PART ONE OF FIVE So, you wanna go to SHOT show? You think it's all fun and games? Get to play with guns? See Jesse James and James Yeager? SHOT show is the annual pilgrimage of the unwashed masses to Las Vegas to rub elbows with youtube celebrities, bloggers and overseas businessmen copying US made equipment and share infectious disease.
If you love guns, gambling and gonorrhea - SHOT show is for you! It is not my typical idea of a good time. I am not a big fan of Las Vegas.
However: I do attend for a few reasons. First, I do enjoy travel and I'm gold on UA so I can usually score an upgrade. Second, industry people are in there that I do hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars with business with so it's nice to put a face with the name and see what deals are out there. SHOT for me has been a bust for the past few years. Being a value guy, I want to buy at $1000 and sell at $3000 and as of recently the gun business is more like buy for $1 and sell for $1.10 if you get what I mean.
We used to do business at SHOT and now it's just checking in on foursquare, instagram and rubbing elbows with bloggers and the like. I want to make money, not spend money so this is very annoying to me.
Anyways, onto the play by play.
Saturday, January 19th. Three days before SHOT show. I talk a friend of mine to drive me to the airport after I drop my F350 at the body shop. I had a hit and run and someone totally fucked up all my paint and clearcoat. My guy says he can get it done while I'm gone for SHOT so I hitch a ride with a friend and pick up the tab for lunch. We have brisket. It is delicious. I get to the airport 3 hours early for my flight just in case the TSA line is a shitshow thanks to, well TSA. The government shutdown is not helping these folks. I have pre check and much to my surprise I breeze right through after a brief 3 minute wait.
I slog my way to the lounge, as shitty as it is to wait for my winged chariot to IAH. I have gone from being in an abusive relationship with AA to being in an abusive relationship with UA. Although if you really want to experience the battered spouse feeling, NK is a few gates over.
I board my flight to IAH and my Renton assembled chariot is on time and boarding early. The hate agent scans my pass and the alarms go off and spits off a new boarding pass. I have been upgraded to first class. You all will be turning right, I will be turning left once I pass the threshold of 2L on this old 757. I'll take a cleared upgrade at the gate any day of the week considering that I am 29/53 for Bush to LAX.
Fuck my life.
I gate check my bags to make life easier for me and the rest of the folks riding with me. If I don't have to worry about being short on time at my destination, I like to gate check to free up bins for those who are not as fortunate. Eventually I board and ask the FA to say hi to the captain and get a ride report. She says no problem. I step down into the 757 flight deck and take some selfies with the crew. They appreciate my aviation nerdery. They tell me that there will be light chop all over texas today and we're going to have some bumps so strap in and don't be a hero.
Having brightened the day of the flight crew, I head back to my lie flat window seat, fully recline and kick back and relax by listening to channel 9 on the IFE. It's disabled. Fuck. I put on a movie and watch the delightful Tag with the always excellent Jon Hamm, Ed Helms and others. It's a good movie and made me laugh. Just as we get to the gate the credits roll.
We land at Bush right on time but I have a 59 minute spa layover I had planned OR I can go to Landrys with my priory pass and get some blackened snapper. Do I hightail it to the Centurion lounge in terminal D, my home away from home? Or go for fresh grilled seafood?
This centurion lounge does not have a spa. Fuck it, lets go cajun. I walk over to Landrys and order the blackened snapper. It is delicious. The kitchen is a little behind so they box it up the rest of it for me to take on the plane which they don't have to do and I leave the waitress a nice tip. I am sweating from the blackened seasoning. I don't care. NOM NOM NOM. Fish is delish.
They have already started boarding to LAX as I walk up to the gate. I ask the hate agent if there's any upgrades. She says first is checked in full and we are 100% packed to LAX today. I thank her and board my bulkhead seat to LAX with my blackened snapper in one hand and personal item in the other.
Giving the FA a friendly nod, I ask to say hi to the captain and she says no way boss, we're busy - sit down and shut up.
Rude.
The boarding door closes for an on time departure and I watch another classic - Wall Street!
I polish off the blackened snapper, dirty rice and green beans. Charlie Sheen before he went crazy was a pretty good actor. He's so dreamy. I'm sweating profusely from the blackened seasoning and get up to throw away my trash because I didn't want the other guys in coach to have to do it for me. I walk right up to the forward galley into Bitchy McBitchface who woke up on the wrong side of life starts telling me to use the coach lavatory. I tell her I just wanted to throw some trash away and she gave me more attitude than a sassy black woman working at the DMV.
Listen lady, if you don't wanna be dealing with trash - maybe you shouldn't be working for United, eh?
I take my seat and I fall asleep on the way to LA. The ride is smoother than my nephew's 16 month old ass. The flight was not long enough. The landing is a perfect grease job on 24R and the only thing awakening me from my slumber is the reversers on the 737 Max. I pull my headset out so I can tune in LAX ground on LiveATC just as we make the left for taxiway Alpha/Alpha. I see the taxiway signs out of the corner of my window and start the feed just as I hear the ding.
ding What I'm expecting: Welcome to Los Angeles where the local time is 5:55. Your Houston based flight crew would like to thank you for flying United and your baggage will be at carousel (integer)
What I heard from a clearly panic stricken FA: IF THERE IS A DOCTOR OR ANYONE WITH MEDICAL TRAINING ON BOARD PLEASE RING YOUR CALL BUTTON.
