March For Decency

Display evoking separated children in Dayton, Ohio,
one of Satruday's protests held in 700 different cities

I definitely enjoy my day job, but if there are measurable downsides to working in the real estate industry (aside from obnoxious residents), having to work alternate weekends is certainly among them.

Back on January 21st, 2017, I was proud to be amongst the hundreds of thousands of people around the world to join the Women's March in opposition to the inauguration of Donald Trump.

Had I not had to work this past weekend, I certainly would have been one of the thousands of people who took to the streets on Saturday to express non-violent opposition to the Trump administration's needlessly cruel immigration policies.


Instead, I kicked in a few bucks to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to support their ongoing, multi-pronged efforts to support not just the rights of undocumented immigrants, but the legal rights of all Americans as well.

I felt like it was important to do something besides gripe about Trump's rampant idiocy and the ACLU has filed suit inn federal court to put a halt to the family separations - last Thursday ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt told New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, "The government's efforts are ridiculous. We can't just let the government go along the way they've been going, where kids can spend eight months separated."

Support for organizations like the ACLU, CASA in Action and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center is more critical than ever.

Especially considering that unaccompanied migrant children forcefully separated from their parents as young as three-years-old have been forced to appear in court to defend themselves.

These kinds of widely-condemned policies result from the Trump administration directing the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and the Department of Justice under Attorney General Jeff Sessions to use the federal government as a tool to leverage the right-wing extremist ideology that now defines the Republican Party.

Honestly, what kind of administration directs authorities to have three-year-olds defend themselves in a court of law? If you're a parent, picture your three-year-old child appearing in court alone.

American children got a lesson in Democracy as
they marched for immigrants rights on Saturday

As NBC News reported on Thursday, Lindsay Toczylowski, the executive director of the Immigrant Defender's Law Center in Los Angeles observed,

"We were representing a three-year-old in court recently who had been separated from the parents. And the child -in the middle of the hearing- started climbing up on the table."

That's flat out unacceptable by the standards of any modern civilized society, period.


The absurdity of that kind of nightmarish scenario taking place in 21st century America is just one of the reasons that hundreds of thousands of people turned out in more than 700 different cities across the U.S. and around the world on Saturday.

Last Thursday, an estimated 633 women were arrested after they staged a non-violent sit-in inside the lobby of the U.S. Senate's Hart Office Building in Washington, D.C. to demand that Congress enact legislation to end the Trump administration's policy of separating families locking up those seeking asylum - which is legal under U.S. law by the way.

The women who participated in the D.C. sit-in last Thursday donned themselves in foil blankets to evoke the haunting images of unaccompanied migrant children forcefully separated from their parents by the Trump administration huddled in foil blankets in warehouses and other hastily-constructed migrant detention facilities.

Around midday on the same day, nearby a group of kids wrapped in foil blankets also held their own demonstration inside the Capitol Building as they chanted "Shame!" while onlookers, supporters and members of the press looked on and captured the images on social media.

Speaking of shame, considering the intentional cruelty of the draconian immigration policies enacted at Herr Trump's behest, he doesn't seem to have whole lot of it - and based on her tacky fashion choice last week, neither does his wife.

Melania Trump sports her "troll jacket" last week

Perhaps Melania Trump should consider covering her face in shame with one of those foil blankets in the wake of her odd decision to wear that offensive, tasteless green Zara jacket when she made her second photo-op visit to a Texas border detention facility last week.

With blistering Texas temperatures hovering in the 90's, Melania's decision to accessorize with a $39 olive green Zara coat with the words "I DON'T REALLY CARE. DO U?  emblazoned on the back called into question her taste, fashions sense and ethics.

In an op-ed posted on the dependably-conservative Forbes.com on Sunday, Fruzsina Eordogh called Melania's unseasonable outerwear a "troll jacket" and suggested that:

"The jacket sabotaged not just any peace and goodwill that could have been fostered by positive headlines of the government appearing somewhat competent, it also severely damaged Melania's brand. CNN talking heads called it a "PR disaster.""

