their mouths.” On Jan. 11: “Taping them up, wrapping tape around their mouths so they can’t shout or scream, tying their hands behind their back and even their legs.”
Sometimes the tape is explicitly duct tape, sometimes it’s electrical. Sometimes it has a specific color, as it did on Jan. 10: “Usually blue tape, as they call it. It’s powerful stuff. Not good.”
It’s hard not to be disturbed by the explicitness; one assumes disturbing explicitness is the point. Trump could have merely said the journey was dangerous for migrant women.
It’s a fantasy of his, I can only assume. And as he has no filter between his id and his mouth, we all get to share it with him.
Maggie Haberman got her hands on an advance copy of Chris Christie’s book:
President Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, believed that the “Russia thing” would end as a side effect from the firing of the national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, in the early days of the administration, according to an account in a new memoir by Chris Christie.
The incident recounted in Mr. Christie’s book, “Let Me Finish,” is among the anecdotes describing how the president and Mr. Kushner grappled with a campaign and a presidency that Mr. Christie says neither was prepared for.
Back to bed.
