Greetings and welcome to this 45th performance of the Carnival of Fools! As with any long-running revue, we are keenly aware of the dangers of complacency — the same cast of characters pulling the same pratfalls can get old after a while. So, every now and then, we like to change things up and pull a few of our older and departed stars out of the vaults to give the longtime fans something special. Guess who hauled himself out of mothballs this week?
Joe Biden Bails Out Donald Trump Yet Again
The Trump administration is in the midst of a bad patch. Elon Musk isn’t merely “off the reservation”; he walked off to look for America. Over at the Pentagon, the left hand doesn’t seem to know what the right hand is doing, as Trump turns on a dime against Vladimir Putin (a welcome change of position, however overdue). And the Department of Justice is currently a clown show for the ages, with FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino reportedly threatening to quit unless Attorney General Pam Bondi resigns over bungling the release (non-release, really) of the so-called Epstein files.
I assume Bondi is going nowhere. (Imagine the impossibility of quickly confirming an attorney general in the current political climate.) But the mishandling of the Epstein files — artificially raising expectations and then snuffing them out — is a black eye for the administration according to a segment of its Extremely Online fanbase. These people, however small a sliver of Trump’s coalition, are very loud and are addressing an administration that is itself Extremely Online. Trump wrote a lengthy post on Truth Social pleading for unity — which was greeted with skepticism — and has otherwise been reduced to idly threatening to strip Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship. Wild musings such as these are properly interpreted as Trump’s form of venting his frustrations on an easy target. (I’ll admit it: I could not help but chuckle at the blithe fascism of the phrase “Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country.”)
So, thank God for good ol’ Joe Biden, still somehow alive, as he comes doddering into frame to shift the discussion away from Trump’s miseries. Yes, the real story this week is that Blunderin’ Joe went out there to remind the world that he still exists, answered a question few were seriously asking, and in so doing created even more problems for himself.
The New York Times has the scoop because it got the interview, one that Biden requested:
In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Biden said that he had orally granted all the pardons and commutations issued at the end of his term, calling President Trump and other Republicans “liars” for claiming his aides had used an autopen to do so without his authorization.
“I made every decision,” Mr. Biden said in a phone interview on Thursday, asserting that he had his staff use an autopen replicating his signature on the clemency warrants because “we’re talking about a whole lot of people.”
Way to steal a spotlight, Joe! During the late stages of the 2024 campaign, I took to calling the deposed shell of President Biden “Banquo’s ghost,” because every time he appeared in public — whether it was to mumble at the ladies of The View or label Trump supporters “garbage” during a donor call — he would toss some grenade into the Harris campaign’s lap, or upstage her media message that day, or generally remind viewers that his presidency was a giant fraud.
But, of course, the story gets even better. As Jim Geraghty also noted yesterday, Biden admits in this very same interview that he didn’t actually pay any real attention to whom he was pardoning toward the end of his presidency: He admits that he gave his aides a general list of criteria (i.e., “Pardon anyone who is [X], [Y], and/or [Z]”), and that they then autopenned the pardons on his behalf. This explains why several egregious criminals, including a “black widow” killer and a judge who took bribes to send teens to a for-profit prison, received commutations of their sentences.
All of this rather directly undermines Biden’s claim that he was “in control” and knew what he was doing when he signed all of those pardons: He certainly seems to have no idea whom specifically he was pardoning or if his aides had faithfully applied his criteria. (I’m pretty sure that he wasn’t trying to commute the sentence of Jimmy Dimora, for example, one of the most corrupt men in the last half century of Ohio politics.) Biden has managed to thicken the cloud of suspicion that hangs over all domestic political acts taken during his presidency.
The funniest thing about this self-inflicted damage, though, is how needless it was. Why is Biden out there giving this self-defeating interview anyway? Nobody actually cares whether Biden was using an autopen — there is no legal argument to be made here. Trump was as serious about undoing Biden’s laws and pardons over the autopen issue as he is about deporting Rosie O’Donnell. Trump could not undo those commutations even if he wanted to, and he most certainly doesn’t want to — they’re a political gift to him, a way to shift blame to “Senile Joe” when Trump is feeling the heat. All Biden had to do was remain silent. But the vain old man simply can’t help himself; even in his extreme dotage, character remains destiny.
