Pop Quiz: Does Trump *Like* It When You Make Money Selling Access To Him, Or Does He *LOVE* It?
Ooooh oooh oooh Boris Epshteyn, girl you in trouble.
Boris Epshteyn, he’s this guy. Apparently despite his entire resume being “went to college with Eric Trump,” he’s been basically running Trump’s transition — a transition that still doesn’t exist, since the designated department heads all refuse to fill out their stupid “ethics” papers and Joe Biden’s administration decided to play hardball on that instead of “don’t take a picture smiling next to Hitler.”
Anyway, Epshteyn’s reportedly been calling around and demanding payola from people who want Cabinet positions, and he didn’t even have the smarts God gave a goddamn stupid baby, the youngest of whom would know to offer Trump a cut. Thirty, forty thousand dollars a month for each sucker, and soon you’re talking about “what Generation Z considers the minimum successful salary.”
OK, so according to a review by whichever of Trump’s consiglieres is his campaign lawyer or whatever, Epshteyn demanded vig (I do not know what vig is, obviously) from Scott Bessent, Trump’s new Treasury Secretary-designate who thinks tariffs can’t be inflationary because they make people poorer and thus unable to buy more things so inflation cannot exist? The paper doesn’t say who the other sucker was, just some poor defense contractor Epshteyn demanded a hundred thousand dollars a month from. Anyway look at this shit, amazing.
Mr. Bessent declined. He also did not partake in another effort by Mr. Epshteyn, described in the report, to get him to invest in a three-on-three basketball league, but played along with him to avoid offending such a seemingly powerful figure in Mr. Trump’s world.
Mr. Bessent then called Mr. Epshteyn on Nov. 14 to see whether he was criticizing Mr. Bessent to people around Mr. Trump, the review said. Mr. Epshteyn told Mr. Bessent that it was “too late” to hire him and that he was “Boris Epshteyn,” with an expletive between the two names. He then suggested the hiring was for consulting.
How could I have ever been mad at Maggie Haberman, that shit was great!
Trump’s pissed, his spokesman is denying that his boss and everyone his boss has ever met loves to fucking constantly steal, and his son is like “that person will sleep with the fishes.”
While asserting that he had never known Mr. Epshteyn, with whom he went to college, to be anything but “a good human being,” [Eric Trump] said: “My father’s been incredibly clear: You do not, you do not do that under any circumstance. And believe me, there will be repercussions if somebody was.”
He added that he hoped the reports were “false” but that if they were true, “the person will probably no longer be around.”
I imagine he means “he will be fired and not allowed to snail trail all over Mar-a-Lago looking for marks without even offering the king his tribute,” but wouldn’t it be funny if he meant “will be firing squadded like a common Liz Cheney or journalist”? Hahahaha don’t we have fun!
In other news, Trump announced that for some reason he will impose massive tariffs on our biggest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, with whom he already renegotiated our trade deals so I don’t get how that even takes effect but whatever. That is much harder to write about and explain and understand and this one about “Trump idiot tries to make casheesh off the boss” was easy so this is the one you got.
OK, so I unskedded Dr Sarah Taber from 9 am so I could put Marcie up first and then Marcie never posted, and Sarah Taber's went out as an email at 11 instead of a post so now it's going up and getting emailed AGAIN at EOD and Marcie's going up at 1 and WHAT THE FUCK I HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR TWELVE YEARS HOW ON EARTH IS ANY OF THIS HARD.
Shit. Sure hope I'M not going to be the one to have to breakdown the impact this'll have on trade with Canada. Math is hard.