Everyone wants to be a hero until it's time to do hero shit.
I reach up and press the button and a single chime tells the FA that row 9 pressed button.
ding FA: If you are a doctor or have medical training please head to the rear galley immediately.
I dumped my phone in my seat. (This was my first mistake. I'll tell you why later.)
Shit. It's go time. The passengers next to me are soundly asleep and it's a full flight, so I unbuckle my belt and turnstile jump over the two of them making a resounding thud onto the cabin floor.
I promptly walked with a purpose to the rear cabin. As I'm heading back I hear someone else walking behind me but I'm focused on the long walk from the bulkhead to the rear galley. I arrive shortly and my immediate impression is that the rear galley is not in good shape.
Oh, the bitchface FA that told me off? She's now profusely thanking me for showing up. Funny how that works isn't it?
There's a woman lying across three jumpseats on oxygen screaming in pain with a clearly experienced physician working on her and checking her out. I am not about to get in his way. Right behind me is a six foot three beast of a man who I can only imagine used to play right wing for Detroit. Doc 1 is working her, there's me and Doc 2 is behind me.
Doc 1 tells us she's got shortness of breath and chest pains.
Doc 2 nods and says he's a trauma surgeon from Cedars Sinai.
Doc 1 tells us he's an internal medicine specialist at UCLA.
Doc 2 asks me what my specialty is.
FC says structural firefighting and making sure you two get everything you need.
Doc 2 looks at the FA and asks if they got an AED on board.
I look up at the nearest overhead and there's an AED in the compartment, I bust it out and hand it to him. They start sizing her up as we taxi down Alpha/Alpha. I stand in the aisle inbetween the two bathroom doors as they do their thing ready to help out.
(FC breaks the fourth wall)
FOR THE UNINITIATED: United is in terminals 7/8 on the south side of LAX. When you land next to In-and-Out Burger on Sepuldeva you're on the north side of the field. It's easily a 20 minute ride to get from one side of the airport to another when they're busy. Prime time for LAX is 1800hrs because you have all the morning flights from the east and the afternoon flights from the central time zone arriving.
When you have a medical emergency and time is a factor, a 20 minute ride to the gate is what we call sub optimal. There's hard stand/remote gates at LAX on the northwest side of the field surface street adjacent that you can get to a lot faster than a long haul around the airport. If you give me a choice of going to the hard stand and meeting the ambulance or taking a 15-20 minute taxi during rush hour to a UA staffed ramp - I will GLADLY take to the hard stand, shut down and start em up. Yes, it's going to inconvenience a plane full of people for 20 minutes for you to unload, restart and taxi back. No, I give zero fucks.
My mistake was leaving my phone behind. Had I had it with me, I would have known we were going long way around and applied some intervention techniques to get things moving faster. I had no idea where we were.
(Cut to present)
Doc 1 managed the best he could and the lady said inbetween raspy breaths that she was going to start vomiting from the pain. Doc calls for a bag. The FA takes the safety equipment bag, the one holding the lifevest, seatbelt extender and oxygen mask and empties it.
OH FOR FUCKS SAKE. I reach over to the nearest passenger, pull all the contents of the seatback out, dump it on the floor and hand doc 1 a United brand official airsick bag. Just as I do this and I step back, the plane rapidly slows down and begins to turn.
(FC breaks the fourth wall again)
I used the term suboptimal earlier, and this is going to be a theme for the rest of the trip. Boeing in their infinite wisdom decided to stretch a 737 design and call it the MAX instead of doing a clean sheet. Three FA's, two doctors, me, and our lady experiencing chest pains are in the rear galley all not wearing seatbelts. All but the patient are standing. We are something like 80 feet behind the main landing gear.
Inertia is not our friend today. I start falling and I grab the only thing I can on the way down: the door handle to the lavatory.
(Cut to present)
Next thing I know, I've experienced what the FAA would probably term a "Lavatory Incursion" - and I wonder where my life has gone wrong as my knee has hit the toilet bowl. I get back up and prop a hand up on the cabin ceiling just to steady myself for the rest of the ride to the gate.
I look towards the front of the plane and notice something. Some fuckwit in row 29 is livestreaming this on instagram or some crap. Are you fucking shitting me? I lean over to the purser and tell her that while Doc 1 and 2 are fixing her, I'm gonna go do some fixing of my own about 10 rows up. My resting bitch face is on point right now as I walk up to the
tactless millennial inconsiderate smartphone user and get ready to fix this problem in a way honed by years of catholic school, brute force and dealing with shithead customers.
FC: Just what do you think you're doing?
1: I'm livestreaming this on twitter. It's my right.
FC: You're gonna delete whatever you filmed right now.
1: Or what are you gonna do about it?
FC: You see that FA over there? The one that looks like she's not taking any shit from anybody today? I'm gonna ask her for the intercom, I'm gonna call the captain and my friends over at the LAPD are gonna haul your ass in front of a judge and the next place you're gonna be livestreaming from is the back of a police car. And let me tell you something you might not know. There's two ways to enjoy LA Jail on a Saturday night. One's a Richard Pryor album. The other's when a skinny inked up ginger white boy like you walks in. Give me that goddamn phone.
I'm handed the phone and I delete the video as I walk back to the rear galley and put it in my back pocket. People are now asking if they're gonna make their connections and shit and I tell them to shut up, we've got more important things going on. As I walk back I peek through the windows seeing nothing but darkness. How long does it take to get to the gate? And even then, is there an ambulance waiting there?