Frankly I'm not loosing sleep over the damage to Melania's "brand", if she was so concerned about that she shouldn't have married a lying, twice-married serial philanderer who slept with porn star Stormy Daniels while Melania was pregnant with Trump's child Baron.

I'm not buying Donald Trump's rambling suggestion that his wife's jacket was not meant as a not-so-subtle message to the right-wing supporters who salivate over his vilification of immigrants to the United States.

Zara, the maker of Melania's "troll jacket" also made
this tasteful Holocaust prisoner shirt-thing - WTF?

From calling Mexican people "rapists", "murderers" and "drug dealers"on the first day of his presidential campaign, to his suggestion that there were some "very fine people" amongst the neo-Nazi's who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump has gone out of his way to toss out klutzy wink-wink-nod-nods to the white supremacists and extremists that he openly cultivates and panders to.

As DailyKos reported last week, Zara, the company that makes the $39 jacket Melania wore to a humanitarian crisis in Texas last week, aren't exactly strangers to controversial fashion designs.

As a Twitter user named Molly helpfully pointed out last Thursday, Zara has also come under fire for selling a shirt that looks alarmingly similar to the infamous striped prison garb worn by Jewish prisoners of Nazi concentration camps during WWII (pictured above).

They also sold a shirt that says "White Is The New Black" - really.

Anyway, kudos to the hundreds of thousands in more than 700 different cities and towns who stood up against Trump's immigration policies on Saturday.

Those mass protests last week were about more than just the way the Trump administration treats people who immigrate to this country.

It wasn't just a statement on policy, it was also a march for decency, and what the vast majority of Americans (and people around the world) think this country really stands for.

FEMA & The Elusive Sanctity of Home

Two of the thousands of Puerto Ricans displaced by
Hurricane Maria temporarily living in U.S. motels

As I was getting ready to go to work early Tuesday morning, I heard a news segment on WNYC public radio about the approaching deadline for the approximately 2,300 Puerto Rican families displaced by Hurricane Maria last fall.

If Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officials in Washington don't extend an emergency aid program known as the Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA) program in the next two days, thousands of hurricane refugees could face eviction this Saturday June 30th.

As a real estate professional who works in the industry, there's nothing more heart-breaking to witness, or be a part of than an eviction - even if a resident has done something to deserve it.  

In the same way that separating immigrant children from their parents and incarcerating them is a violation of the very principles the United States was founded upon, the idea that an agency of the federal government could be responsible for a mass eviction of U.S. citizens who fled an island nation ravaged by a hurricane is simply outrageous.

And just as outrageous as the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court upholding Trump's overtly racist and discriminatory travel ban earlier yesterday in a closely-watched 5-4 decision.

Even as thousands of Americans prepare to attend mass protests against the Trump administration's heartless immigration policies this Saturday June 30th in Washington, New York and other cities, it could be a really shitty weekend for many of the 2,300 displaced Puerto Rican families currently depending on vouchers from FEMA's TSA program to live in motels around the U.S.

Given Trump's full descent down into a dark, racist, unhinged obsession with scapegoating and vilifying non-white immigrants in a desperate effort to rally the conservative supporters who applaud his vile bigotry and concocted rage, it's not surprising that mainstream media coverage of his repugnant tweets, repeated lies and conflicting statements on immigration is overshadowing so many other important news stories.

Like the ongoing crisis in Puerto Rico and the looming expiration of FEMA's TSA voucher program.

Maria Baez-Claudio and her 5-YO grandson who
has cerebral palsy wait for his school bus to arrive

But not all mainstream media content producers have moved on from reporting on the lasting effects of Hurricane Maria.

For example, "The Disaster Is Not Over", an 8-minute digital documentary produced by NBC News' NBC Latino, looks at the story of Maria Baez-Claudio (pictured left).

