Naming Names: One of Jeffrey Epstein’s former teenage sex slaves said in a deposition that at the behest of Epstein and his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, she went to bed with Prince Andrew, celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, and “the owner of a large hotel chain” who does not appear to be Donald Trump. She named others as well.

  Epstein died a suicide in a Manhattan jail and Maxwell is being held for trial on sex trafficking charges.

  Virginia Giuffre, who was taken into the Epstein fold as a teenager, said in the 2016 deposition for her lawsuit against Maxell that she was flown to London to “meet” Prince Andrew in 2001. She said, “The first time I was with Alan Dershowitz was in New York,” suggesting that she had sex with him more than once. Dershowitz denies it, but he’s already become the pariah of summer society on Martha’s Vineyard.

  Giuffre said of Maxwell, “She’s the one that procured me, told me what to do, trained me as a sex slave, abused me physically, abused me mentally. She’s the one who I believe, in my heart of hearts, deserves to come forward and have justice happen to her more than anybody.”

   She said of Maxwell and Epstein, “Their whole entire lives revolved — they were both the same — around sex.”

Ticking Down: As word surfaced that Microsoft is in talks to buy the popular Chinese owned video-sharing app TikTok, President Trump last said he intends to ban the company from operating in the US.

  “I have that authority,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. The President is reacting to fears that the Chinese government is using the app to capture user data. TikTok, which claims 100 million American users, says it would never share information. 

  It’s hard to pick sides between Trump and a Chinese tech company.

Going Postal: President Trump’s campaign against the postal service is coinciding with his unfounded claim that the fall election will be thrown by mail fraud.

  Under a Trump appointee, the  service has stopped paying mail carriers and clerks overtime to ensure completion of daily deliveries. Reports say mail is being delayed several days. 

  That could become a factor in an election in which mail ballots might be in wide use to guard against the coronavirus.  Wendy Fields, executive director of the Democracy Initiative, told The NY Times that Trump was “deliberately orchestrating suppression and using the post office as a tool to do it.”

Low Grade Fever: Nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s handling of the three major challenges facing the country — the coronavirus pandemic, unrest over racial inequality, and relations with Russia. That, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll. Trump’s approval ratings, according to the poll; Coronavirus, 34 percent; Unrest, 36 percent; Russia, 36 percent.

  NY Times columnist Paul Krugman writes that, “Trump is one of those nightmare bosses who can’t do the job but won’t step aside.”

HydroxyQuackery: Texas political quack Rep. Louie Gohmert, who said he may have caught the coronavirus because he wore a mask too much, announced on Twitter that he’s taking the disproven hydroxychloroquine to cure what ails him. He wrote, “It is what was decided as the best course of action between my doctor and me — not by government bureaucrats. How long until the tech tyrants censor this tweet?”

  They’re too busy laughing.

  Dr. Anthony Fauci testified before Congress that, “Any and all of the randomized placebo controlled trials, which is the fold standard of determining if something is effective, none of them has shown any efficacy of hydroxychloroquine.” 

  Fauci said he is “cautiously optimistic” that a coronavirus vaccine in the US could prove effective by “late fall or early winter.”

  At least 1,239 Americans died of the virus in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 153,314.

Wayward Son: In a family philosophical rift, James Murdoch, one of Rupert Murdoch’s sons,  has resigned from the board of News Corp., which owns The New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, among other right wing news outlets. In his letter, Murdoch said,   “My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.”

  News Corp. is one of two media companies controlled by the Murdoch family. The other is Fox Corp., which owns Fox News. James Murdoch, known as the family liberal, had already resigned from Fox Corp.

The Bulletin Board: The federal stimulus package, including the $600 weekly unemployment checks, expired yesterday and Congress has not replaced it. — A federal appeals court threw out the death sentence for the imprisoned Boston Marathon bomber. The death penalty was invalidated because the trial judge did not adequately screen jurors for bias, the ruling says. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will remain in prison for a re-do of his penalty trial, and no matter what happens, he’ll never see daylight. — The Supreme Court ruled that President Trump can keep building his border wall. — A 17-year-old Florida boy has been arrested and charged with hacking the Twitter accounts of famous people to make a plea for Bitcoin donations. Among celebrities hacked were former President Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Kanye West, and presidential candidate Joe Biden. Two other young men also were charged in the scheme that netted about $100,000.

Queen of Mean: The reputation of talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, once dubbed the “Queen of Nice,” is crumbling amid reports of her abusive behavior and a toxic culture at her show. She’s currently in the denial stage saying, “People who work with me and for me are speaking on my behalf and misrepresenting who I am.”

  Warner Bros., which produces the show, said after an internal investigation, “We are disappointed that the primary findings of the investigation indicated some deficiencies related to the show’s day-to-day management.”

  Translated, “She’s a nightmare.”

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