What the fuck is happening? Where the fuck are we?
I ask Bitch McBitchface how long these symptoms have been going on. Apparently this issue had just arisen upon landing. Doc 1 asks for a stethoscope. I pull down the first aid kit from the compartment. It requires keys. The cabin crew has to find the keys for the first aid kit. I'm eventually handed a key and bust out a stethoscope for the doc. I peer out the window of the rearmost seats looking for signs of a gate, ambulance or anything I can reference to figure out where we are - the tower, a 777 tail which would tell me we are nearing the international terminal.....nothing but darkness.
This is not good.
Doc keeps the O2 flowing as we are all standing there helpless waiting for the plane to get to the ambulance or vice versa. The cabin crew asks how they're going to get her off the plane.
FC: Well she's in no condition to walk, can you get the rampers to put air stairs on 2L and take her off that way? It would be easier and optimal.
FA: I don't think we are able to do that
(It is at this point I think I smell toast. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T DO THAT? GET ON THE INTERCOM AND TELL THE CAPTAIN THAT THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE HER OFF THE PLANE VIA 2L AND STAIRS WTF)
I get that what is happening is clearly exceeding the crew's training but this is.....bad. Eventually we arrive at the gate and the fine folks at Station 51 from LAFD EMS arrive. The EMT sizes it up and calls for an aisle chair to be brought to take her off the plane since she can't walk. (WE HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS THE WHOLE TIME!)
They load her up and I step out of the way into the lavatory, I see them wheel her out through a crack in the door. I take this chance to do a bit from spies like us.
I look to my left and extend my hand. Doctor. I nod. I repeat to the right. They also repeat the bit. We chuckle.
I look towards Doc 2.
FC: Hey Docs, I didn't catch your names. I'm Will. Will Hayden.
Doc 2: George, George Rodriguez.
FC: Good work there Dr Rodriguez. Thanks for helping out.
Doc 2: We're doctors. It's what we do.
Doc 1: Hiya Will, I'm Charlie Fong.
FC: Nice work today Dr Fong. Thank you for showing up.
We start walking back to our seats as I snort out a laugh.
FC: So, Dr Fong.....I guess it's safe to say that United has successfully smoothed things over with the Asian physician community?
The doc's have a two Mississippi awkward pause as they begun laughing hysterically. Please, tip your waitresses. Try the veal. I'm here all night. Tactless millennial asks me to return phone, and I hand it back as we walk back to our seats.
EMS clears the plane, captain tells people that they can now leave and a cacophony of seat belt buckles pierces the high pitched drone that is a 737 sitting at the gate without engines running on shore power.
I ask Bitchy if I can see the captain on the way out as she once more thanks me for my service. She stuck her head in, got a nod and let me pass. I asked the captain why we landed on the north side of the field with an onboard medical and why we didn't get priority handling from the ground controller and why the hell it took so long to get to the gate.
His response was staggering.
CA: We didn't even know there was an emergency in the galley until the FA told us. By then we were almost to the terminal.
FC: Are you fucking kidding me?
CA: Nope. By the time we knew something was going on we were already on the ground and almost to the gate.
We talk airplane briefly about the 737 Max, the new jumpseats and I wish them a good rest of the trip. I secretly think he's got to be shitting me.
Being a good aviation nerd, I made mental note to check his work after I got back to the hotel.
I head to the lounge in LAX for a bite to eat, a sprite and some very boring time to myself. Just as I walk into the terminal there's a voicemail from my uncle. My plan for LA was to see my family - and my cousin and his wife who's pregnant with their second kid. I crash at my uncle's house in Pasadena and walk around old town and shop at Vromans Bookstore and enjoy all that Southern California has to offer. It's a good way to spend a weekend. If you ever get a chance, do it. It's fun. I can pay United a shitload of money to fly into McCarran on Monday or I can spend 1/3 of that and go into LAX a few days before and hop over for $45. I love LA.
NEW VOICEMAIL FROM UNCLE LOU: Family emergency, we all have to head to Chicago because Lisa's mom is in the hospital and we can't see you this weekend. You're on your own. I'm on my way to Burbank to catch the last flight to Midway. Talk to you later.
Fuck.
Time for an FC adventure.
I order some food in the lounge and crack open the laptop. One of my customers works for LAFD. I find his personal cell phone number in my sales records.
ring ring 1: Go for Smith
FC: Chief Smith! Will Hayden here! How's that M110 running?
1: Will...holy shit long time no talk. What's going on?
FC: Family bailed on me for this weekend, gotta make my own adventure. You working tomorrow? I'd love to see how LA does things.
1: No, but I have some friends on C shift that are. Let me see who's gonna be around. Let me call you back in 10.
FC: You got it Chief.
I eat and drink and relax and the phone rings back. Chief smith says be at station 9 at 0800 hrs Sunday morning. I say no problem! Thanks! He tells me to check in with the captain of the truck crew and he'll show me around.
While I'm on the laptop I book the marriott in Torrance. It's near the airport and a 25 minute ride to station 9. Little did I know it's next to a goddamn oil refinery and the housekeeping staff have left all the windows to my room open. Ugh. I kick back and take a shower. When I get back, I pulled all the ATC tape from LAX tower, from landing clearance to touchdown to the ground controller handoff to the checkpoint, to the request for medical assistance and timestamped all of it.
