Westscape: The West Xtra Bulletin Board

In a recent interview with Time magazine, Donald Trump walked back his campaign promise to lower grocery prices. "Look, they got them up. I'd like to bring them down. It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard," Trump told Time, admitting to what many of us knew months ago. On Thursday, Trump offered up a perplexing story about “an old woman” buying three apples at a grocery store and taking “one of the apples back to the refrigerator” because the price was too high.

Fox News's Sean Hannity was joined by Rachel Campos-Duffy and Jason fucking Chaffetz to address the central issues that Americans are facing this holiday season: Gov. Tim Walz's Christmas tree. And they threw in some tampon jokes, too. It bothers conservatives that Walz signed a bill requiring public schools to provide menstrual products — including pads and tampons — to students in 4th through 12th grade.

We’ve long known Republican Sen. Doug Mastriano is unfit for any public office. His December 16th tweet purporting to reveal some cover up over a “crashed drone” taken to a secret location for investigation is just the latest evidence. In reality, it’s a meme photo of a Star Wars prop. It is inconceivable that the federal government has no answers nor has taken any action to get to the bottom of the unidentified drones.

Fox and Friends host Ainsley Earhardt was so enthusiastic and effervescent about her love of RFK Junior that I broke up a short video clip into two articles. The first short segment out was about how Ainsley believed the anti-VAX crackpot cures autism and cancer in children. That in itself would put any political pundit in a white straitjacket. Her second point was just as ludicrous when she claimed that people do not gain weight eating pizza and pasta in Europe.

Trump's suit seeks “accountability for brazen election interference.” I'm not a lawyer but also sounds like they're alleging criminal activity as Trump's outlandish claim would also imply a conspiracy against him. Given that there is no proof of that, or even that Trump's lawyers are interested in seeking evidence, they've alleged that it violates the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, a ludicrous claim that likely won't go anywhere but will cause headaches for Ann Selzer and the Iowa Register. Given the cost of litigation, we probably won't see a countersuit from Ann Selzer or the Des Moines Register but it's certainly a possibility.

On a gray, blustery November afternoon in Detroit, John Kish watches vigilantly as his four-year-old grandson, also named John, frolics on a towering play slide. If the day was sunny, there might be a line to use it, but given the weather, they have it to themselves. “It’s a long climb, but it gives them something to do,” Kish says, laughing, as the youngster carefully crosses a bridge within the structure.