She's a healthcare professional from Puerto Rico displaced by Hurricane Maria who currently lives in a Super 8 Motel in Kissimmee, Florida with the help of a TSA emergency rental subsidy voucher provided by FEMA.


She's a the sole caregiver of her 5-year-old grandson Christian Dariel, a wheel-chair-bound special needs child with cerebral palsy who needs constant supervision to eat, and dress - he must wear diapers because he is unable to use the toilet on his own.

As the short NBC documentary shows, Baez-Claudio applied to FEMA for an extension on the emergency rental subsidy she receives, but her application was denied because FEMA officials now claim that Puerto Rico is now "livable".

But as CBS News correspondent David Begnaud reported back on June 1st, on the first official day of the 2018 hurricane season, a staggering 11,000 customers of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority who lost power last fall after Hurricane Maria hit, are still without electricity.

And many of the homes that are still partially standing, particularly those in hard-hit rural areas, still haven't been repaired and have roofs and walls covered by blue plastic tarp at a time when Puerto Rico's hot, muggy season stretches from May to October - temperatures in July are expected to average in the upper 80's and low 90's.

Activists in Florida are currently urging the passage of some kind of humanitarian intervention by Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott and the Republican-majority Florida legislature - but that's the same state legislature that has diverted $1.3 billion over the past decade from state funds earmarked for affordable housing to the general fund to spend on other programs.

Tamara Rivera-Santiago & Marinelys Cartagena in front
of the Lancaster, PA motel where they've been living

Barring action in the next few days, like the 610 other displaced Puerto Rican families currently being housed in motels around the state of Florida, Maria Baez-Claudio and her grandson will be forced to vacate the Super 8 motel where they currently live by Saturday June 30th.

With no clear idea of where she and her grandson will go, or how they will live.

Try and imagine having that on your mind as you look across a motel room at your 5-year-old grandson.

An innocent child afflicted with cerebral palsy.

That same haunting uncertainty is also being faced by hurricane-displaced Puerto Ricans in 30 other states including Lancaster, Pennsylvania where Tamara Rivera-Santiago and her three children, and Marinelys Cartagena (pictured above) and her four children have been staying in the Budget Host Inn just outside Lancaster with the aid of temporary emergency vouchers provided by FEMA's TSA program.

As reporter Tim Stuhldreher reported for Lancaster Online back in April, both women fled their respective towns in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria last fall due to lack of electricity and long lines for  basics like food, fresh water and gasoline. 

According to Stuhldreher's article, Rivera-Santiago had a job in Puerto Rico working at a bakery, but the business closed when it could no longer get supplies from the U.S. mainland to operate - so she had to flee the island with her children.

While Stuhldreher reports that various local charities in the Lancaster area have organized to try and assist some of the hundreds of Puerto Ricans who arrived in the local area after Hurricane Maria (Lancaster already had a fairly large Puerto Rican population before the storm), at least seven families temporarily being housed in the Budget Host Inn with FEMA assistance could be forced to leave this Saturday.

Embattled (and reviled) DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen

While Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson is one of many politicians appealing to FEMA to grant another extension of the TSA housing program, the prospect of help from a federal agency in the Trump era isn't good.

Remember, FEMA is under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security which is currently headed by Kirstjen Nielsen - a heartless, right-wing Trump sycophant whose become the face of Trump's vile anti-immigrant bigotry.

Nielsen spent much of the past two weeks defending a widely-reviled border policy that criminalized people seeking asylum in the U.S. and separated their children from them.

Nielsen was famously confronted by protesters who booed and shouted "Shame!" at her at a DC-area Mexican restaurant last week, and according to Yahoo News, last Friday morning, a large group of protesters stood outside her townhouse in Virginia and played audio recordings of unaccompanied immigrant children crying for their parents and chanted "How do you sleep at night?" 

