TGIF: Hocus SCOTUS

America’s birthday week means a slow news week, so I’ll keep it tight. 

→ Trump raking it in: The Prince of Mar-a-Lago pulled in $35 million in the second quarter of the year, double what he raised the quarter before. It looks like Republican donors not only weren’t put off by the classified document scandal. . . or the New York indictment. . . or the Georgia case, but are, in fact, rallying behind him, perhaps hoping to get a better seat at the document viewing table. If you had to guess, how much would you need to donate to see the aliens? Just images of aliens, printed and spread out next to a Diet Coke and onion rings, preferably. Asking for a friend.

→ DeSantis running for President of Based Twitter: Florida’s Ron DeSantis, losing in the polls so far, is going harder on the culture war, which we didn’t think was possible. This week, the DeSantis War Room team put out a video showing how soft Trump is on gay issues, and, get this, how chill he is with Caitlin Jenner, dun dun dun. Then the video cuts to DeSantis, the manly man, our hero, then it cuts to images of buff men with strong jaws. Beautiful, muscular men, rippling their muscles. It has a sort of Tom of Finland aesthetic. The video includes all sorts of random right-wing men’s memes. DeSantis’s comment on the video?

“I think identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream, where he was having men compete against women, I think that’s totally fair game,” he said. If there’s one thing I think of when I think of Old Orange, it’s “injecting gender ideology into the mainstream.”

Clearly, this is working for some voters. The DeSantis campaign announced it has raised $20 million since the governor declared his run. 

→ The DeSantis gay coalition falls apart: There is a movement of conservative gays that calls itself Gays Against Groomers. The idea is that some (most?) gays are totally trying to groom your children, but these will be the good gays who will fight that, and everyone will be able to differentiate and no one’s gonna get homophobic, okay? 

With DeSantis’s latest turn, the GAG (yes, that’s the acronym they have chosen—another bulletproof bet) coalition is falling apart. GAG (I know) leader David Leatherwood expressed his horror at the video: “I spent the last 7 years of my life working with Trump to make the GOP a more welcoming place for gays WHILE ALSO being anti-groomer, anti-woke, and pro-religious liberty. . . .” and announced his departure: “While I respect everyone’s right to their own opinion, the homophobia coming from the DeSantis campaign is not something I want to be affiliated with in any way. Even by proxy thru GAG.” (Again, not my choice here.)

There will be another version of GAG that’s coughed up (that one’s on me), I’m guessing in the next week to ten days. 

→ We’ll just never know whose cocaine it was: Life is full of beautiful mysteries. How many raindrops in a storm? How did God make a seashell? And who left an eightball in the West Wing? All things we’ll never know and could never guess. Politico reports that it can simply never be known with the headline: “White House cocaine culprit unlikely to be found: Law enforcement official.” Does the White House have security cameras? Does Hunter Biden have fingerprints? How many seeds on a dandelion?

→ Bill de Blasio has the most Brooklyn breakup: The most hilariously bad New York City mayor who had a hilariously bad run for president is now getting a divorce and yes, it comes with a hilarious announcement. Bill de Blasio, 62, and his wife Chirlane McCray, 68, will begin dating other people. They will stay married and continue to live in the same house. Just for Men has been liberally and proactively applied. 

The piece is full of gems like: “For the guy who took the chance on a woman who was an out lesbian and wrote an article called ‘I Am a Lesbian,’ there was a part of me that would at times say, ‘Hmmm, is this like a time bomb ticking? Is this something that you’re going to regret later on?’ So I always lived with that stuff.”

And of his new dark-dyed hair: “I never anticipated ever doing anything with hair color. But I like feeling what I feel.”

Honestly? This middle-age “That’s enough info, Mom and Dad” era is a great look for the de Blasios. I’m predicting caftans and social media posts waxing poetic about the merits of polyamory in the next six months. I think Bill should get into kundalini yoga and get real freaky with it.