In which the pond goes heavy on illustrations and cartoons to make it through Dame Slap and prattling Polonius ...

 

The pond is always inclined to avoid matters and people before the courts. 

The pond did its best to avoid speculating on the Lehrmann matter - unlike reptiles of the Dame Slap kind, up to her neck in the intrigues and the leaks and heavily loaded columns - and the pond will do its best to avoid speculating on matters surrounding the parrot.

The pond even avoided the temptation of speculating on the Wilcox cartoon featured in Friday's Weekly Beast ...

According to the venerable Meade, the original cartoon drew attention to a plucked parrot and the journalism that helped in the plucking ...

But the official version had the plucked parrot behind bars ...

The venerable Meade didn't go into the logic of the change, but in the first there's a presumption of innocence, while making the most of the comical bird; in the second not so much, with the bird guilty as caged, and the bird joke also locked away.

The pond only went there, and broke its no speculation rule, because Dame Slap yet again decided to intervene and muddy the waters in a way that only a visit to planet Janet above the faraway tree can do ...

Six minutes she wasted on it in The unmistakable whiff of mob justice after Alan Jones’s arrest, Some of those best placed to uphold the presumption of innocence are the same ones who ignored it when Alan Jones was arrested and charged.

It's Janet and she's here to help? Not bloody likely ... she's there to administer mob media justice to the mob peddling mob justice.

Even the opening image, a familiar perp walk of shame in front of a howling media suggests guilt of some kind, Alan Jones is released on bail from Day Street Police Station in Sydney earlier this week. Picture: NewsWire/Dylan Coker:

Getting between Dame Slap and a righteous fit of indignation and faux piety in relation to legal matters  is always a dodgy business, with her taste for mixing banal clichés with rabid ranting...

Not for nothing, Lady Justice holds a set of scales in one hand, a sword in the other and wears a blindfold. If we remove even one of these items from our justice system, we’re all in strife.
The scales symbolise a system where the starting point, the presumption of innocence, addresses the obvious power imbalance between, on the one hand, a citizen facing imprisonment and, on the other, the tremendous power and resources of the state.
The sword signifies the necessary power of the justice system to punish perpetrators who commit wrongs.
The blindfold means the fundamental principles of the legal system apply to every person, equally. Perhaps the most important of the fundamental principles is the presumption of innocence. It’s the golden thread that weaves together a just society, protecting us from the tyranny of mob injustice.
This week, the whiff of sanctioned mob justice was unmistakeable. Some of those best placed to uphold the presumption of innocence are the same ones who ignored it, after Alan Jones was arrested and charged with more than two dozen alleged offences against nine men over two decades. His youngest alleged victim was 17.
The presumption of innocence was undermined when NSW Assistant Police Commissioner Michael Fitzgerald fronted the media and described the complainants as victims. He commended the “victims” for their “bravery in coming forward”.“The victims have our full support. This is what they have been asking for,” he said. “These are serious charges.”
Equally serious is the presumption of innocence. There is no “victim”. Not yet. There is a complainant.
Praising a “victim” may suggest to potential jurors that police want the public to know that law enforcement officers believe a crime has been committed and that the defendant is guilty.
But there is not yet a crime. In the absence of a guilty plea, a jury will be the arbiter of fact. That jury can find guilt only if it believes it has been proved beyond reasonable doubt after consideration of the admissible evidence. And the jury’s starting point is the presumption of innocence.
It’s one thing for Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, to remove nice things that Jones said about her from her personal and corporate websites. Private citizens are entitled to believe what they want. But a police officer of any rank should know that calling a person who has made an allegation a “victim” undermines the presumption of innocence.

Did Dame Slap just berate the use of "victim" while furiously scribbling "alleged victim", and in that legal eagle disclaimer way, imagine that "alleged" washes away the stain of the word? 

"Alleged" is only for scaredy cat word for journalists wanting to avoid a legal action. Shouldn't she, by her own lights, have found another word than "victim"?