So even though Puerto Ricans are in fact American citizens, in the narrow lens of a Trump administration rooted in racism, xenophobia and bigotry, they are non-white people - the likelihood of DHS extending FEMA's TSA housing voucher program is slim.

In addition to insisting that Puerto Rico is now "livable", FEMA (under Nielsen and Trump) is instead contacting some of the 2,300 displaced Puerto Ricans currently housed in motels around the U.S. and offering them one-way plane tickets back to the hurricane-ravaged island as hurricane season gets underway.

NJ Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy visits a shelter
 in San Juan, Puerto Rico back in December

Given the grim reality that that's how the Trump administration is treating U.S. citizens, the burden is falling to individual states to take action.

Here in New Jersey, back in February, two months after visiting the island of Puerto Rico with other state politicians to inspect the devastating hurricane damage, newly-elected Democratic Governor Phil Murphy signed an executive order creating an 18-member, three-month commission tasked with finding ways to help the 30,000-plus displaced Puerto Ricans currently living in the Garden State.


Back in March, I listened to a segment on NPR's The Takeaway documenting the many difficulties faced by some of the many Puerto Rican Americans still living in motels around the country six months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island - where hundreds of small business that residents depend on are still closed on an island that was already facing an economic crisis.

I heard some of those stories first-hand from displaced Puerto Ricans in months following Hurricane Maria.

One of the most difficult aspects of my day job managing the leasing for a residential apartment community in Hamilton, New Jersey is having to be the person responsible for delivering bad news to anxious people in transition desperate to get an apartment.

It's especially hard when you have good people whose applications are denied due to circumstances that they had nothing to do with; like a messy divorce that torpedoed someone's credit because of an ex-spouse's poor financial decisions.

Or an applicant who works two jobs and has solid income who's application is denied because they were injured on the job and the reduced pay from workman's compensation caused them to be late on their rent four times in a 12-month period before they got back on their feet again.

The Quinones family in their Queens, NY hotel room

But it's even harder when potential applicants can't meet the screening criteria because a natural disaster upended their life and finances.

And the difficulties and stress of the transition made it extremely difficult to find work, and arrange for child care while adjusting to living in a new city or town.

As reporter Alexandra Starr reported in a segment for WNYC back in January, the plight of Christopher and Charline Quinones (pictured left) is a perfect example.

As Starr reported, they're the parents of two young girls and they managed to find temporary shelter in a Extended Stay America hotel in Queens not far from LaGuardia Airport with the help of a FEMA TSA housing voucher.

Both parents wake early for an almost 2-hour commute into Manhattan where they search for work - they're lucky enough that grandmother Rosa can stay "home" and watch the girls during the day.

But the stress of trying to find a job, living in cramped quarters with five people and being far from their relatives who are still back in Puerto Rico weighs heavily on the family - multiply their story by thousands and you get a basic sense of the ongoing humanitarian and housing crisis that's happening to American citizens right.

Back in late November and December of 2017, more than a few people from Puerto Rico who'd been forced to flee the devastation of Hurricane Maria called or emailed my office desperately looking for affordable housing.

Unfortunately, the income and residency requirements that the privately-owned real estate management company I work for uses to screen applicants made it impossible for the displaced Puerto Ricans I spoke or emailed with to get approved for the 2-bedroom apartments they were usually seeking.

Displaced Puerto Ricans in a temporary shelter in
Orlando, Florida days after Hurricane Maria

Decent, affordable 2-bedroom apartments are hard enough to find in the Princeton, Lawrenceville, Hamilton area as it is, and with rents as high as they are these days, it was almost impossible for most displaced Puerto Ricans to find housing in this area.

That's not the case for all, a number of displaced people from Puerto Rico already had family ties or friends living in the U.S. - some were lucky enough to able to temporarily shack up with loved ones, find work and save enough money to get their own place.

