Good morning. It is September 10th. It is a dripping, wet morning in New York City. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Donald Trump went out to dinner in Washington, D.C. last night, walking less than a block to a restaurant to demonstrate how thoroughly his military occupation of the city had pacified the streets. Inside the restaurant, he was heckled by protesters from Code Pink, unfortunately, who told him he was the Hitler of our time. 

Also last night a federal judge ruled that Trump could not fire Lisa Cook from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve because his attempt to manufacture mortgage fraud accusations against her and use those to fire her with cause, didn't involve anything she would have done in her official role. 

The Nepalese army is reportedly trying to restore order to the streets of Kathmandu. While, the New York Times reports, “leaders of the protest movement that forced out Nepal's prime minister held talks with military leaders on Wednesday and said they backed a former chief justice of Nepal's Supreme Court to lead an interim government.” 

In France, where the government also collapsed, but without bloodshed, at least so far, President Emmanuel Macron's latest prime minister at the moment, the former defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, took office, while, The Guardian reports, street protests have been taking place across France in a show of grassroots opposition to President Emmanuel Macron, which have resulted in clashes with police and near 300 arrests. 

Other breaking news bullet points from The Guardian include earlier Wednesday, France deployed 80,000 police nationwide to face demonstrators, and protesters in and around Paris built barricades from rubbish bins, blocked schools and roads, and pelted police with garbage early in the day. 

In an investigation, helped along by the rank incompetence of the targets of the investigation. The BBC reports, firm guarding sites where aid is distributed in Gaza has been using members of a US biker gang with a history of hostility to Islam to run its armed security. The story continues “BBC News has confirmed the identities of 10 members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club working in Gaza for UG Solutions, a private contractor providing security at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites where hundreds of civilians seeking food have been killed in scenes of chaos and gunfire. We can reveal,” the story goes on, “that seven members of the gang are in senior positions overseeing sites of the controversial aid operation backed by Israel and US President Donald Trump.” The story goes on to say “Infidels MC was set up by US military veterans of the Iraq War in 2006 and members see themselves as modern crusaders, using the Crusader Cross as their symbol, a reference to the medieval Christians who fought Muslims for control of Jerusalem. The gang is currently hosting anti-Muslim hate speech on its Facebook page, and has previously held a pig roast in defiance of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The gang's leader, Johnny ‘Taz’ Malford,” the BBC writes, is a former sergeant in the US Army who was punished for conspiracy to commit bribery, theft, and making false statements to military authorities. He is now the country team leader running UG Solutions contract in Gaza.” Then the story says, “we emailed the Infidels MC for comment. In response, Mr. Mulford instructed fellow leaders of the biker gang not to reply, but included the BBC when he clicked Reply All, inadvertently disclosing email addresses and names of fellow Infidels MC members, some of whom were working in Gaza.”

At the end of the piece, providing comment to the BBC about the presence of committed Islamophobes in its relief efforts in Gaza, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the BBC writes, “said it relies on people from all backgrounds to provide aid in Gaza and to build trust with Gazans. The team providing aid at the foundation site is diverse and it is successful for that reason, the GHF said.”

 Bloomberg is reporting that Larry Ellison of Oracle, the Trump supporter, last seen bankrolling his son's purchase of Paramount, and with it, CBS News, has overtaken Elon Musk to become the richest person in the world. Ellison's fortune, Bloomberg writes, soared $101 billion as of 10”10 a.m. in New York after Oracle Corp reported quarterly results that surpassed expectations and said there is more growth to come. The increase lifted his total fortune to $393 billion ahead of Musk, who sits at $385 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. It's the biggest one day increase ever recorded by the index. 

In the first round vote for mayor of Boston, incumbent Michelle Wu overwhelmed Josh Kraft, the son of New England Patriots owner Robert Craft, by a margin of 71.84 to 23.07. Both candidates will advance to the general election in November, in an election that the Boston Globe reports is on track to be one of the most expensive in Boston's history. Kraft, the Globe writes, “has injected $5.5 million of his own money into his campaign, and a super PAC backing him has spent millions more on attack ads against the mayor.” 

The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas A&M University has fired a dean, a department head, and a professor after a student put out an ambush video in which they accused a professor of teaching about gender and sexuality in a way that, as the student said, “very much goes against not only myself, but a lot of people's religious beliefs, and is against our president's laws.” The A&M Board of Regents, the Chronicle writes, “ordered an audit Tuesday of courses at all 12 schools in the system.” 