Never mind, at this point the reptiles inserted a very lengthy history of the parrot, and it might just be the pond, but it seems to point to a pattern of behaviour consistent with guilt, and thereby at odds with Dame Slap's pious messaging about a presumption of innocence ...

Even the header "The fall of Alan Jones" suggests that where there's clouds of suspicion, there might be a fire of guilt... lo, how the mighty guilt laden have fallen, let the reptiles count the many ways ...

Talk about a lengthy charge sheet, and yet Janet, off on her Planet, seems singularly unaware of how the reptiles have undermined her piety. 

That last snap, of the furtive fugitive cowering behind glass, accompanied by an outline of charges, makes him look as guilty as hell, like a Mafia boss on the run ...

On the other hand, perhaps it's just a springboard so that Dame Slap can leap into the deep end and blather about some other pet peeves:

If police and others across the criminal justice system don’t defend the presumption of innocence in their dealings with the public, the immediate danger is that jurors won’t understand that Lady Justice’s blindfold means that the presumption of innocence applies with equal force to our best friends and our worst enemies.
Once we lose that, then the jury system – described this week by senior Sydney silk Arthur Moses as the essential guardrail in a democracy – isn’t worth a jot.
I would launch this strident defence of the presumption of innocence even if Jones were my foe. That Jones is a friend of mine is neither here nor there.
A good portion of the media take the presumption of innocence seriously. But when, in the first press conference after Jones’s arrest, a senior policeman calls a complainant a “victim”, the media will report that.
When police tip off the media about the arrest of a man with as high a profile as Jones, the media will film that.
Still, there are plenty in the media also laying down impressions that here’s a man who has rightly met his comeuppance.
Why can’t Jones’s enemies see the longer game? What if the tables are turned on those celebrating Jones’s downfall – or on one of their friends? What then will they say about the presumption of innocence? Let us be grateful for small mercies. As one reader wrote this week, “Thank god we don’t have firing squads and hanging any more. Cemeteries would be full.”
It’s not just senior police officers who appear to be casting aside fundamental tenets of our criminal justice system. When ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum said last week that she struggled to understand why juries found it so hard to believe an allegation of sexual assault, she left many people baffled and disappointed.

That was a Dame Slap matter the pond had avoided up to now, together with the reptiles' obligatory snap of the alleged perpetrator, ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum.

Once Dame Slap gets the bit between her teeth, she can be relied on for a full neighing ...

Many were concerned that her words would be interpreted as telling prospective jurors that they ought to find it easier to believe sexual assault allegations.
All judges, let alone a chief justice, should be very careful that everything they say and do serves the administration of justice.
Senior criminal barrister Jack Pappas put it this way: “Judges are appointed and paid to hold the reins of fairness and to steer the lumbering wagon of justice down the middle of the road, not to the right nor to the left but down the middle to ensure that complainants and accused persons and the community receive a fair go.
“When judges start to deviate from that straight path and cannot help doing so, they should get off the wagon and give the reins over to another who is not so affected,” he told Inquirer this week.
Pappas is concerned that when a chief justice expresses disbelief about why juries find it, in her view, unjustifiably hard to believe allegations of sexual assault, it “sends a dangerously destabilising message, not only to potential jurors but to other judges under her direction as head of jurisdiction and a dangerously disquieting message to any accused in a sex matter being overseen by her”.

Meanwhile, the dangerously destabilising reptiles were still doubling down on the charges, the sort of old fashioned format that used to be used when doing a tear sheet about a crime boss:

That snap, those counts ... didn't the graphics artist listen to Dame Slap's pious pleas? He looks as guilty as hell ...

We all know the sort of mischief that tear sheet images conjure up ...