The request to LAX ground for EMS was made somewhere on taxiway bravo after passing papa (TBIT) but before Charlie-6. (T7). By that time we were already on the south side of the field and terminal adjacent.
Cabin crew didn't tell the captain to request EMS till we got to the other side of the fucking airport. From the moment I walked up, I had assumed (incorrectly) that prior to the request for medical assistance they would at least have told the captain what was going on. They didn't and he was flying blind. When you do a CPR class the first thing you do is call 911 and ask for an ambulance because it does not matter how much CPR you do if an ambulance never shows up to take you to the hospital.
There's a lesson to be learned here.
When seconds count, the request for EMS is waiting for the plane to get to the terminal to be called.
I knew United wasn't great, but this is to use a southern california term - no bueno.
The Westchester In and Out Burger has a 4x4 with my name on it and it is DELICIOUS. After I finish eating I hop on the hangout with the guys.
Since I've got no plans till morning I decide that it's worth the crazy time and I call
u/gunexpert69 and we make plans to hang out at his local watering hole. We then try to pick up some flight attendants at the Doubletree. We fail miserably and call it a night.
Sunday, January 20th. Two days before SHOT show. My alarm is set for 727AM. It rings, I wash up, jump in the car and put free fallin by Tom Petty on the radio and hop onto 405 south to pick up 110 north. The freeways are empty and I make incredible time downtown. I look down at the address and wonder where the fuck I am going. 7th and San Julian St? I drive around and there are tents on the sidewalk everywhere. This is the closest I have seen to life in a WROL situation. Eventually I find a spot on 7th street, bang on the door and the guys tell me to pull my car into the back lot. I do so and the guys are having breakfast and invite me to sit down and grab a bite.
When in Rome......
I grab some eggs, bacon and a biscuit and the truck captain comes by and says oh you know Smith? Apparently they came up in the same academy class and are old friends. He sticks his head out the door and yells at one of the guys and pantomimes some instructions. I don't speak ASL so I just nod and take it in. He runs down what they're doing today. LA tradition is that weekends are for the boys so they do training on weekends. It's 820AM and they've setup a training scenario and are gonna run it. This looks cool.
One of the guys comes back and hands me a headset, saladbowl and turnout coat. Captain says you're with me in the truck. Gear up.
Uh. What?
CA: Yeah, Chief Smith said you'd be riding along with us today. Right?
FC: LOL! I thought he was just gonna do a station visit. Sure, I'll ride with you guys.
CA: You ever see a TDA before?
FC: I used to be on the engine or the quint so this is gonna be new.
CA: Well, jump in. Lets go.
My ride to LA was a 737 max made in Renton that just came off the line January 17th. My ride to Skid Row was a 100' Pierce Arrow XT Tractor Drawn Aerial that was three years old. I hopped in and we drove around to the training location where the guys were to setup the ladder and pretend like they were venting a roof on a 5 story building. I was told to go shadow the command post as they'd be evaluating the guys and they had a good training day. LA has a good group of people and it shows. They did a post training debrief, simulated a dry hydrant and talked about everything they did, everything they did badly and everything they could do better.
LA has some fantastic people there that are very talented. The guys started putting tools away and rolling hose. I find the captain over on one of the engines and ask him if they need help with anything. He says if you want to help out, we're breaking down that attack line you can drain it.
FC: You guys straight roll to a flat load right?
CA: Yeah. You know hose?
FC: Drivers do it with hose.
CA: LOL! Hadn't heard that one before! Here's some gloves.
He gave me some gloves, I straight rolled three sections of three quarter line and hauled it all back to the engine where I found the truck captain loading hose with his guys. If anyone wants to see where real leadership is, it's helping your guys load hose and pack up tools.
I hook up and look up as I notice their technique. LA flat loads all their attack line, no preconnects. Two guys in the bed dressing and dutching it, one guy on the ground, straight roll between the boots pulling hose straight up into the engine. Gets any residual water out and they can check the gaskets every length. Never seen that done before but it looks like a smooth technique. I hook up the last of their attack line as the guys finish packing up. The bells come in and there's an automatic fire alarm tripped. First call of the morning. We hop over there and its' a false alarm.
The rest of the day is spent with station 9 watching the various indigenous folks of Skid Row do their thing. Station 9 is the busiest fire station in the nation. Before lunch they ran 3 overdoses, 2 stabbings, and a cacophany of crap. I went with them and their ambulance drivers and EMT's really earn every dollar they make working this area. After a quick break for lunch, they start watching the Rams game. Just as it got good, bells came in for another few calls and next thing I knew - the Rams were going to the super bowl and the dinner bell was ringing.
I decided it would be overstaying my welcome to hang out for dinner so I packed up and bought a shirt and told the guys if they ever needed guns to shout at me. Drove over to Grand Central Market to get a bite to eat and then grabbed some in and out burger on my way back to the hotel. txgi is sloshed and in no position to travel after watching the patriots destroy KC.
It's been a crazy day and the beginning of a crazy trip. And it's just getting started.
Monday, January 21st. One day before SHOT Show I wake up late, grab lunch at the Del Amo mall and do some shopping. My flight to McCarran leaves at 7PM and arrives just after 8PM. Knowing rush hour traffic in LA I decide to leave early and get to the airport at 430. I hightail it to the lounge in TBIT and grab a bite to eat and relax. I'm on an Alaska A320 to McCarran all the way in the back but at least I got a window seat. I stop in on the way to talk to the captain and he asks me a bunch of gun questions. I tell him the VP9 is good to go and he should buy it with his ATP credentials.