But for many displaced people, meeting the application screening criteria, including income and credit checks, plus coming up with the application fees, first month's rent and security deposit (some properties also want last month's rent up front too), just made finding a decent place too steep a hill to climb - even when they had already managed to find work here.

It's not like anyone called me in tears or anything, but I could hear the tension in the voices of Puerto Ricans who called me; they called me from New York, Florida, New Jersey and I even got some calls from as far north as Boston and Connecticut.

To a degree, these were some of the lucky ones, people who'd been able to get flights off the island to reach U.S. cities like Miami, Atlanta and New York relatively soon after Maria totally devastated Puerto Rico - many were able to find temporary shelter with relatives who already lived here.

By the time most reached my office they were coming to grips with the reality that most apartment applicants need to show proof of monthly income to get an application approved.

Trump throws paper towels with thousands of
Puerto Ricans without power and many missing

And these were folks who'd had to flee their homes, loved ones, communities and jobs in a country that was already spiraling into an economic crisis.

It's not easy telling desperate Americans devastated by a natural disaster doing everything possible to get back on their feet that they can't qualify for an apartment.

The Trump administration's handling of aid to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria was epic fail.

And questionable at best (who can forget Trump throwing paper towels to displaced residents seeking federal assistance?), so in my view FEMA at least bears a moral and ethical responsibility to ensure that Americans displaced by that natural disaster have decent housing while they find a way to get back on their feet.

FEMA provided housing subsidies to victims of other U.S. hurricanes like Katrina for two or even more years - it's only nine months since Hurricane Maria and the federal agency under Kirstjen Nielsen and Trump are already trying to yank housing vouchers out from under the feet of those who still need them.

A decision that's clearly linked with the heartless ethnic and racial bias that's defined the Trump administration's approach to, well, pretty much everything.

FEMA has two days left to grant an extension of the TSA program.

But with the White House currently obsessed with deporting non-white people (even American citizens like Puerto Ricans), this Saturday when the TSA deadline expires, the sanctity of finding a home even could become even more elusive than it already is for those still in need of a helping hand.

Marco Munoz & Republican's Ignoble Cause

39-YO Honduran father Marco Antonio
Munoz committed suicide on May 12th 

For many Americans, it's been jaw-dropping to listen to Republican Attorney General Jeff Sessions try and use border security to justify the Trump administration's heartless decision to order U.S. Border Patrol agents to separate children from their parents when undocumented families cross into the United States.

Few cases illustrate the intentional cruelty of that policy more than Marco Antonio Munoz, whose death in a Texas jail cell has sparked outrage.

As initially reported by the Washington Post, after Munoz crossed into the U.S. with his wife and three-year-old son at the border in Granejo, Texas on May 12th, he turned himself into Border Patrol agents and requested asylum for his family.

After the three family members were taken into custody and brought to a processing center in McAllen, TX, about nine miles away, Border Patrol agents informed them that they would be separated, and Munoz, understandably upset and likely exhausted after traveling hundreds of miles north from Honduras, became enraged.

Unable to calm him down, agents took him to the Starr County, TX jail where he was eventually found dead in a pool of his own blood on the floor of a padded cell with some cloth wrapped around his neck on the morning of May 13th.

That horrifying scene (Border Patrol agents reportedly had to physically pry Munoz's three-year-old son from his arms) seems totally devoid of compassion, more like a chapter from a dark dystopian sci-fi novel than a snapshot of 21st century America.

Munoz's death is so far removed from the words inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

Even Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked
Jeff Sessions to stop separating migrant families 

Scores of Democratic Senators and members of Congress (including some Republicans) called on the White House to halt the draconian  "zero tolerance" immigration policy announced by Sessions in early May.

In response, Trump had the gall to blame Democrats for a policy that he himself initiated in order to fire up the loyal right-wing base of support that feeds off his xenophobia and bigotry.

But not all conservatives are comfortable seeing children ripped from the arms of parents seeking asylum in the U.S. - or the effect it's having on the image of the Republican Party.