Ken Paxton’s Dirty Laundry Is About to Be Aired
A couple of months ago, I wrote in the Carnival of Fools about the dire state of the 2026 Texas Senate race, where incumbent Senator John Cornyn trails ultra-MAGA state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the primary polling:
Allow me to briefly explain to you why it’s no surprise to see him losing to a Democrat in this kind of environment next year. It is the habit of ethically or otherwise morally challenged Republican politicians to cling desperately to the MAGA brand as a survival strategy, like barnacles affixed to the tail fin of a giant baleen whale. Even among this motley assortment — remember the “black Nazi” who Trump strongarmed Republicans into nominating for North Carolina governor last year? — Ken Paxton somehow manages to stand out for his sleaze and corruption.
I have a feeling that we’re about to find out the true depths of that sleaze and corruption, for a very important defender of Paxton’s has just abandoned him: his wife, State Senator Angela Paxton. “Today, after 38 years of marriage, I filed for divorce on biblical grounds. I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage.”
Paxton’s sexual indiscretions are nothing new — this is a guy who was credibly accused by whistleblowers within his own office of forcing them to hire one of his mistresses — but Paxton’s wife had stood by him so far, including during his impeachment proceeding in 2023. (Yes, Paxton was impeached by his own party, over a matter completely unrelated to the mistress: that’s how notoriously corrupt this guy is.)
One can only wonder at what “recent discoveries” Angela made about Paxton’s life that made her decide to throw in the towel now, but I suspect we’ll find out. Such revelations won’t be enough to tank Paxton’s chances in the GOP primary: Texas MAGA voters already know exactly who Ken Paxton is. (The scandal is that they do not care.) But he will be the most toxic general election candidate the Republican Party of Texas has ever fielded in a federal statewide race, and I expect him to struggle even harder than Ted Cruz had to in 2018 to hold the seat for the GOP.
We Need to Talk About Elmo
Sad news — because of the fumbling of the Epstein files, Trump has lost the trust not only of a voluble segment of his online fanbase but also that of lovable Sesame Street Muppet Elmo. Even worse, Trump seems to have radicalized Elmo into embracing Nazism. From Elmo’s official Twitter/X account last night came this shocking (and now deleted) three-tweet rant:
Elmo says ALL JEWS SHOULD DIE. F*** JEWS. DONALD TRUMP IS NETANYAHU’S PUPPET BECAUSE HE IS IN THE EPSTEIN FILES. JEWS CONTROL THE WORLD AND NEED TO BE EXTERMINATED.
RELEASE THE FILES @realDonaldTrump CHILD F***ER
Kill All Jews
Heavy stuff indeed. I suppose it’s possible that Elmo’s account was hacked by an antisemitic troll. That’s certainly the “official story.” But you and I know better. We need to be honest with ourselves: The warning signs were there with Elmo all along.
As NR editor Ramesh Ponnuru points out, “in retrospect, Elmo going incel is not all that shocking.” A profiler would argue that he raises every red flag: He is painfully shy and has difficulty talking to adult women, he is naïvely curious, he probably spends most of his time indoors or on his phone, and he’s covered in matted red fur. Of course a kid like this was going to go online and get seduced by the alt-right. Of course he was going to “break bad.”
Perhaps we should pity Elmo and try to understand him as a survivor of abuse: He has been tickled without his consent by hundreds of thousands of strange children over the past 30 years, which is bound to warp anyone’s personality in dark ways. Maybe this was meant as a cry for help. But irresponsible antisemitic conspiracy-mongering among Muppets must be condemned in the strongest possible terms regardless, or before you know it Oscar the Grouch will be ranting from his trashcan about Israel like Tucker Carlson at a Turning Point USA convention, while Count von Count shares his theories of Transylvanian racial superiority. (“Let’s learn about ordinals today by ranking ethnicities, children!”)
And, really, it’s just sad to see the guy throw away his career like this. Elmo had it all: a squeaky clean image, proven star power on television, a lucrative side hustle in public appearances, and the esteem of millions. Now, just like Kanye, he has flushed all of that away in one late-night rant about the Epstein files. (I fear that the rumors circulating around Sesame Street about Elmo’s increasingly out-of-control ketamine habit will only grow after this.)
When Elon Musk briefly unleashed MechaHitler upon humanity, what did most of you do? I’ll bet that you laughed at the absurdity of it all. (While I don’t approve of the way the AI was quickly taught to bully the ridiculous Will Stancil, I also cannot bring myself to regret some of the jokes that have emerged from it.) Of course that was before the other dominoes began to fall. I hope you regret your mirth now that Elmo has turned to the dark side.
Until next week.