The 320 ride to LAS is entirely filled with moderate chop. The airplane is literally banging the side of the plane into my head. It is a miserable flight. We land on time and I am unable to stop at the Centurion lounge for a bite and a drink because it's closed for renovations.
I grab my bags and pick up my badge for SHOT Show at the airport and jump on the shuttle bus to Hertz. I reserved a compact knowing I'd need to be in and out of a tight parking garage. I get to my assigned spot, spot 13 and there's a fullsize Chevy Suburban there.
What the fuck is this?
I throw my bags inside, jump in and drive right up to the Gold Member service area.
FC: The lady on the phone asked me compact, midsize or fullsize - WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?
Hertz: That's the Hertz Love Wagon! Think of all the ladies you can drive around in this!
FC: DO I LOOK LIKE A GODDAMN LYFT FOR WORKING GIRLS?
It is at this point where I learn something.
The best part about Vegas is anything crazy or unbelievable can be explained or justified by shrugging your shoulders, opening your palms upward and saying "It's Vegas!"
Hertz: It's Vegas!
FC: I am not driving (gesticulates widlly) THIS into the parking garage of the Palazzo for 4 days straight!
Hertz is not impressed with my pantomime.
They find me a brand new 2019 Honda Pilot with 19 miles on it. I hightail it up the highway to Circus Circus. Check in line is totally deserted. I am able to haul my bags up and get keys in 3 minutes flat. That's gotta be a fucking record.
Just as I arrive at my room I decide to send Rusty Shackleford a picture of me looking grumpy in front of the hertz love wagon.
RS: ARE YOU IN VEGAS?!?!?!??!?!?
FC: YES!!!! WHY ARE WE YELLING?!?!?!??!?
(image of Rusty coming down the escalator with the sign behind him that says WELCOME TO LAS VEGAS in the background)
FC: Oh dear god. I just got to the hotel to dump off my bags, you want a ride? I can be there in 20.
RS: Nah man we just landed a few min ago I was gonna take an uber
FC: By the time you get to the rideshare area it'll be 20 minutes. I can be there by the time you get to the curb. Seriously.
RS: LOL okay head over!
I look at my watch. Las Vegas Blvd traffic on a monday night? This isn't gonna work. I grab my coat and run back to the parking garage and tear out of the CC garage tires squealing all the way down. I bang a left onto Sammy Davis Jr Drive and haul ass to Spring mountain where I jump on 15 and get the car up to 100MPH between mandalay bay and 215.
McCarran Airport SUCKS in many regards and the airport pickup is one of them. It's not laid out well at all but it makes the cabbies plenty of money. I find it kinda funny because this year I'm picking up Rusty. Last year I was picking up a coworker of a buddy of mine who needed his SHOT show pass and there was no way to get it to him that night so I just said fuck it, give me the pass and I'll get it to him and drive him to the hotel. The year before, I picked up
u/fluffy_butternut.
I guess I am the world's worst uber driver. I like doing the same bit over and over again like beating a dead horse so I can pickup Rusty one of to ways.
A: The classic Las Vegas Airport pickup. Drive to airport and park car on curb. Wait for metro PD to start yelling at you for parking on the sidewalk. Message Rusty to tell him I'm the one parked on the sidewalk.
B: In my best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression: COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE
My calculations were rough but I figured rusty should get to the curb right at the same time as me. If he's there already, we do B. If he's not, I'll do A.
The speed limit in the tunnel under the airport is 55. I'm doing 90. I fly up the ramp to Terminal 1 and tell him that I'll grab him at the American arrivals level. Just as I pull off to the curb to tell him I'm here he tells me he's just walked outside and I look up and see a classically hawaiian shirt standing at the curb. I pull the car forward, stop quickly and do my best Arnold. He laughs and hops in. I take him to his hotel and dump him off at registration as I park the car. I spend 20 minutes parking the car and I walk over to registration to find him still in line. The hotel is packed with people for the convention.
Behind us is a beautiful blonde engineer in town for what I'm guessing is World of Concrete based on the blueprints she's brought with her. I chat her up a bit until I see that she's got a wedding ring on her other hand. We head up to rusty's room where we find a king size bed and a hot tub 5 feet away. You don't even need to leave your bed to drown a hooker if you don't want to.
It's Vegas!
Rusty says lets go down to the casino and lose some money. We head down to the casino and lose some money at the craps table. This trip is not treating me nicely. I tell him I gotta tap out. Show in the morning.
submitted by Link to article James B. Stewart: The Truth About the ‘Deep State,’ Donald Trump, and Jeffrey Epstein
Journalist James B. Stewart talks about reporting on Trump, the Clintons, Epstein, and why—as Steve Bannon tells him—Trump’s “deep state” conspiracy is for “nut cases.”
The Daily Beast Lloyd Grove Editor At Large Updated 10.08.19 7:21PM ET Published 10.08.19 5:02AM ET
arly in his career covering the financial industry, law enforcement, and the unsightly pageant of American politics, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James B. Stewart spent quality time with both Hillary Clinton during her husband’s first term in the 1990s and Donald Trump in the late 1980s.