Last week Jeff Sessions sat down for an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Knowing how much damage Trump's policy is doing to undocumented immigrant families as well as the image of the Republican Party just five months before the November midterm elections, Hewitt pleaded with the notoriously anti-immigrant attorney general to at least stop separating children from their families. 

Sessions' response was to self-righteously insist that he's bound by the law - even though there is no existing law mandating that Border Patrol agents separate families who enter the country illegally.

As if separating children from their parents wasn't already making him seem like some kind of soulless monster who crawled out of a primordial ooze, earlier today Sessions insisted that fleeing deadly gang violence or domestic abuse from a spouse or family member in another country is not grounds for an asylum claim in the United States.

DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen & Sen. Kamala Harris

Back on May 15th, the embattled Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen sat before a Senate Committee and got into a heated exchange about the Trump administration's demand that the children of undocumented immigrants be separated from their parents.

As the Denver Post and other news outlets reported, Nielsen got an earful from the no-nonsense California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris.

The former California Attorney General, whose reputation for unrelenting questions and demanding answers in Senate Committee hearings has riled more than one Republican on Capitol Hill, grilled the Trump cabinet member on the reasoning behind ripping parents from their children.

"What we'll be doing is prosecuting parents who've broken the law, just as we do every day in the United States of America." Nielsen insisted.

As if she's proud of that.

As if Border Patrol agents literally pulling Marco Antonio Munoz's terrified three-year-old son from his arms in an immigration processing center in McAllen, Texas is making the country safer.

As if immigration authorities currently housing some 11,500 undocumented immigrant children away from parents who came here to seek asylum is a noble cause that must be defended.

When in fact, she and Sessions (at Trump's behest) are in effect, twisting U.S. immigration policy to churn out death, injury, terror and heartless family separation to justify the xenophobic hysteria of a man who didn't even know the words to God Bless America at a fake "Eagles fans rally" on the White House lawn last week that no actual Eagles fans attended.

That's the guy claiming that ripping children from their parents arms in the name of  border security is a noble cause as he blunders his way through the G-7 summit in Canada by insulting our allies and embarrassing Americans with his ignorance of diplomacy and foreign affairs.

The November midterm elections can't come soon enough, and as Mr. Munoz's death demonstrates, lives are literally at stake.

Gender Hypocrisy & Stormy Weather For Trump

Senator Corey Booker & DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen 

New Jersey Democratic Senator Corey Booker's intense grilling of Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen during her appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday laid bare the lingering global resentment over Trump's recent dismissal of Haiti, Africa and El Salvador as "shithole countries" during a White House meeting last week. 

Perhaps more interesting was the subsequent indignant Conservative outrage over the optics of a black U.S. Senator calling out a white, blond-haired Trump sycophant on live TV.

Now it's probably fair to say that Tuesday's heated exchange was a result of both Booker and Nielsen feeling some frustration after a long and pretty heated hearing on Capitol Hill.

Democrats pressed her repeatedly to clarify whether or not she'd heard Trump use the words "shithole countries", and in her defense, Nielsen isn't some bubble-headed debutante who fell off a zucchini truck like Sarah Palin.

She earned her bachelor's degree from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and her law degree from the University of Virginia.

She was a special assistant in the White House under George W. Bush, and held positions related to legislative policy, cyber security and homeland security at the Transportation Security Administration, George Washington University and the World Economic Forum - and served as former general John Kelly's chief of staff when he was DHS secretary.

Trump flanked by Republican Senator Tom Cotton (left)
and Senator David Perdue (right) August 2, 2017

So at that testy Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on Tuesday, Nielsen was smart enough to understand that Democrats were trying to trap her into confirming the deplorable language Trump used, and thereby cast Republican Senators David Perdue of Georgia and Tim Cotton of Arkansas as liars.