Yet Dame Slap managed to sail on, oblivious, to a righteous conclusion:

These days, bar associations and other legal professional bodies rarely say boo about fundamental principles. But Brodie Buckland from the ACT Bar Association delivered a rare rebuke.
He said McCallum’s comments might give rise to perceptions that “juries in sexual assault trials are getting it wrong because they do not believe the allegations made by complainants”.
“Such perceptions do not serve the interest of justice and ought to be rejected,” Buckland said. He defended juries as the ultimate arbiters of fact.
“They are foundational to the common-law criminal justice system and their decisions must not be gainsaid,” he said.
Pappas is concerned that McCallum’s public comments may intimidate young and relatively inexperienced defence bar­risters, dissuading them from testing allegations in court against their clients.
“Other more experienced and resolute barristers may push back, but a criminal trial should not be a contest between the judge and those at the bar table to achieve fairness. The judge should guarantee that fairness,” he said.

The fact of the matter is that Dame Slap simply can't help herself. 

Such columns do not serve the interest of justice and this one should have been spiked, especially given the explosive nature of the charge sheets attached to the verbiage. 

But will Dame Slap ever learn? Of course not, she was once a lawyer, and she loves to interfere with the course of the justice system ... cf. the Lehrmann matter, as outrageous a way to behave as any case has seen in recent times. 

The reptiles did try a little repair work by showing a brighter parrot in an AV extra, As he faces a likely criminal trial next year, Alan Jones will need all the support the pick-and-stick club can give.

But is that fair compensation for the way that the pond came away from Dame Slap thinking she was protesting too much and likely he was as guilty as hell - a verdict the pond had done its best to avoid while holding its nose at the smell of some of the parrot droppings:

Some senior lawyers in the ACT are asking privately whether McCallum is slipping into law “reformer” mode, angling for a return to judge-only trials for sex offences. When the ACT allowed for judge-only trials for sex matters, conviction rates were low. But no one imagines that would remain the case with a Supreme Bench headed by McCallum and composed of different judges from those in previous years.A former criminal prosecutor said that returning to judge-only trials for sex offences would raise even deeper concerns for the presumption of innocence in the ACT, given McCallum’s comments about juries finding it so hard to believe allegations of sexual assault.
McCallum is not alone in her apparent drive to raise conviction rates for sex cases. In the ACT, the use of the term victim survivor instead of complainant is endemic, delivering added injury to the presumption of innocence with its emotional tagline of survivor.

Historically, the term complainant was used up until an accused person was convicted at trial or pleaded guilty. But as another very senior ACT lawyer told Inquirer: “The government now uses the term victim survivor to describe anyone who complains of being the victim of sexual assault or domestic violence. It features heavily in most government documents, reports, press releases which relate to alleged sexual offending.”
In circumstances when there has been no conviction or guilty plea, the lawyer says, victim survivor is a “highly charged and loaded term … that completely undermines the presumption of innocence and is grossly inappropriate”.
The lawyer says while some former and current prosecutors refuse to use the term because they understand how unfair and inappropriate it is, government departments and other agencies in the criminal justice system routinely use the loaded term.
It’s disturbing how many people chip away at the presumption of innocence, disregarding that old proverb: there but for the grace of God go I – or go the people I love.
When McCallum aired her misguided views, she opened a can of worms about the flawed administration of justice in the ACT.
We’ve only just started exposing the mess where people entrusted with tremendous state power, across different legal institutions, are determined to press down on one end of Lady Justice’s scales to lift sexual assault conviction rates, at the expense of a fair trial for an accused.

If anybody opened a can of worms this day, it was Dame Slap. The impact of those charge sheets, and her feeble protestations, is to do the parrot like a dinner, and to put him in a cage before due process is done ...

Now for the good news.

The pond hasn't forgotten Polonius lurking behind the arras, and ready to emerge to strut his stuff with four minutes of prattle in Red-faced pundits change their tune on Donald Trump, On November 5, Trump was another Hitler, but within less than two weeks he was a democratically elected president-elect with whom there should be communication.

