E. Jean Carroll schools a nation how to beat a bully, sexual predator, liar, fraud, whiner, welcher, cheat & grifter again, and again, and again. Never give in; never give up; outlast the bastard.

Steve Villano

Jun 29, 2026

(Photo by Steve Villano, of the Statue of Sainte Jeanne D’Arc at the Cathedrale of Notre Dame de Paris, May, 2012, Paris, France.)

It took a tough, tenacious, courageous, intelligent and persistent 80-year old woman to teach this nation how to beat Donald Trump again and again, and how to make him pay for the consequences of his actions, in the only language he understands: costing him money.

Like Sainte Jeanne D’Arc of France, E. Jean Carroll on New York lighted the way to dignity and victory over abject evil, and schooled the bulbous, bellowing bully who has abused and stolen from all of us, is our new national symbol of freedom, independence, and courage, and a true symbol of this nation’s 250 Birthday celebration.

Thrice now, this lightening bolt for justice—E. Jean Carroll—stood up proudly against Donald Trump, an algae-sogged swampbeast of modern times, defying death threats and drubbed the dribbling Donald in courtroom after courtroom, including the highest court in America—the US Supreme Court—which the sputtering, spoiled Fatty Arbuckle of our century—believed he owned. In the end, which came this week, the Supreme Court wouldn’t even listen to the wild-eyed whines of the worst human being in recorded history to ever occupy ANY public office in the United States.

This latest Court decision in favor of E. Jean Carroll, like all of the other legal losses piled up by Trump and his soon-to-be disbarred band of ambulance-chasing lawyers, is yet another clarion call to everyone fighting Trump: never give up, never give in, never capitulate to pressure from a sexual predator, liar, grifter and amoral ghoul.

Saint Jean D’ Carroll showed the con man’s cowardly Christian supporters—who canonized the original Jeanne D’Arc some 500 years after they burned her at the stake— how pure guts, a strong sense of morality, a steel spine, persistence, and an unshakeable determination to never back down in the face of pure evil, will triumph.

This brave woman–sexually assaulted, abused and libeled on a huge scale by Trump–beat the lawless sexual abuser, liar, convicted libeler, and fraud in an arena he has always abused, the way he abuses women: the Courthouse.

Today, she stands astride him once again, sword of justice pointing toward the heavens, our new national shero. Oh, how Trump’s maggot supporters will despise the use of that term, since it represents diversity, and the triumph of right over might & money.

Trump never really saw Jean D’ Carroll’s slaying strikes coming, since she had a few time-tested weapons on her side whose existence Trump has never recognized and cannot comprehend: the law, the truth, and moral courage. In short, she and her kick-ass team of attorneys led by Roberta Kaplan, took no shit, which, in the end, is all Trump really is.

Acting more like Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Trump–who mistook E. Jean Carroll for one of his Epstein girls–also mistook his own lies for the truth.

That approach may work at MAGA cult covens, or or with corporate toadies willing to pay tithes of tributes to be in on the theft of billions of our tax dollars, but not before real, live judges and jurors. When Trump whines that “the courts are out of control,” what he means is that they are out of his control—even the Supreme Court justices he selected, who didn’t want to hear his losers’ voice anymore.

Outraged that he lost a $5 million sexual abuse and libel case to Carroll three years ago, Trump—never a financial nor legal genius with anything he could not steal— decided to double-down, multiplying his initial loss nearly 18 times (to a total of $88 million) by seeking “retribution” against his sex abuse victim in print, at his MAGA mosh pits, and on national television.

The crapulent, spoiled brat, chauffered to private school in his mother’s rose-colored Rolls Royce, just couldn’t stand the fact that years after he physically and emotionally abused her, Carroll–refusing to bow before him–continued to wield her sword of truth, law and moral courage against him, over and over again in Courtroom after courtroom. Each new Trump lie became a new cause of action, costing the financial failure more and more money every time he texted a libel, or opened his mouth—a sure sign that he’s lying.

There are historic implications for this case, which could open the floodgates in the other pending cases against Trump. Courage begets courage. It’s no wonder he’s pilfering billions of dollars of our taxpayer dollars and shaking down corporations down for billions more: he’s stuffing his pockets for the legal battles he knows face him and his family in the years ahead.

With a mostly white, mostly male, mostly middle-class jury finding that for repeatedly lying about the sexual assault Trump was found guilty of committing— an act, which, the following year was included in a new definition of rape under a new New York State Law—and for incessantly smearing the name and reputation of his victim, Donald Trump was punished over and over again. This week, not even his own appointed conservative Justices could stand to hear his whining words once again.