One was an activist first lady who, like Bill Clinton, was bitterly resentful of media scrutiny and had hoped to enlist Stewart—a bestselling author whose just-published 10th book is Deep State: Trump, The FBI, and The Rule of Law—to expose the rank unfairness of the press coverage of the Clintons and certify their probity and honesty.
The other was an outer-borough apartment-building scion who was trying to recast himself as a high-flying corporate raider and wanted Stewart, then a Wall Street Journal reporter, to validate his status and acumen. Neither the Clintons nor Trump succeeded.
“He invited me up to Trump Tower and said, ‘This is completely off the record, deep background,’” Stewart told The Daily Beast. “And then we’re sitting there and the secretary walked in and said ‘Mrs. So-and-So is here.’ And Trump says, ‘Show her in’—so much for being deep background, off-the-record. And so she walked in and he said, ‘This is Mrs. So-and-So’—I don’t remember her name, but she was from the Philippines—‘and she is the richest woman in the world.’ And I thought, ‘Ohhh, interesting, I never heard of her. I thought the Queen was the richest woman in the world.’
“And then he turned to her and said, ‘James Stewart from The Wall Street Journal is here interviewing me. He is the most famous reporter in America.’ At which point I knew she was not the richest woman in the world,” Stewart recalled, adding he found the future president “charming and funny in kind of a mean way,” but that he politely declined Trump’s offers of a free flight on the Trump Shuttle, his money-losing airline that was soon to go under, a ride to La Guardia airport in his limo, and, later on, persistent invitations to prize fights in Atlantic City.
“He was always trying to get me to take something,” Stewart said. “Fortunately, I had no interest in boxing. I had no interest in gambling.” The dapperly dressed Stewart, who happened to be celebrating his 68th birthday, was holding forth in a midtown Manhattan coffee emporium across the street from The New York Times, where he has been a star for the Business section since 2011.
He said he was currently toiling on an investigative report concerning the late Jeffrey Epstein, the plutocrat-pedophile whom Stewart visited at his Upper East Side mansion in August 2018. Stewart refused to provide details on his research or when he hopes to publish—although it could be soon.
“It’s at a delicate stage,” he said.
In August, after Epstein was found hanged in his jail cell, apparently by his own hand, Stewart wrote a controversial column about their off-the-record encounter.
The column raised eyebrows about Stewart’s apparently cordial interaction with the notorious registered sex offender, who had pled guilty in 2008 to procuring an underage prostitute in Florida, and had served a very light prison sentence under a non-prosecution agreement negotiated by his high-powered legal team.
Stewart’s column also raised questions about why the New York Times didn’t pursue an investigation of the socially well-connected sex offender in their own backyard prior to his arrest at New Jersey’s Teterboro airport—on July 6, 2019, nearly a year after Stewart’s visit—on new federal charges of sex trafficking.
In his column Stewart explained that he’d met with Epstein because he was trying to ascertain if rumors were true that Tesla tycoon Elon Musk had asked Epstein to represent him in his search for new members of the Tesla corporate board, and concluded that there was no credible evidence for that.
The Times also assigned longtime business reporter Landon Thomas Jr., who 10 years earlier had written with strange empathy about Epstein during the criminal proceedings in Florida, to interview him concerning his supposed relationship with Musk and Tesla. Thomas did the interview, although no news story resulted.
But the assignment later proved a major embarrassment for the newspaper when NPR revealed, shortly after Stewart’s column appeared, that Thomas and Epstein were friends and the reporter had successfully solicited a $30,000 charitable donation from the financier for a school in Harlem. (When Thomas came clean with his editors, The Times forbade him from having further contact with Epstein, and he left the paper early this year.) During his sit-down with Epstein, Stewart quickly determined that he would not be a solid source. “I thought he was slippery and evasive,” he told Columbia Journalism Review Editor in Chief Kyle Pope shortly after his column was published.“I don’t like dealing with people like that as a source.”
Given Epstein’s criminal past, Stewart said he was surprised that when he arrived at his East 71st Street residence, “a beautiful young woman opens the door—I was kind of taken aback by that. If it was me, I would not have had a young woman at the door to make the first impression for somebody coming there.”
Stewart added that while he thought the woman was young, he didn’t consider her underage. “If I had to guess, I would say 19, 20, 21, something like that,” he told Pope.
When Epstein sat down with him for their chat, Stewart said, he considered it a strange form of “rapport-building” when Epstein insisted on discussing his legal troubles and his attraction to young women and girls.
“It was kind of the elephant in the room. I knew he was a fairly notorious character” but in the end “I was indifferent. I was there to find out what if anything he knew about the Musk situation,” Stewart said. “Frankly, he threw a lot of people under the bus in that interview. He talked about their sex activities and their drug use…I don’t even know if it’s true, but he was dropping names left and right…mostly to show me how plugged-in he was…He was utterly unapologetic about his behavior. He did not show a trace of remorse. There was no contrition whatsoever.”
Stewart told Pope that soon after his August 2018 interview, he discussed with his editor the possibility of doing a piece about Epstein’s efforts to return to polite society and the prominent people who were enabling him, ” but “there were a zillion other things going on. It never happened. Then when he got re-arrested, I got involved in the story” but didn’t consider using material from his previous encounter because of the ground rules—which were no longer applicable after Epstein’s death, Stewart said.