Huzzah, Polonius is going to give the pond the chance to have a cartoon fest for Sunday, though the pond must first get a dullard illustration out of the way, A couple of Trump derangement syndrome sufferers are eating plenty of humble pie.

Right from the get go, Polonius hedges his own bets. You know, "It remains to be seen", so he can indulge in his favourite pastime of slagging off others ...

It remains to be seen whether Donald J. Trump’s MAGA movement will really Make America Great Again after Trump becomes the 47th US president on January 20 next year. Or whether the Trump administration will make America healthy again if Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s appointment as secretary of health and human services is confirmed by the US Senate.
In the meantime, a couple of Trump derangement syndrome sufferers are eating plenty of humble pie. The reference is to Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who host the Morning Joe program on MSNBC. The couple were close friends of Trump up to around the time he became the 45th US president in 2017. Then the relationship turned sour.
Scarborough and Brzezinski became leading Trump antagonists – warning that Trump was a fascist who, if elected on November 5, would destroy US democracy.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a cross-promotional Sky News moment.

Sky News contributor Kristin Tate has slammed ‘Morning Joe’ hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. “These ‘Morning Joe’ hosts were screaming loudly for years, insisting to their viewers that Donald Trump was a ‘Nazi fascist’,” Ms Tate told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “Well, guess what? If they truly believed he was a ‘Nazi fascist’, would they be going to his home and meeting with him? Of course not. “These ‘Morning Joe’ hosts lied. They lied to their viewers. “They should be ashamed, they should apologise, but I’m not going to hold my breath for an apology.” Ms Tate’s remarks come after the two hosts revealed they had met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, to which they later received backlash from MSNBC staffers.

There's a good chance they didn't lie, given all the shadowy 2025 players lurking in the wings. 

Or the line-up of sexual deviants, scam artists, frauds, liars and thieves currently being lined up for plum positions ...

A recent example was featured by Ben Mathis-Lilley in Slate, He Wasn’t Qualified to Be Attorney General. He’s Even Less Qualified for the Next Job Trump Wants Him In. He Does Have a History of Scams.

One of the more delightfully dumb and blessedly low-impact storylines of the first Donald Trump administration involved a man named Matthew Whitaker. In 2018, when Trump finally hectored former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions into resigning his position as attorney general—Sessions had approved the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, which made Trump mad—the highly underqualified Whitaker replaced Sessions as interim AG for three zany months. It was a sort of King Ralph situation but for the Department of Justice, down to Whitaker and John Goodman both having been pretty solid football players in their younger days.
Anyway, Trump has now nominated Whitaker to be the U.S. representative to NATO, which is another job for which he is not qualified.

Whitaker served as a U.S. attorney in Iowa from 2004 until 2009, but much of his notoriety owes to work he did from 2014 until 2017 for a company called “World Patent Marketing.” The company charged would-be inventors thousands of dollars for services such as “Global Invention Royalty Analysis” that would purportedly help them make money off their ideas; the Federal Trade Commission, though, alleged in a lawsuit that its advertisements were deceptive and and that it performed basically no actual work on behalf of its customers. In 2018 a federal judge ordered the company to pay $26 million in damages while permanently banning its founder—who was based, naturally, in Florida—from selling services to inventors. (You can read more about this in the Miami New Times.)
Whitaker acted as a World Patent Marketing “adviser” and once told a dissatisfied customer that there could be “criminal consequences” (WaPo paywall) for him if he complained about the company online, but was never charged with any personal wrongdoing in relation to the case.

And so on, with the picking of the transition team a running series of clown car jokes ...

Tulsi is another truly weird choice. 

Slate spends some time on her devotion to the cult The Science of Identity Foundation - just what you need for intelligent service on intelligent duties -  while Punchbowl News focussed on intelligence issues:

Former Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, is on record calling for the U.S. government to “drop all charges” against Edward Snowden, wanting to repeal key intelligence-gathering tools and sometimes embracing Russian talking points regarding the wars in Syria and Ukraine.

