FRIDAY WRAP:...News In Pictorial...It Was A Busy Workweek...We Can Work It Out...From Bumbling Trump Attorney Todd Blanche To Peripatetic Food Tourist Mayra Flores...And Beyond!!!...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

WESLACO, Texas |...What a week? It just won't stop, Ma. News on a crazed journey across ragged, tired brains from coast to coast. Someone pass me the salt. I can't seem to keep it off my wounds.

We arrive with our new weekly feature: Friday Wrap.

Not quite the tasty lettuce wraps I get at PF Chang's, but this is about horrible reports coming across my old desk. We get to everything sooner or later, yes.

Here, then, a few photos:

The first one is shown above, a cool shot of Donald J. Trump and his lawyer Todd Blanche as they mosey in or out of the courthouse in New York City, where Trump is on trial for cheating on his business records. Yes, porn star Stormy Daniels is also fighting for the center of the story, but it's about Donald misleading the tax office on that $130,000 payment to the stacked Porn babe.

Trump's face is morphing into that of, it seems, a giant Orange Muffin of the sort you get at Corner Bakery. Blanche throws out a face only a mother could love. He is the portrait of defeat in this one.

". . .It was your client who went down to that holding area and stood in front of the press and started to speak." Judge Juan Merchan told Trump attorney Blanche. "He went to the press. He didn't need to go in that direction."

"I agree with that," Blanche responded, drawing what The New York Times described as a "large laugh in the overflow room."

That exchange royally pissed off Trump, a dude who rarely concedes anything and who also hates it when people concede things for him.

Oh, well, Blanche's once stellar legal career is at the bottom of that outhouse hole...

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Interesting photo. Students at Columbia University in Lower Harlem cooking it on their laptops. Hey, where'd all those photos of raging students attacking each other and taking over buildings? The agitators?

This is a photo we didn't see during the student protests of the 1960s.

Perhaps some of them were students and these were simply working on course assignments. Ah, that news media. It only wants to give you the dramatic, the sick and the cop beatings.

Study on, Kids! The future is all yours...

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Yes, the Kennedy scion is still in the 2024 presidential race. The question on the minds of pretty much everybody who believes in vaccinations is....why?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr has nothing else to do.

He has no job, no first wife (she killed herself), no chance and no family member behind him. Anyone remember the comedian Pat Paulsen and his useless runs for president?

Yeah...

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Michael Cohen may get maybe not the last laugh but a few there at the end of Donald Trump's Hush Money Trial. He's been to the cesspool and back, his legal career over and that memory of having served as Trump's so-called "fixer" for some 12 years.

They say he went to the lowest-regarded Law School in the country. Ho hum. He still managed to do well in the Big Apple, the City That Never Sleeps, where he still made his cash and even wrote a few books.

Cohen's testimony against Trump is, as they say in Stephen King thrillers, "riveting."

Well, sure. I guess. He was there and, as Vietnam veterans like to say, you had to be there to understand.

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The semi-attractive South Dakota Republican governor, Kristi Noem, decided to have a book written about her and, well, she insisted that a certain incident in her life be included - the one where she kills her dog, "Cricket."

The explanation is somewhat believable: Out in the country, when your dog kills a neighbor's chicken, you shoot it dead. Never mind that her family may have like "Cricket," or that "Cricket" may have barked like Hell to keep from being murdered.

Noem shot him and "Cricket" died.

As did Noem's shot at being picked as Trump's running mate. Oh, well, to Republicans gunfire is Christmas music...

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We have been monitoring this campaign for the 34th Congressional District, pitting Republican Mayra Flores against incumbent Democrat Vicente Gonzalez.

It's still boring, as neither candidate has taken out their Chicano knives. But we're told things will liven-up in the next few weeks.

All we have to date is Vicente Gonzalez bringing home the federal bacon and Flores traipsing across the Rio Grande Valley's eateries.

Her Facebook page is a literal cubby hole of photos showing Flores eating here and there. Yes, she mentions the name of the cafe and says she supports local business, blah, blah, blah.

Pro boxers often train like crazy, get down to weight and then scarf up grub like mad to get ready for fight night.

Mayra is looking rather full these days.

Let's get ready to rumble!!! 15 rounds of boxing.

This, we also say, may be Mayra's "All You Can Eat" Campaign...

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Well, that about covers it for this week, kids.

Oh, one more...

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