As for critics who said Stewart should have violated the ground rules immediately after his Epstein interview “because he was involved in some kind of crime,” Stewart said:
“That strikes me as totally off-base. First of all, he’s already pleaded guilty and served his time. I didn’t think the woman [at the door] was underage, and I assumed, maybe naively, that once you’re on probation or whatever he was, you’re going to be very careful to obey the law and not do anything.”
Stewart wrote in his column that he declined Epstein’s offer to cooperate with a book-length biography, and also spurned Epstein’s invitation to have dinner with him and Woody Allen.
Stewart told The Daily Beast that such an encounter would have been journalistically useless, to say nothing of the unattractive optics.
“How creepy is that?” he scoffed. In an email on Tuesday, Stewart addressed a series of questions about the Epstein episode, including whether the Times should have followed up last year on investigating Epstein’s possible continuing criminal misconduct, and whether Stewart should have written contemporaneously about the Woody Allen dinner invitation and Epstein’s apparent friendship with an accused sex offender (although Allen was never criminally charged and has consistently proclaimed his innocence). “I believe my editors at the Times handled my visit with Epstein professionally and appropriately,” Stewart wrote in his email. “I had no reason to believe that Epstein was violating any provisions of his sentence or had continued to engage in any unlawful conduct. I never entertained the possibility of having dinner with him and Woody Allen (or anyone else), but neither did I consider such an invitation newsworthy. Since his arrest last summer, I've been focused on reporting the Epstein story wherever it leads, with the full support of my editors.”
Stewart won’t say precisely who cooperated with his latest book, beyond on-the-record interviews with fired FBI Director James Comey and, surprisingly, Steve Bannon—who makes a cameo appearance to mock the “deep state” conspiracy theory, embraced by Trump, that a cabal of faceless government bureaucrats are staging a secret coup against the duly elected president.
The “deep state conspiracy theory is for nut cases,” Stewart approvingly quotes Bannon. “America isn’t Turkey or Egypt,” Bannon says, adding that while there’s an entrenched bureaucracy, “there’s nothing ‘deep’ about it. It’s right in your face.”
Comey, meanwhile, tells Stewart: “There’s no ‘deep state’ looking to bring down elected officials and political leaders that represents a deep-seated center of power… But it’s true in a way that should cause Americans to sleep better at night. There’s a culture in the military, in the intelligence agencies, and in law enforcement that’s rooted in the rule of law and reverence for the Constitution.”
A careful reading of Deep State suggests that Stewart managed to secure the cooperation of Comey’s fired interim successor, former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe (who wrote his own book about recent events) and former FBI in-house counsel Lisa Page and top agent Peter Strzok, the so-called “gaga lovers,” per Trump’s toxic Twitter feed.
Page and Strzok lost their jobs after the public release of text messages in which the two, who were married to other people, not only indicated they’d been having an affair, but were insulting and critical of the former reality-television star who went on to become the 45th president. “America depends on institutions,” Stewart said about the overarching theme of Deep State. “And it depends on people functioning in those institutions whose first loyalty is to the Constitution and the rule of law—not to an individual who may happen to be president at one time or another. I want people to understand that and respect the fact when people act on behalf of the interests of the Constitution and the American people, it’s not an act of betrayal. It’s the highest form of patriotism.”
A few years after that Trump Tower meeting, during Bill Clinton’s first term as the 42nd president, Hillary’s close friend Susan Thomases, then a securities lawyer and managing partner at the blue-chip law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, arranged a meeting between Stewart and the first couple at the White House.
“They initiated my book,” Stewart said, referring to Blood Sport, his 1997 bestseller that chronicled the pre-Monica Lewinsky scandals, which included the conspiracy-theory-inducing suicide of deputy White House counsel and Hillary intimate Vince Foster. “They sent an emissary [Thomases] to me saying, ‘We’re being persecuted by the press,’ and she said, ‘They want you to do a book and they have nothing to hide. They’ll show you everything.’
“So I went to the White House and met them—Bill was delayed, delayed, delayed, and finally popped in to say hi—and I spent most of the time with Hillary… They were supposed to be interviewing me. But Hillary did all the talking. ‘We’re being persecuted. The media’s so unfair. We have nothing to hide.’
“And I chimed in and said, ‘I hope that’s true, because I’m going to do my usual thorough job, and once I go down this path and sign a deal, this is my livelihood, there’s no turning back.’ And she said, ‘Oh yeah, we understand that. That’s fine.’ That was the high-water mark of our relationship.”
When the Clintons failed to provide promised documents and canceled scheduled interviews, Stewart decamped to Little Rock, Arkansas, “and everybody was eager to talk,” he recalled. “And somehow word got back to the White House that I spoke to the state troopers [who were members of Bill Clinton’s security detail when he was Arkansas governor]. I did talk to the troopers. I was talking to everybody, and boy, did I get an earful.”
Stewart soon had the strange feeling that his movements in Little Rock were being monitored by a local network of Clinton loyalists. “Every time I came out of my hotel, I think somebody reported back to the White House. I later heard that the minute they [the Clintons] heard I talked to the troopers, it was over. And they never spoke to me again.”
Decades later, Trump and the Clintons are central figures in Stewart’s latest book, from which neither party emerges unscathed. On the other hand, Comey, whom Stewart has known and reported on since Comey’s days as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, comes across as something of a hero—albeit a flawed one—who risked his career and reputation in order to resist Trump’s misuse of presidential power.