That’s even before examining Gabbard’s foreign policy views, which are far outside the mainstream of American political discourse — and even further away from the center of gravity in the Senate Republican Conference.

It’s presenting a unique challenge for Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee. That panel — which is responsible for processing Gabbard’s nomination — is stacked with hawks on both sides of the dais.

Trump’s choice of Gabbard is in keeping with his desire to completely overhaul the federal bureaucracy. But GOP senators are already indicating they’ll be interested in probing Gabbard’s controversial and often outright hostile posture toward the very intelligence apparatus she’d run if confirmed.

The Snowden praise is particularly troubling to lawmakers, the vast majority of whom believe the NSA leaker caused irreparable damage to U.S. national security. Snowden is now a Russian citizen.

This is news: Republican senators have privately discussed their interest in viewing Gabbard’s FBI file, according to three sources familiar with the conversations. This is done for each Cabinet nominee, but the implication is that the documents could reveal previously unknown information about Gabbard, including possible foreign contacts.

But back to Polonius, Mika and Joe:

So it came as some surprise when Brzezinski announced to viewers on Monday that she and Scarborough had travelled to Mar-a-Lago to meet the president-elect. It was the first time they had met since 2017.
Then Scarborough stated that it would come as no surprise to the Morning Joe audience that the co-hosts “didn’t see eye-to-eye (with Trump) on a lot of issues”. He added: “We told him so.” This would not have surprised Trump. But he was smart enough to receive the pair with courtesy.
Then Brzezinski added: “What we did agree on was to do something different and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him.”
How about that? Two of the best known journalists in the US decided it would be a good idea to talk with the president whose party would run the White House and would have majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. Quelle surprise.
So there you have it. On November 5, Trump was another Hitler. And within less than two weeks he was a democratically elected president-elect with whom there should be communication.
Brzezinski conceded that abuse was no substitute for reasoned argument, declaring: “Hyperbole and personal attacks will not work; my hair on fire doesn’t work; we’ve seen all that.” Like so many members of mainstream media in Western nations, the Morning Joe co-presenters failed to detect that Trump had considerable support in American society, especially among those earning less than $US100,000 ($150,000) and without a tertiary qualification.

How about that? Polonius seems entirely unaware that as well as copping abuse from the right, the pair have copped a huge amount of abuse from disappointed viewers and what passes as the left in America, with ratings plummeting and the pair in damage control mode:

Never say never because while they might not have lied about the mango Mussolini's aspirations to being an authoritarian ready to use the military in an unprecedented way, the pair have shot themselves in the foot by their hypocritical pandering and fawning, and perhaps done themselves irreparable damage, while cartoonists had a field day ...including Luckovich, revived by the pond for the occasion ...

Well the pond did say it was going to use cartoons to get through Polonius, as he turns to the wretched Maureen Dowd, though it could have been worse, he could have trotted out David Brooks:

It was much the same among many Australian commentators.
A week later, all that had changed. Writing on November 9, in the wake of the presidential election, Dowd led off her column with this: “Some Democrats are finally waking up and realising that woke is broke. Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of black and Latino voters and young men.”
She accused the Democratic Party of embracing “a world view of hyper-political correctness, condescension”.
Dowd added: “This alienated half of the country, or more; and the chaos and anti-Semitism at many college campuses certainly didn’t help.”
Neither the two Morning Joe presenters nor The New York Times columnist conceded that they misread the US electorate before November 5. They were not the only ones.

The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd appears to have experienced a similar metamorphosis. On November 2, she wrote a blistering attack on Trump. Dowd presented him as “a man with no character”. And she described the president-elect as “milking the emotions of Americans who don’t feel that things are working for them, who feel that government is corrupt and incompetent, who feel that it’s them versus Washington”.

So now they get holes in their teeth and they're supposed to flash a grin and dance in the streets in triumph? Not to mention polio, measles and the like ...