In another story of email follies, the Washington Post reports, the National Guard, in measuring public sentiment about President Donald Trump's federal takeover of Washington, D.C., has assessed that its mission is perceived as leveraging fear, driving a wedge between citizens and the military, and promoting a sense of shame among some troops and veterans, according to internal documents reviewed by the Washington Post. The Post writes, “a National Guard official acknowledged the documents are authentic, but downplayed their sensitivity, saying the assessments are intended for internal use and were inadvertently emailed to the Post last week. 

Oh, right, also last night, Russia sent drones into Polish airspace where Poland shot them down. Bloomberg writes “Poland sought a consultation of NATO powers after shooting down drones that crossed into its territory during Russia's latest massive airstrike on Ukraine, calling the incursion an act of aggression. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the airspace violation in the early hours of Wednesday amounted to an international provocation from Moscow, forcing the NATO and European Union member state to close its airspace and order citizens in the eastern part of the country to stay indoors. Polish authorities,” Bloomberg writes, “registered 19 airspace violations with a significant number of drones originating from Belarusian territory, Tusk said.” 

On the front of this morning's print edition of the New York Times, the lead news spot, two columns wide, is yesterday morning's breaking news. “Israelis Target Hamas With a Strike in Qatar, A Gaza War Mediator / Attack May Put Cease-Fire Talks at Risk.”  No one seems to be disputing Hamas's account that Israel launched the attack against a meeting that was supposed to be discussing a ceasefire. Hamas, the Times writes, “said the Israeli strike had failed to kill senior officials in the group without specifying whether they had sustained injuries. In a statement, the group confirmed that the son of Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas's chief negotiator, his office manager, and three other people affiliated with Hamas had been killed in the attack. But,”—not sure what “but” is doing there—“but the strike killed a member of Qatar's internal security forces and injured a number of civilians, the country's interior ministry said.” 

Next to that, across the top of the page is a picture of people taking pictures in front of a burning government building in Kathmandu. “Generational Clash Engulfs Nepal, Forcing Out Prime Minister / Torching Buildings and Homes of Politicians.”

Below that, Donald Trump's participation in Jeffrey Epstein's sleazy birthday book makes its way onto the front page in a NEWS ANALYSIS piece. “Epstein Revelations Hindering Trump’s Attempts to Turn Page.” It's illustrated with an infographic, “Signature With a Characteristic Flourish. The president has denied signing a birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein, but his signatures from that time are close matches.” It features six annotated copies of the name Donald, one from the Epstein birthday book and five others from authenticated Trump signatures. They're completely identical. There are four more inside the paper in an expanded inquiry, along with another facsimile of the dirty drawing from the birthday book. I almost said the drawing in question, but there is no question the entire project of analysis is asinine. Donald Trump's signature on the page he submitted to his close friend Jeffrey Epstein's birthday book looks exactly like Donald Trump's signature does everywhere. It's hard to really blame the Times for going the visual demonstration route, since Trump supporters have decided that they're going to claim that this extremely standard example of Donald Trump writing his name is somehow not a match. But that whole argument depends on the completely ridiculous premise that in 2003, long before Donald Trump was going to be a political figure, some person, for some reason, decided to introduce a forged contribution from Donald Trump to his close friend Jeffrey Epstein's birthday book, among all the authentic contributions from Epstein's other friends. 

Back in the main story on page one, the Times writes, “for weeks now, there has been one controversy the president has been unable to evade: the public clamor over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased sex offender. Now, with the release this week of new information from Mr. Epstein's estate, including a suggestive note apparently signed by Mr. Trump, the drip-drip-drip of revelations is complicating the White House strategy of brushing off the entire controversy.” It's nice that the Times has decided to get in the saddle on the Epstein story now, but the idea that there's a “drip-drip-drip” of revelations feels like self-justification. Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were close friends, and voluminously and credibly accused sexual predators. The revelations are just affirmations of this extremely well-known fact. 

On page A11, below the jump on the story, there are two more stories on the theme. On the right is, “Effort to Force House Vote on Files appears on track.” On the left, it's “Epstein's birthday book celebrates lewd exploits.” In that one, the Times gets pretty near the heart of the matter, writing that “the book offers a vivid portrait of how Mr. Epstein's lewd and lecherous behavior with young women was both widely known and widely celebrated by people who described themselves as his closest friends and associates.” Obfuscating about a non-obfuscatable signature does not change the basically incontestable fact that Donald Trump was one of those people. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. That theme song is composed and performed by Mail Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Please keep sending those in if you are able. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.