I knew Comey and held him in very high regard. Comey tells the truth. I have never known him to lie,” said Stewart, a non-practicing attorney who graduated from Harvard Law School and spent a few years as an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore before returning to his first love, journalism. He was a summer intern at his small-town Illinois newspaper, the Quincy Herald-Whig, and also worked on the undergraduate newspaper at Indiana’s DePauw University.
In the end, Deep State is “a thriller, full of intrigue and drama,” as Stewart puts it, featuring a mendacious, bullying president driven by ego and self-interest, his hand-picked enablers in government, and diligent public servants and denizens of the “deep state” like Comey and his interim successor McCabe—and even Page and Strzok—who attempted, with limited success, to foil Trump’s efforts to subvert the Constitution.
Although Stewart was compelled to finish Deep State months before the latest White House horror—namely the formal impeachment inquiry prompted by Trump’s apparent attempt to get Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden in return for military aid—Stewart argued it’s not a problem.
“All the behavior that Trump has now exhibited is amply dramatized in my book,” he said. “He’s impulsive. He doesn’t listen to people giving him advice—even more so now. The minute he’s caught red-handed, he immediately—in Roy Cohn fashion—turns the attack on the people who are criticizing him. If you reveal embarrassing behavior by him, you’re a quote-unquote traitor, with the implication that you should be given some kind of death penalty. And he lies constantly. Constantly. All that behavior is here.”
In Deep State, meanwhile, Stewart provides the most detailed—and damning—account to date of Bill Clinton’s ill-considered June 27, 2016, visit with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on a Justice Department jet parked in Phoenix. Amazingly, this occurred during the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Hillary’s mishandling of classified emails as secretary of state, a probe that was threatening to derail her presidential campaign.
Ever loquacious—after Lynch welcomed him aboard against her better judgment—the former president ignored the AG’s repeated protests that she had to go, took a seat in the cabin and talked her ear off about the Arizona heat, Brexit, globalization, West Virginia coal miners, and other weird topics.
“That Bill Clinton would be so tone-deaf as to initiate an extended private conversation with the attorney general, the very person weighing criminal charges against his wife, just five days before her FBI interview astonished Lynch’s staff,” Stewart writes.
Stewart told The Daily Beast: “Oh my God, Clinton! I’m sure it’s subconscious… The person with him said, ‘I don’t think it’s such a good idea,’ and yet he bludgeons his way up there, plops down, lingers for such a long period of time that it made everyone question, ‘What the hell are they talking about?’ Was he trying to undermine his wife? That’s crazy! He couldn’t have done a better job. It was a disaster for her.”
Arguably, however, the person who comes out worst of all is Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—who was widely portrayed in the press as “honorable” and “a straight-shooter” when Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation and Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel.
“Look, he was in an impossible situation. What should he have done in his position?” Stewart said, citing the notorious memo Trump ordered Rosenstein to write as the justification for sacking Comey—i.e., that the FBI director had overstepped his authority and violated Justice Department policy in the bureau’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.
“I guess if it was me, I would have resigned the day of [Trump’s] phony story that ‘The reason I’m firing Comey is because of the way he dealt with the Clintons,’” Stewart continued. “What happened to Rosenstein the following week? Obviously he was deeply upset and bouncing off the walls and coming up with these wild ideas”—notably Rosenstein’s suggestion that Cabinet officials be persuaded to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump as president, and his offer to wear a wire into the Oval Office to catch the president saying something incriminating.
In neither case was Rosenstein joking, Stewart’s books recounts—contradicting Rosenstein’s spin that he was merely being “sarcastic.” “He was coming unglued. By the way, there are many witnesses to this,” Stewart pointed out.
In Deep State, Stewart quotes Comey, after Trump nominated Rosenstein to be the Justice Department’s No. 2, as musing prophetically to his friend Benjamin Wittes that Rosenstein was essentially “a survivor” who might compromise his principles to keep his job.
“Everybody I interviewed was interviewed by Mueller, so I know he knows the whole story. So Rosenstein was mysteriously spared in the Mueller report.”
“And, oh my God, does that turn out to be true,” Stewart told The Daily Beast. “There were two occasions when people were writing the stories that Rosenstein was going to be fired”—after Rosenstein’s “wild ideas” were widely reported. “He goes in for a one-on-one with Trump and miraculously he comes out with his job intact.”
Noting that Rosenstein was Mueller’s boss, Stewart said that if Mueller had agreed to speak to him for the book—which he didn’t—“there are two questions I wanted to ask him. One is, why isn’t Rosenstein in the Mueller Report except in passing? None of that stuff about the week after [Comey’s firing] is in there. Everybody I interviewed was interviewed by Mueller, so I know he knows the whole story. So Rosenstein was mysteriously spared in the Mueller Report.”
Stewart’s second question: “Why didn’t Mueller insist on testimony from Trump specifically on obstruction of justice? Because he allowed Trump to refuse to testify about obstruction. No prosecutor I know would accept a deal like that. There are communications between Mueller and Rosenstein and Rosenstein and Trump that I don’t know. All I know is that whatever Rosenstein said to Trump, he kept his job.” Stewart speculated that because the president was keenly aware that Rosenstein had recommended removing him from office and offered to wear a wire to gather evidence against him. “It’s inconceivable that Trump would have kept him on if he wasn’t able to use that leverage to get something in return. Again, I’m not privy to those conversations. But if I was a fly on the wall, the one thing I would have loved to have heard is the back and forth between the two of them.”
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