It wouldn't be a Polonial outing if he didn't berate the ABC, while of late he's turned into quite the Sky News (Au) sycophant (strange, that they've never given him his own show):

As I documented in my Media Watch Dog blog on November 8, the visiting experts who appeared on the ABC in the lead-up to the election got the outcome hopelessly wrong. Namely, Americans Anthony Scaramucci, Allan Lichtman and Ann Selzer, along with Rory Stewart from Britain.
The same can be said of ABC TV presenter Sarah Ferguson, who was sent, at taxpayer expense, to the US to report to Australians on the presidential election. In appearances on 7.30 (November 4) and Radio National Breakfast (November 6) she took far too much note of Selzer’s prediction that Vice-President Kamala Harris would win Iowa – with implications for some neighbouring battleground states. Another hopelessly wrong prediction.
Many of the Australian TV reporters who went to the US to cover the election – which often involved talking to other Australians – would have been better advised to stay at home and watch Fox News or Sky News on Foxtel.
Robert Cahaly (Trafalgar Group) and Matt Towery (InsiderAdvantage) appeared on Fox News’ Hannity program in the lead-up to the election. Both pollsters had predicted a Trump victory in 2016 and a Biden victory four years later. They got it right again in 2024.
As followers of the Fox News’ Gutfeld! late-night program will know, the retired black wrestler, now comedian, Tyrus (who was born George Murdoch – no relation) predicted that Trump’s victory would be evident by 10pm US eastern standard time. Reports from inside the rival camps suggest the Harris advisers privately conceded defeat at 9pm while the Trump team privately declared victory one hour later.

How is it that Tyrus got it right while so many of the American and Australian commentariat got the result wrong, by predicting a Harris win or by stating that the result would be extremely close? In other words, by substantially underestimating Trump’s support throughout the nation. This manifested itself in Trump prevailing over Harris by about 3.5 million votes.

Deeply weird that Polonius has now got into wrestling and the UFC and the whole damn thing, while Sam Eagan in The New Yorker reports that Dana White, the head of the UFC circus, is now jack of the whole thing ...

Donald Trump’s U.F.C. Victory Party, Dana White, the C.E.O. of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, helped Trump reach young male voters. Now White says he’s done with politics: “I want nothing to do with this shit.” (paywall)

The whole celebration of the UFC circus is worth a read, but spoiler alert, this was the punchline:

...White, for his part, told me that he’s done helping with Presidential campaigns. Trump is a friend—but the rest of the G.O.P. may be on their own. “I’m never fucking doing this again,” he said. “I want nothing to do with this shit. It’s gross. It’s disgusting. I want nothing to do with politics.” 

Meanwhile, the pond is still taking bets on how long Uncle Leon will last, and the pond isn't the only one to speculate. 

There was Theodore Schleifer in The New York Times, Elon Musk Gets a Crash Course in How Trumpworld Works, (paywall) The world’s richest person, not known for his humility, is still learning the cutthroat courtier politics of Donald Trump’s inner circle — and his ultimate influence remains an open question.

Inter alia:

For the first 53 years of his life, Elon Musk barely spent any time with Donald J. Trump. Then, beginning on the night of Nov. 5, he spent basically no time without him.

And so Mr. Musk, more than any other key player in the presidential transition, finds himself in a cram session to learn the courtier politics of Mr. Trump’s inner circle. For the world’s richest person — not known for his humility or patience — it is a social engineering challenge far trickier and less familiar than heavy manufacturing or rocket science.

Doubts abound as to whether he will graduate in 2028 with a four-year degree in Trumpism: It is now a parlor game in Washington and Silicon Valley to speculate just how long the Musk-Trump relationship will last. The answer, as discarded aides from Mr. Trump’s first term will tell you, may depend on Mr. Musk’s ability to placate the boss and keep a relatively low profile — but also to shiv a rival when the time comes.

In short, how to play the politics of Trumpworld.

