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'Sandwich Guy' Triumphs Over Ham-Fisted Jeanine Pirro As Jury Acquits Him

Sean C. Dunn, affectionately nicknamed the “Sandwich Guy” after lobbing his Subway footlong at a Border Patrol officer, will not spend time behind bars after a jury acquitted the Air Force veteran on Thursday of misdemeanor assault charges.

If there is anyone who will be hanging their head and calling this outcome baloney, it’s U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro. The perpetually angry former Fox News host has been carrying out a failed vendetta against protesters like Dunn who have stood up to President Donald Trump’s bogus federal takeover of the nation’s capital.

After people took to the streets in August to protest Trump’s decision to send ICE, Border Patrol, and the National Guard to police the so-called crime-ridden city, Pirro vowed to pursue maximum sentences against those arrested.

She’s been having a hard go at doing exactly what she was hired to do, and Dunn’s case is another example of that.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the meaty moments that emerged from the trial.

“The sandwich kind of exploded all over my uniform,” Border Patrol Officer Gregory Lairmore testified on Tuesday. “It smelled of onions and mustard.”

During the trial, prosecutors tried to convince the jury that Dunn’s dinner delivery to Lairmore’s bulletproof-vest-clad chest was a violent attack.

But the defense didn’t buy the sob story, pointing out the sandwich-themed memorabilia Lairmore displayed in his office following the incident.

“If that vest ... is going to keep you safe from military rifle fire, it is certainly going to keep you safe from a sandwich,” attorney Sabrina Shroff said.

And of course, despite the man who got pelted by some pastrami finding humor in it all, Dunn—who worked as a paralegal with the Office of International Affairs in the Justice Department’s criminal division—was fired from his job.

While Dunn’s days at the DOJ under this administration might be toast, his action became a symbol for the resistance against Trump’s invasion of blue cities.

From sandwich-lobbing to the Portland frog, these jokesters are bringing humorous attention to some serious issues in the U.S.

And while we can laugh, the meat of the matter is that people are enraged and concerned about the Trump administration’s heinous treatment of immigrants, their disappearances, and the use of military and masked federal forces against the people protesting these travesties.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Trump Commands Smithsonian To Stop Showing 'How Bad Slavery Was'

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump confirmed that he is going to force changes at the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., including removing exhibits that talk about the ills of slavery.

Trump made the comment in a Truth Social post, in which he said that changes to the museums are part of his war on "woke”—a term conservatives can’t even define but usually refers to their anger at anything that promotes equal rights for people of color, women, and the LGBTQ+ community.

"The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of 'WOKE.' The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen, and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made," Trump wrote. "This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the 'HOTTEST' Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums."

Of course, slavery was objectively bad, and remains a stain in U.S. history. Millions of African Americans were enslaved in cruel conditions, finding themselves raped and beaten at the hands of the white slave owners who reaped the economic benefits of their indentured servants.

Indeed, the impact of slavery still hurts Black people in the U.S. today—with Black communities facing economic and educational inequities that trace back to slavery and Jim Crow segregation.

What's more, other parts of Trump's idiotic Truth Social post are also false, as Smithsonian museums absolutely do feature success stories. Not to mention, Trump's claim that the museums do not contain anything about the future is also absurd, as history museums by definition focus on history, which by definition is in the past.

Ultimately, Trump’s vow to be the arbiter of what is included in Smithsonian museums is the latest way Trump is trying to rewrite history—and make the entire country view America through his racist and egomaniacal lens.

Since his first term in office, Trump has tried to whitewash the United States’ history, including when in 2020 he announced that he was creating the 1776 Commission in order to make sure kids were not being taught that the United States is “an irredeemably and systemically racist country.” The 1776 Commission ended up releasing a report in January 2021, right before Trump was booted from office, that the American Historical Association said amounted to “a screed against a half-century of historical scholarship.”

After taking office again in 2025, Trump quickly went to work to whitewash history, including stripping mentions of diversity and equity from government websites, which led to irrational things like the removal of photos of the Enola Gay B-29 bomber because it contained the word “gay.” A Defense Department tribute to Jackie Robinson, an Army lieutenant who became the first Black man to play Major League Baseball, was also removed. Additionally, articles about the Navajo Code Talkers, who in World War II used their native language to create a code that the Nazis could not understand that helped the Allied forces communicate battle strategy, were removed from the Defense website.

Trump also signed an executive order that deemed books that tell the story of slavery to be filled with “corrosive ideology,” and ordered them removed from the Smithsonian Institution and the national park system. And the Smithsonian changed an exhibit on presidential impeachment to make Trump's two impeachments look less damning.

Meanwhile, Trump is also attacking universities, threatening to pull funding if they do not bend to his will on everything from hiring decisions to admissions policies.

Trump during his first run for office declared that he “loves the poorly educated.” Now, he’s trying to ensure everyone in the U.S. is poorly educated, taught only his false and whitewashed view of history.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump Ignores Nashville Blast, Urging Supporters To Rally In D.C. On January 6

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

President Donald Trump has so far ignored the massive bombing in Nashville, Tennessee that damaged 41 buildings. Instead, he is asking his Twitter followers to rally in Washington D.C. on January 6 to support his overturning an election that he lost over 46 days ago.

"The "Justice" Department and the FBI have done nothing about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud, the biggest SCAM in our nation's history, despite overwhelming evidence," Trump wrote in a Saturday morning tweet. "They should be ashamed. History will remember. Never give up. See everyone in D.C. on January 6th."January 6 is the day Congress meets to approve the Electoral College's vote. Usually, it's a mere formality before Inauguration Day, but because Trump has remained in complete denial about his loss — including the over 50 "election fraud" court cases he's lost — he has encouraged Congressional Republicans to vote against approving the election results.