The jurors from urban and suburban counties in and around NYC, where Trump was born, refused to be intimidated by the threats of violence by Trump’s deranged supporters. Neither was the courageous Carroll—whose name, unlike the jurors’, could not be kept secret.

In Mary L. Trump’s Substack column on the day of the verdict in the Carroll case, Trump’s niece, a clinical psychologist, wrote:

“Donald is someone who has gone through his entire life without facing consequences—and I believe he thinks he can get away with everything. Today, that changed. It was one of the first times Donald has been made to answer for his egregious behavior.”

If only the same standards would be applied to the dozens of other sexual assault charges against Trump, brought by women—and young girls—alleged to be as young as 14 years old—when they were abused and assaulted. .

One of the most ominous statements which puts the Carroll verdict and its validation by the highest court in the United States this week in context for what may lie ahead for Trump, once out of office, came from one of Carroll’s attorneys, Shawn Crowley, to MSNBC, on the day of the jury’s decision:

“I believe very strongly after today, that the lesson is that actually, no one is above the law, and, that your behavior, and your statements, and your threats and your lies are gonna catch up to you someday.”

Even if that someday doesn’t come until after Democratic majorities win both houses of Congress later this year, or when Trump is finally out of office, hope is eternal that Crowley’s prediction will come true. It certainly did at the US Supreme Court on June 29, 2026, when they upheld the core Carroll verdict.

But, it was E. Jean Carroll herself, always bouyant and radiant in victory, head held high in the glow of justice achieved, who perfectly articulated the call to action for women just like her, and millions of others fed up with being abused by well-connected, people in power, and stuffed into the closets, dressing rooms and cages those ghouls construct to try to rob humans of fundamental dignity and rights:

“ This is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she’s been knocked down, and a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep women down.”

THIS week, even Trump’s hand-picked Justices on the Supreme Court reaffirmed that message once again, and they did it by silently telling Trump to shut the fuck up.

My love for my father, a working-stiff from Brooklyn who loved his family, his beer and his Yankees, was stronger than all the money & power arrayed against us in New York.

Steve Villano

Jun 20, 2026

(Our family celebrating our last Christmas holidays together a few months before my father, Alphonse Villano (lower, right, seated) died in May, 1993. Seated next to my father (front, left) is my mother Margaret Julia Villano, and standing behind both of them (from right to left) are Carol Villano, our son Matthew Villano—now a father himself—and me.)

My father died on my 21st wedding anniversary, and my first Fathers’ Day of being a son without a father came three weeks later. His death sent me reeling, spiraling out of control for months.

I watched my father die a painful, drawn-out death from a carnivorous cancer which started in his prostate and spread to his spine, paralyzing him.

I read him the sports section everyday for the last two weeks of his life, quoting every line of each Yankee box score, and telling him the horse-racing results from race-tracks around the country. In addition to his family, baseball and horse-racing were my father’s passions. He had watched Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio & Mantle play ball in the Bronx, and had winning tickets on other thoroughbreds named Affirmed, Secretariat, Native Dancer, and Seattle Slew.

Days after my father’s death, my friend Jim Morgo invited me to join him at Yankee Stadium on Father’s Day. He had prime box seats behind the Yankee dugout for a Yankees/Red Sox game. Jim knew I loved the Yankees as much as he adored his beloved Red Sox, especially watching them play at the Stadium. What better way to feel closer to my father, I thought, than to be in the surroundings where we spent our sweetest hours together.

At least once a year, every August since I was 10 years old, my father was given use of the field box owned by the Pershing Square Building Corporation, his employer. Six days a week, every week, for 35 years, my father labored in the bowels of their office building at 100 East 42nd Street, operating the old steam boilers, to make sure the wealthy lawyers and accountants who worked on the upper floors were always comfortable.

My father knew I loved watching double-headers, and that none of the corporate executives who had first dibs on the tickets, wanted to sit in the sweltering sun on an August Sunday to watch two baseball games. For me, six solid hours of baseball was a double treat. The world consisted of nothing but baseball all day, and I had my father all to myself.

The seats I sat in on my first fatherless Father’s Day were only a few rows behind where my father and I sat, year after year, inning after inning. I looked around the Stadium imagining I saw him everywhere. There he was, getting a beer, or mopping the sweat off his brow with a clean, white handkerchief. Each time I spotted an old guy with a beer belly, I thought of my father hauling his paunch up and down those flattened Stadium steps to “hit the ‘head,” as he said.