Most of the people who now surround Mr. Trump in the transition are battle-tested aides from his past fights, or decades-long personal friends. Mr. Musk is neither. What he brings instead are his 200 million followers on X and the roughly $200 million he spent to help elect Mr. Trump. Both of those have greatly impressed the president-elect. Mr. Trump, gobsmacked by Mr. Musk’s willingness to lay off 80 percent of the staff at X, has said the tech billionaire will help lead a Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy.

Over the last week, Mr. Musk has kept up his buddy routine with Mr. Trump, joining him at nearly every meeting at Mar-a-Lago as well as a U.F.C. fight. On Tuesday, he brought the president-elect to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas for a SpaceX launch.

In private meetings at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Musk shows little familiarity with policy or the potential staff members being discussed, but he returns repeatedly to a central point: What is required, he says, is “radical reform” of government and “reformers” who are capable of executing radical changes, according to two people briefed on the meetings, who insisted on anonymity to describe the internal conversations...

...Mr. Trump’s aides are divided on Mr. Musk’s role. Some see him as relatively harmless, and he is close with Stephen Miller, a top policy aide. Others have chafed at his near-constant presence at Mar-a-Lago, especially given his lack of personal history with Mr. Trump.

So it is notable that Mr. Musk has appeared concerned about the perception of his influence. On Wednesday, in response to a headline describing him as Mr. Trump’s “closest confidant,” the tech billionaire went out of his way to praise “the large number of loyal, good people at Mar-a-Lago who have worked for him for many years.”

“To be clear, while I have offered my opinion on some cabinet candidates, many selections occur without my knowledge and decisions are 100% that of the President,” he wrote on X.

It appeared to be a recognition of a well-known lesson in Trumpworld: Don’t outshine the boss. At least if you want to stay awhile.

Is it just the pond or has Polonius entirely missed the point of what the next four years promise? So much comedy material to be mined (and never mind the planet going to hell in a handbasket):

The answer appears to be that the likes of Tyrus and Fox News presenters are more in touch with what average Americans feel. They are aware that, to most Americans, what’s important is economic and social wellbeing. Hence the focus on the cost of living, the prevalence of crime and border security. Moreover, many Americans are social conservatives.
It appears that Dowd now gets this – with her view that Americans are now working out that “woke is broke”. And the Scarborough and Brzezinski duo now accept that even presidents such as Trump deserve respect.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Now there's a tell: "even presidents such as Trump deserve respect."

That "even" gives the game away. Polonius knows it's likely to be a shit storm, but like Mika and Joe he's keeping his head down. You know:

It remains to be seen whether Donald J. Trump’s MAGA movement will really Make America Great Again.

It remains to be seen, but what a great start this cavalcade of clown cars has made ...

As for the mango Mussolini deserving respect, back in the day, the pond's grannie used to say that you had to earn respect, rather than deserve it. 

Wadda ya kno, apparently the google AI bot channeled the pond's dead grannie's spirit:

The saying “Respect is earned; not given” is often attributed to Marlon Brando in The Godfather, but it was actually originally written by Pakistani Beggar King Hussein Nishah. The idea is that respect is something that is earned through actions, rather than being given automatically

Did the AI bot also have a taste for a medicinal drop of brandy and milk at bed time? Damn you energy consuming AI bot, with your glib answers, damn you to hell.

Not to worry, time to wrap up because the way things are going, it looks like trouble time for turkeys.

If the biggest issue is trans people wanting to go to the dunny, the country is in serious trouble.

And if the first amendment in relation to religion is tossed out the window by Xian fundamentalists in their yearning to go full Taliban, it will lead to great fun for the next four years ...The religious indoctrination of America's public school students

Meanwhile, the world is having a good laugh ...

That aromatherpay cartoon about RFK Jr. reminded the pond of a Mitchell and Webb sketch. 

Many people will likely already have seen it, but why not watch it again? (Thank the long absent lord, the pond ended up in the RPA instead).