‘Ever Feel Like You’ve Been Cheated’ —Visiting the Maewestside 2016 Archives
I was writing about Trump’s relationship with convicted child sexual assaulter Jeffrey Epstein before it was trendy
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I guess it’s okay to name names. In 2016, I was still trying to write above the headlines, and not indict the people I knew on the periphery of what came to be known as TrumpRussia.
I was in Laguna Beach at a seaside hotel in November 2016, while an acquaintance was attending a conference. Since September 17, I had been investigating, writing, reporting, blogging, as fast as my fingers could type, because it was on that day I interrupted my otherwise happy life to address the seriousness of Trump as candidate. Until then, I didn’t realize that a con man, D-lister was being taken seriously.
I had written about him since the mid-‘90s, a tacky joke in Westside circles, and a veteran ponzi schemer in investigative circles — there was no way America could see him as a viable candidate. He was a guy who ripped people off, didn’t pay his workers, and was faked up to create TV ratings. In other words, a fake rich guy who slapped his name on buildings so he could move dirty money for really shitty people.
He was competing with the most qualified presidential candidate to run for office in modern times, a candidate that Americans had voted as their favorite politician just three years earlier. In 2013, Hillary Clinton topped the list, beating out Obama, McCain, and Biden — she was very well liked.
That was before Putin sent spies to America, before the Internet Research Agency hacked America, before the Russians hacked Clinton’s campaign, before Maria Butina slept her way through the NRA/GOP, before Russian agent Paul Manafort took the helm of the Trump campaign ‘pro bono’ — giving polling data to the KGB to get ‘whole’ with Oleg Deripaska, and before we knew FBI special agent Charles McGonigal had betrayed us to the Russians.
And yet I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, and I warned and I warned and I warned. I read the Jane Doe complaint, and I wrote about my disgust in CEOs I knew lining up behind Trump. They truly disgusted me. There was Trump deploying the vocabulary of misogyny, there he was being accused of raping a 13-year-old, along with his longtime running buddy, Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted child sexual assaulter. And still, CEOs I knew would go on TV and try to whitewash away his crimes.
It was all so gross.
I had produced a business and economic series, so I had the cell phone numbers of a lot of business leaders. When I saw them lining up behind Trump, I would dash off a warning — telling them if they backed him, it would end their career. And in the case of Andy Puzder, I was right. I warned Puzder, the former CEO of Carl’s Jr/CKE who was jockeying for Trump’s Secretary of Labor, that he’d be through if he reputation-washed Trump.
And I wrote the following Maewestside Tumblr blog on November 3, 2016, at 6:26 pm.
In 2016, I had created a language to try to communicate with people — part Mark Twain, part investigative reporter, part high-concept sloganeer. I was trying to use my platform as a media personality in the second biggest market in the country, and my training in broadcast news, but I was drowned out by code, spies, St. Petersburg desk yobs, and traitors. MAGA was always an active measure.
Below is the 2016 text in full:
EVER FEEL LIKE YOU'VE BEEN CHEATED... by heidi siegmund cuda, aka maewestside, November 3, 2016
I've reached the tipping point. And it wasn't reading the "Jane Doe Complaint," detailing teen rape allegations against the GOP candidate and a convicted billionaire felon. And consider Trump's Own Words: that for 15 years, he liked hanging with Jeffrey Epstein, the guy named as his codefendant, a real swell, who the Trump said "likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it..." (New York Magazine, Oct. 2002).
Gross. Who talks like that? About young girls? Oh yeah, Pageant Predator types talk like that.
But no. It wasn't in reviewing the GOP candidate's own creepy words, and the creepy past of his pervy codefendant, who got a very light sentence for soliciting sex with a minor. And it wasn't because l'd spent years investigating human trafficking and that the only difference in the complaints against them is the size of their pocketbooks. Nope, not even that.
The tipping point, for me, came when one of Me Ol Chums, an erstwhile respected business leader said on Der National TV news, he supports the GOP candidate on policy and doesn't involve himself in "tabloid fodder."
Da Big CEO is above Tabloid Fodder. Right. Pervy ads for his company starring tabloid vixens would indicate otherwise.
That, we, as Loyal American Subjects, should be asked to only care about taxation and regulation and that "Tabloid Fodder," such as the history of a settle-out-court Convicted Perv and a shady GOP presidential candidate, by his own creepy admissions, should be ignored?
Um. Okay. Yeah, so ladies and the men who love ladies, today would be a really good day to stop allowing Da Big CEO types and the Billionaire Boys Club that own so much of what we once deemed precious and valuable, the Fourth Estate, to direct the narrative.
Be a good day to no longer allow the marginalization of those already marginalized.
One thing I will say amid all this madness: the GOP candidate's son-in-law owns a newspaper. That newspaper elected at the final hour, to not endorse him for president. Money can't buy street cred.
#dumptrump
#freepress
#goodforamerica
#billionaireboysclubcantbuystreetcred
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Author Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an Emmy award-winning investigative producer.
It was five days away from the election, and I was optimistic America wouldn’t vote for a sadist.
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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
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Thanks for this excellent article. Please continue to write about the Trump-Epstein relationship.