The Republican opposition will accomplish very little seeing as majorities in both chambers of Congress would have to vote against the Electoral College results in order to challenge it, something that won't happen in the Democrat-led House. On the contrary, the vote will put Republicans in the awkward position of having to state on the record whether or not they support Trump's baseless attempt to steal the election.

If they don't vote in favor of Trump's lies, Republicans could make themselves targets of supporters eager to end their political careers or target them for violent threats. If they do vote in favor of Trump's lies, they mark themselves as supporting an unprecedented attempt to overturn democracy in the United States.Some Twitter users suspect that Trump may be trying to foment violence in the nation's capital over the election.

In a Saturday morning tweet, George Conway, Republican husband of former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, wrote, "It's pretty clear now that @realDonaldTrump's next desperate play is to encourage disruption, if not violence, in Washington on January 6, the day electoral votes are counted before a joint session of Congress."

In a separate Saturday morning tweet, Trump wrote, "A young military man working in Afghanistan told me that elections in Afghanistan are far more secure and much better run than the USA's 2020 Election. Ours, with its millions and millions of corrupt Mail-In Ballots, was the election of a third world country. Fake President!"Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Yaroslav Trofimov commented on the tweet, stating, "Afghanistan's last two presidential elections were so fraud-ridden that the loser and the winner ended up sharing power to avoid civil war…"

Authorities expect the Nashville bombing to be a potential act of terrorism, one that is apparently unimportant to the president.

A Calvin Coolidge Christmas In Washington

Our little town of Washington is missing Christmas cheer this year. The Capitol dome and the Mall green are under repair, but that’s not it.

Many are melancholic about Donald J. Trump’s un-American idea to ban Muslims from entering the country. Especially, in the Joy and Peace season of Lights, when we’re hurting from the Paris and San Bernardino tragedies.

When a sober President Obama addressed the nation in the wake of the attacks, did he meet the moment?

I was looking for a blast at the National Rifle Association or Congress for blocking legislation that would halt gun sales to the FBI’s terrorist no-fly watch list. Frankly, the president lacked spirit. Nor did he bring comfort, as merry gentleman Franklin D. Roosevelt did in his Fireside Chats.

The White House is decked out for Christmas, but you have to laugh at the 2015 tree ornament. It honors Calvin Coolidge, a flinty Vermonter famous for saying nothing at all. It’s hard to get excited about Coolidge. Come on.

By contrast, Barack Obama was once the young president with the golden voice. Now he seems like King David shorn of his harp and songs he composed to inspire his people. While I remain in his camp, sweet reason is not going to lull the NRA or ISIS.

Some Republicans rebuked their 2016 presidential frontrunner, saying they are shocked, shocked at Trump’s hate talk.

On the Hill, one pithy voice struck me. The new House Speaker, Paul Ryan (R-WI) said Trump’s religion ban “is not what this party stands for, and more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.”

Well-said by the man from Wisconsin.

Belatedly, there’s an awakening among us that Trump plays with perfect pitch to an anxious, angry constituency that feels left out of the political equation. They are the angry folks — white men — who listen to Rush rave on talk radio by day and watch “Fox News” by night. They may be working class or wealthy. They are not locked out of political ownership, given a Republican congress. But they feel aggrieved against Obama. And Hillary Clinton makes them see red.

Trump speaks directly to their discontent. The economy in wartime, with the Wall Street crisis, has not been kind since. It has been a bleak recovery, as most millennials know in their bones. Washington’s wise men and women say he can’t win, but I’m not so sure. He’s textbook demagogue.

Up the road, things stay tough in Baltimore, where April race riots over Freddie Gray’s hard death in police custody won’t soon be forgot on the streets. One police officer is now on trial; there will be more. “Ain’t nothing changed out here,” was how the story went in The Washington Post.

The Washington Post is leaving its own building. Granted, the city block look was getting old, but great and good journalism happened within those walls. The “Nixon Resigns” headline as the culmination to the Watergate burglary is the paper’s pride and joy. Bob Woodward, 72, had a hearty laugh with his old partner, Carl Bernstein, at the fare-thee-well.

David Maraniss, the Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author, told me:

“When I arrived there in 1977, it had the smell of ink and paste pots and cigarettes and we wrote on typewriters with carbon paper between the sheets and signed 30 at the end of our stories and it was all noise and controlled chaos and the operators Mary and Joyce would field and place calls for you and the floor would start shaking when the presses started running a few floors below. It was a newspaper, and there was such a visceral deeply enjoyable feeling to it all.

“That all disappeared long before the building move. The journalism is in many ways the same, but everything else has changed, some for the better, some for the worse. It was time for the move.”

Bittersweet. I turned into Martin’s Tavern on N Street in Georgetown. The rumble seat, perfect for reading the newspaper, was open and so I sat where the senator, John F. Kennedy, often came for Sunday breakfast. He proposed to the ravishing Jacqueline Bouvier in a nearby booth.

Martin’s opened in 1933 and still serves meatloaf. How sweet it is, with festive holiday lights and all, when time stays a while.

Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama waves during the National Christmas Tree Lighting and Pageant of Peace ceremony on the Ellipse near the White House in Washington December 3, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

'Sandwich Guy' Triumphs Over Ham-Fisted Jeanine Pirro As Jury Acquits Him

Trump Ignores Nashville Blast, Urging Supporters To Rally In D.C. On January 6

A Calvin Coolidge Christmas In Washington

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