They mocked Donnie! You bastards!

 

Flash!  The world's most powerful biped is afraid of a cartoon.

From the Guardian:  "Since...'Sermon on the 'Mount' is a scorching critique of both Paramount's cowardice and Trump's eagerness to ride roughshod over his own voters, sting it does.  Trump himself is a character, as is his talking micropenis...Trump is there to try to placate the residents of South Park, who are angry that the person they voted for has become a self-interested dictator who probably appeared in the Epstein files."  Trump's good friend Jesus also makes an appearance.  

"If Trump could get $16 million by suing Paramount...it stands to reason that he will go after a cartoon that depicts him trying to insert his micropenis into Satan.  And if he does sue, will Paramount risk destroying its already damaged reputation by capitulating yet again?"

This is where it gets tricky, because Paramount Plus just signed a $1.5 billion contract with Trey Parker and Matt Stone for exclusive rights to South Park over five years.  If they back out, they probably still owe Parker and Stone all that money; if they don't, they might yet lose the $8 billion merger with SkyWizard or whatever it's called.  A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Moreover, if they defend against Trump's suit, doesn't he have to prove in court that he neither sleeps with Satan nor has a tiny peener?  Can he do that without committing perjury?  So far the response (from one Taylor Rogers, not Ministry of Truth Social) has been standard Trump boilerplate ("fourth rate," "popularity continues to hit record lows," "hanging on by a thread," etc.), which makes you wonder about that $1.5 billion deal.  In any case, Trump has other challenges to contend with.

As he plots to have both Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon thrown off the air, Trump continues to rage at The View, where Joy Behar labeled him "jealous of Obama" for being everything he is not:  "trim, smart, handsome, happily married, and can sing Al Green's song 'Let's Stay Together' better than Al Green."  Clearly it's Al Green who should feel insulted, but the White House (Rogers again?) trotted out the same tired cliches.  FCC biomass Brendan Carr is already "investigating" the show for bias, i.e., having opinions.  They're probably monitoring Jeopardy! to be sure there are more clues about Trump than Obama.

Show business is always a useful distraction, but Epstein Epstein Epstein is not going away.  CPAC is holding what seems to be its weekly meeting and includes a panel on human trafficking, but Pam Bondi cancelled at the last minute over a "torn cornea," which is legalese for "bone spurs."  It's as if she anticipated booing and hostile questions.  Her deputy Todd Blanche is meeting Ghislaine Maxwell today, and she'd better have her own lawyer as they hammer out the price of the pardon.   Ron DeSantis was trying to read a tribute to the late Hulk Hogan when a heckler began shouting, "You bow down to a pedophile!" and asking if Alligator Auschwitz is "your fucking legacy."  The Senate is still in session and various Trump flunkeys are pursuing this week's Big Distraction, the "Hillary was a hophead" story.  Roger Marshall asserted that she was "craving for all the power she could get," and you have to believe him because he used to a doctor, sort of.  At the same time John Cornyn and Lindsey Graham were demanding that the Bondi Department appoint a special prosecutor to look into Obama's "sedatious" activities in 2016.  Thom Tillis, who's retiring anyway, says they should "release the damn files."  ("This nonsense of, well, we've got to protect the innocent witnesses, that's called redaction.  We do that all the time.")

"Being fired from this place is significantly better than being thrown out of a leper colony," Toddie (Robert Preston) tells a nightclub owner in the cross-dressing comedy Victor/Victoria.  If I were serving time in the Washington press corps I would feel the same.  The Wall Street Journal has been prohibited from standing around watching Trump kick golf balls in Scotland, and Meghan McCain wants Kaitlan Collins removed from covering the White House for CNN because she was too aggressive in questioning Karoline Leavitt about Gabbard's ever-changing version of Iran intelligence.  That's what a reporter does.  A "pure partisan hack" like McCain only wants to be sure she repeats the latest lie.

Using his superior negotiating skills, Trump has secured the release of ten Americans imprisoned in Venezuela.  The New York Times, which is becoming downright bold, thought we should know about one of them, Dahud Hanid Ortiz.  Mr. Hanid Ortiz, who holds dual US-Venezuelan citizenship, was convicted of murdering three people in Spain in 2016.  He set out to kill a lawyer who was having a relationship with his wife, but the man was not in his office.  Mr. Hanid Ortiz then killed a man he mistook for the lawyer and two women who happened to be present.  One of the women was killed with an iron bar, the other with a large knife.  He fled after setting fire to the office.  "He arrived in the US on Friday and his whereabouts are reportedly unknown," the article says laconically.  Here is a recent photo.

At least Trump didn't use an autopen.