Both Senators were at the White House meeting last week and both claimed they didn't recall hearing Trump say those words.

I'm sure Cotton and Perdue's joint memory-lapse had nothing to do with Trump having invited both xenophobes to the Roosevelt Room of the White House (pictured above) last August to lavish praise upon them for their proposed bill to curb legal immigration to the U.S. by making selected work skills a priority for new immigrants and drastically reducing the numbers of immigrants allowed into the country each year. 

Nielsen was smart enough to do her best to avoid taking the heat for something Trump said, but she's also an experienced and loyal Washington player who wouldn't do anything to undermine her former boss at DHS John Kelly - who currently serves as Trump's White House chief of staff.

So she she did the "Washington Two Step" and became the third Republican attendee to lie about Trump using vulgar, racially-charged language to describe nations where the majority population are people of color by claiming she couldn't recall Trump using his now-famous phrase.

Booker, who was likely a little frustrated that Nielsen didn't take the bait, took the cue to lay into her, but he wasn't really laying into her per se - he was just doing the "Washington Two Step" as well by using her to publicly lay into Trump.

MAGA? Donald Trump with porn star Stormy Daniels

While he was only voicing the anger felt by people around the world over a sitting U.S. president openly allowing his own internalized bigotry to affect government policy towards foreign nations, Republicans quickly tried to turn Booker into the villain.

Conservative media outlets like Fox News criticized Booker for "mansplaining" to Nielsen.

National Review's David French haughtily proclaimed "Corey Booker's Rant Exposed the Left's Gender Hypocrisy". 

Which is actually kind of funny considering that porn star Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as "Stormy Daniels", is now on record as saying that she had an on-again, off-again affair with Trump over the course of several years - including when his current wife Melania Trump was pregnant with their son Barron and Trump was publicly fat-shaming her.

Last Friday the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's lawyer David Cohen negotiated a $130,000 payout to Daniels just one month before the 2016 presidential election to buy her silence on her ongoing affair with the man conservative Christian evangelicals overwhelmingly supported for president last fall.

Remember Cohen was arranging the payout agreement with the increasingly-famous porn star as Trump raged incoherently about Hillary Clinton's ethical failings and emails - Clifford went public because (drum roll please...) Trump never paid her the money.

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens enjoying some gun porn

Speaking of concocted conservative outrage over "gender hypocrisy", Trump isn't the only high-profile married Republican to get caught trying to silence a woman to prevent her from talking publicly about a consensual affair.

Remember current Missouri Republican Governor and ex-Navy SEAL Eric Greitens, the guy who ran on a populist anti-establishment platform?

The Rhodes Scholar, humanitarian, author and former Democrat?

He's now frantically trying to apologize to state Republican legislators and rainmakers after it was revealed that he tied up his former mistress and took compromising photographs of her naked then threatened to use them to blackmail her in the event she told anyone of their affair.

Talk about "mansplaining".

As Allison McCann reported for Vice earlier today, the air is leaking out of Greitens' once-promising career balloon fast as Missouri voters were already pissed over his rolling back the minimum wage from $10 to $7.70 an hour, making it harder for women to access abortion services and blocking people's ability to file discrimination lawsuits

I mean seriously, what kind of delusional, right-wing narcissistic ape rolls back the minimum wage, curbs women's health care choice and makes it easier for companies to discriminate against workers then ties up a woman to blackmail her?

The kind of guy other Republican members of his own state legislature are now trying to force to resign from office just as it's looking like a massive blue wave is about to wash over the land in the upcoming November mid-term elections.

No wonder Conservative media outlets like Fox News and National Review are frantically trying to gin up phony overblown outrage over a sitting U.S. Democratic Senator asking some tough questions of a Department of Homeland Security Secretary who admits she's never actually met or spoken with a DACA recipient even though she's using her office to try and deport them.

Trump's got some balls complaining about "shithole" countries when Republican politicians seem to be doing everything possible to turn American into one.