The King’s Speech: Returning to Washington to speak for the first time since he left the presidency, Donald Trump yesterday delivered a speech in which he admired the swift Chinese justice system, suggested that homeless people should be put in tent encampments outside major cities, and claimed to be the target of political persecution.

  Speaking in a hotel ballroom to the America First Policy Institute, Trump said, “They really want to damage me so I can no longer go back to work for you. And I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  The former president who tried to overturn a legitimate election he lost claimed to be a victim, saying, “The biggest threat remains the sick, sinister, and evil people from within.”

  He got several standing ovations from the crowd of 800.

  Trump pressed on with his big lie that he won in 2020. “I won a second time, did much better a second time. Did a lot better. Did a lot better. Very corrupt,” he said, “But we may just have to do it again. We have to straighten out our country.”

  Across town, former Vice President Mike Pence, a likely candidate for president, did not denounce Trump but said, “Some people may choose to focus on the past, but elections are about the future.” 

Real News, Fake Electors: Previously undisclosed emails between Trump’s campaign officials, advisers, and close associates reveal the effort to assemble slates of people who would claim without any basis to be Electoral College electors on his behalf in battleground states that he had lost, The NY Times reports.

  The Times reviewed dozens of emails, some of which actually referred to the substitute electors as “fake.” The emails revealed that even lawyers working on the proposal made clear that the scheme would not pass legal muster.

  The Times quotes Jack Wilenchik, a Phoenix-based lawyer who helped organize pro-Trump electors in Arizona, saying, “We would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted.”

  In a follow-up to Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser for the Trump campaign, Wilenchik wrote that “‘alternative’ votes is probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes.” He added a smiley face emoji at the end.

  The paper says that participants in the discussions reported details to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, and in at least one case to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, bringing the scheme to within a breath of Donald Trump. 

Edited Out: A New Yorker employee says she was fired from her job less than a week after publicly accusing the magazine of workplace sexism.

  “So the New Yorker has fired me, effective immediately,” Erin Overbey said on Twitter. Overbey claims that she was subjected to a performance review after sending an email alleging workplace sexism and that she was accused of making errors  in copy that she claims were actually inserted by the magazine’s editor David Remnick himself.

  In one complaint about sexism she wrote on Twitter,  “Most recently, I’ve raised concerns about an archive project where I was told that it was a requirement of my job to ‘assist’ the male colleague appointed to lead the project.” She said,. “I had concerns about this dynamic & our disparate qualifications & raised them several times.”

  She seems to have made a valid complaint about the lack of Black editors at the magazine. But as always in an office, sometimes it’s how you go about it. The NY Post quotes  “a source with knowledge of the situation” saying that Overbey was fired for a “pattern of conduct” that was deemed “disruptive to the operation of the Company” and which “undermines the journalistic ethics of our magazine.”

Off Duty: The entire police force of the little town of Kenly, North Carolina, four officers and the police chief, plus two town clerks, all of whom are white, resigned last week less than two months after the appointment of a Black town manager. They said they quit because of a “toxic” and “hostile” work environment.

  The town manager, Justine Jones, who has years of experience in local governments, was chosen after a “nationwide search” of 30 candidates.  

  One local resident told the Charlotte News & Observer, “They don’t want to be led by anybody Black; that’s Kenly. The woman said, “They’re always harassing Black people. It’s racial.”

The Non-Obit Page: An erroneous Facebook post yesterday reported the death of former actor Tony Dow, who starred as the older brother Wally in the immortal sitcom “Leave it to Beaver” that aired from 1957 to 1963. Dow’s son Christopher said his father is alive, but under hospice care and close to the end.

The Spin Rack: The city of St. Louis is drying out after eight inches of rain fell overnight Tuesday, flooding streets, homes, and cars. — Russia says it will quit the International Space Station after 2024 and send up its own orbiting laboratory. They didn’t say exactly when after 2024, giving themselves lots of wiggle room. — A third set of human remains has been found as drought shrinks the giant Lake Mead reservoir in Nevada. It’s probably not the last. 

Meltdown: Klondike, the ice cream company that makes the Klondike Bar and famously asked in its ads “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?” is now leaving its customers asking what they are going to do without a Choco Taco.

  The company announced that it is discontinuing the waffle cone ice cream taco dipped in chocolate and nuts. One disappointed fan on Redditt said, “Honestly, if there was anything I could say about its passing, I would say that the world didn’t just lose an ice cream taco, it lost its way.”

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