Jeff Tiedrich’s blog on Substack is called “Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion.” He uses language that I ban from this site. But he’s so exceptional in his insights, his humor, and his ability to weave incidents into a narrative that I have to post him despite his flagrant use of the F word.

He writes:

finalfuckingly. Donny Convict has been sentenced. 

The judge who presided over Trump’s criminal trial, Juan Merchan, issued a sentence of “unconditional discharge”, meaning the president-elect will be released without fine, imprisonment or probation supervision for his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. While the sentence makes Trump a convicted felon, he will face no penalty other than this legal designation.

in the end, A Very Special Boy received the slightest possible punishment, being told in effect to go think about what a bad boy you’ve been. but at least Donny will go down in history as America’s only convicted felon president. you know the big grievance-baby is never going to stop letting it gnaw away at his insides — and for that, ha fucking ha. sucks to you be you, Donny.

Donny had tried like hell to put off his sentencing until how about never, running first to the New York Court of Appeals and then to the New York State Supreme Court, insisting that the imaginary doctrine of “pre-presidential immunity” meant that he couldn’t be sentenced for any crimes at all. 

both courts told Donny to get stuffed — and so he went scampering off to his besties on the Supreme Court. late last night, the Supremes surprisingly did the right thing, and ruled 5-4 that Donny could eat an entire bag of dicks. 

three of the four dissenters were Luxury Vacation Clarence, Fishin’ Trip Sammy, and Blackout Brett — the bought-and-paid-for Federalist Society hacks who vote the way their oligarch overlords tell them. the fourth was Nihilist Neil, whose own motivation is that he hates government and just wants to see everything burn. 

wrap your mind around that. there are four Supreme Court Justices willing to go beyond the already-corrupt concept of ‘presidential immunity’ and insist that Donny is A Super-Duper Extra-Special Boy who can do all the crimes he wants, any time, for any reason, with no accountability at all, ever. 

one vote is how close Donny came to escaping even the limited form of justice that was meted out this morning.

the MAGA cinematic universe is howling with outrage right now, and demanding to speak to Amy “Commie” Barrett’s manager.

boo fucking hoo.

Mr. Convicted And Sentenced Felon spent yesterday doubling down on his outright lies about the wildfires in Los Angeles.

“if you noticed yesterday, the hydrants were empty. they didn’t have any water, any of them. they said twenty percent but now I just heard fifty percent and now none of them have water and that fire’s still raging. when he turned that down, I was going to give him unlimited water, it would come down, it really comes down from the north, way up north, including parts of Canada, it’s so much water that they wouldn’t know what to do with. just the opposite would have happened. but and uh, that’s the reason that this happened. he wouldn’t do what we wanna— and we’re gonna force that upon him now, but it’s very late.”

where do you even begin with this nonsense?

Donny somehow believes that Gavin Newsom rejected an imaginary offer of water that apparently comes from some mysterious source “way up north.” (Donny stopped short of repeating his ‘big Canadian faucet’ fairy tale.)

here’s something you should know about about the “water restoration declaration” that Donny keeps insisting Governor Newsome refuses to sign:

there’s no such thing. you can’t find a single water management expert who has a fucking clue what Donny is gibbering about. 

“There was no ‘water restoration declaration’ for him to sign,” Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow in the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California think tank, said in a Wednesday interview.

“There was never a ‘water restoration declaration’ in California that the Governor refused to sign,” Brent Haddad, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a Wednesday email.

let’s go back to the clip. 

“we’re gonna force that upon him now.”

he’s going to force water on Gavin Newsom? how does that work?

“Governor Newsom, there’s a delivery man here with a hundred million tons of water, he wants to know where to put it.”

Donny’s never been all that big on the concept of consent. remember when he promised to quote-unquote “protect women,” whether they like it or not?

“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not,’” Trump said. “I’m going to protect them.”

how fucking creepy is that? “I’m doing this to protect you” is the kind of thing the serial killer says as he handcuffs you to the radiator.

Donny famously bragged about grabbing women by the pussy — because when you’re a star, they let you. now Donny’s going to hydrate California — because when you’re a president, they let you.

oh look, Donny’s also going to force himself on the people of Greenland, whether they like it or not.

reporter: “what’s the price tag?”
Donny: “well, maybe no price tag. y’know, look, we’re going to have to see what happens. because Denmark — we need this for national security. we need Greenland very badly. you look— the Russian ships, the China ships, they’re all over the place, they’re surrounding. now they have for a long time, that’s a lane. but uh, we need that for national security. so, I don’t know that Denmark has any right title and interest, so we’re going to find it— but I can tell you, you saw the clips that were released. the people of Greenland would love to become a state of the United States of America. I— we were greeted with tremendous love and affection and respect. the people would like to be a part of the United States. now Denmark maybe doesn’t like it, but then we can’t be too happy with Denmark, and maybe things have to happen with respect to Denmark having to do with tariffs. because they have to do this, I think, for the free world. we need that to protect the free world.

listening to Donny try to form coherent thoughts on the fly is like watching a chimpanzee play with a hand grenade. you know it’s going to end badly, but you can’t look away.

what is this nonsense? “I don’t know that Denmark has any right title and interest.” that Greenland is a territory of Denmark is not open to conjecture. there’s no maybe they and maybe they aren’t. it’s a fact, and facts are not malleable. Donny lives in a fantasy world of his own construction.

now, as to these people in Greenland who are so fucking psyched to become Americans — are they in the room with us right now? because when Cokey McSniffles Jr. and that weird little garden gnome Charlie Kirk did their failed Greenland photo op earlier this week, they had to bribe unhoused locals to wear MAGA hats and pretend to be supporters.

Danish public media organization DR News reports that many of the Trump supporters pictured dining with the president-elect’s son were unhoused and “socially disadvantaged” people asked to wear MAGA merch and offered a free dinner at Hotel Hans Egede in the town of Nuuk.

so yeah, that sounds like a groundswell of enthusiasm right there.

Scott Jennings can fuck all the way off.

try to keep your jaw from hitting the floor as you listen to Jennings twist the racism dial so far past eleven that it’s a wonder the whole thing didn’t snap off in his hand.

“also in California, you might have recalled a news story from last year. there was some interest in the fire departments and the firefighters in California. and the interest was that there were too many white men who were firefighters. and we need to have a program in California to make sure we don’t have enough white men as firefighters. we have DEI, we have budget cuts, and yet I’m wondering now if your house was burning down, how much do you care what color the firefighters are?”

Scott Jennings seems to care a lot what color the firefighters are. sounds to me that if Scott Jennings’ house were on fire and black firefighters showed up, he’d demand to know where the white firefighters are.

fuck this implication that black people aren’t up to the job of fighting fires, and that they’re being allowed to ride on the firetruck as some kind of unearned favor.

Tex. Rep Jasmine Crockett was having none of it. 

“we are looking at qualifications. what diversity, equity, and inclusion has always been about is saying, you know what, open this up. don’t just look at the white men. open it up and recognize that other people can be qualified. if we have been good enough to build this country, we are good enough to serve and die overseas, we are good enough to serve in other ways.”

the Most Unwelcome Man in the World inflicted himself on Jimmy Carter’s memorial service yesterday, and there are two things you need to know.

first, the narcoleptic old dotard immediately drifted off into slumberland — and second, Melania apparently now does her shopping at the Pilgrim Warehouse. 

but the real hero of the day was the photographer from the Carter Center, who positioned his camera so that Donny and Melly, who were sitting to the right of Obama, were blocked by a granite column.