Maybe coming to Yankee Stadium so soon after my father’s death was not such a good idea, after all. I was grieving him deeply, but quietly. Being there, so close to where he and I shared so many perfect moments, made me melancholy. I was in the final months of my work in Mario Cuomo’s Administration, and was depressed over conversations I knew were going on between Cuomo, George Steinbrenner, Rupert Murdoch and NYS’ Commissioner of Economic Development Vincent Tese, to move the Stadium out of the Bronx and put it on the site of the West Side Rail Yards—where the Hudson Yards are today—in mid-town Manhattan. How dare they even think about doing that, I thought. My father is here.

I sat there, drinking in the Stadium’s atmosphere, memories swirling around me like one of those tiny dust tornadoes that swept across the infield every so often. I looked at the majestic white facades towering over right field and realized what a place of peace this was for us from an otherwise chaotic life. To remain silent while the old Stadium’s future was being decided would have been to commit a sacrilege against the memory of my father.

I knew how forcefully committed the Governor was to economic development, and how the sinister George Steinbrenner was threatening to move the Yankees to New Jersey if he didn’t get a brand new ballpark in Manhattan, where he could build high-priced skyboxes for corporate oligarchs. I knew that Rupert Murdoch was exploring the possibility of building a sprawling entertainment center, including TV studios, on the site of the new Stadium. And I knew that somehow, I had to find a way to stop this from happening.

That “way” came within days of my 1993 Father’s Day visit to Yankee Stadium. I came across a copy of a scheduled secret meeting between the Governor, Steinbrenner, Murdoch and Tese with a two-word topic: “Yankee Stadium.” I knew I had to act quickly to create a public outcry to save the old Ballpark. With the forces of money and political power in New York aligned against the original House that Ruth Built, I took the only route left open to me, in my low-key position where I had neither money nor power: I leaked the information about the “secret” Yankee Stadium meeting to New York Times Sportswriter, Richard Sandomir.

The following day, June 30, 1993, a front page story by the Times’ Ian Fisher carried a headline announcing: “Fearing Move by Yankees, Cuomo Explores Idea for a NewStadium.” The Governor was livid when the story dropped, and was convinced that Sandy Frucher, a former top official in the Administrations of both Gov. Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo, was the source of the leak because Frucher worked for Olympia-York, a company with an interest in the Rail Yards. Sandy insisted it wasn’t him, and he was correct. I was the “source close to the Governor” the New York Times quoted throughout the story.

The uproar caused by the Times story stopped the proposed move of Yankee Stadium to Manhattan, literally, in its tracks. It bought the old Ballpark a reprieve of another 15 years, kept the Bronx Bombers in the Bronx, and enabled the spectacular Hudson Yards—without a new Manhattan Yankee Stadium—to be built.

For me, I wasn’t proud of betraying Mario Cuomo’s trust, nor of his betraying mine in believing he would always do the right thing. More importantly, I wasn’t about to let my pride, or politics, or anything or anyone else for that matter, get in the way of fulfilling a sacred promise I made to my father: to keep the old Ballpark alive, for as long as I could, after he was gone.

Over the next 15 years, I shared dozens of Yankee ballgames at “the old Ballpark” with my son, as we cheered on the historic Yankee teams of 1996 through 2001, with Dan McCourt and Sue Conroy and JoAnne DeCarlo, and firefighters and cops, and all the members of our new extended family in Section 622, who shepherded us through the terrible struggles following 9/11. The “old Ballpark,” helped all of us heal.

And, each time we entered the Stadium before a game, or stayed late to watch the field and the fans empty out, and heard the recording of Sinatra singing “New York, New York”, I could feel my father’s presence, and every once and a while I imagined that I saw him give a wink, to assure us that we’d be all right, and our world would be saved by beauty, and loyalty to each other, and love.

Hillary Clinton’s blaming Joe Biden for Kamala Harris’ loss in 2024 to Donald Trump whitewashes the fact that specific actions by Bill and Hillary in 1999 & 2016, made Trump possible.

Steve Villano

Jun 17, 2026

(New York Times photo of Hillary Clinton at the 92nd Street Y in NYC this week, being interviewed by the New Yorker Editor David Remnick, where she blamed Joe Biden’s late withdrawal from the 2024 Presidential Campaign as the reason for Trump’s election.”)

I

If Hillary and Bill Clinton only understood the meaning of the word “grace” and slipped into the background, allowing time and perspective to be their just judge. But they are terrified of letting that happen, because what they allege of others, can easily be said of them.

Fearful of what a balanced, long-term evaluation of them would yield, the Clintons continue to blame everyone (the Russians, Bernie Sanders, a ‘vast right wing conspiracy,” and now Joe Biden) but themselves in order to temper history’s harsh decree of how they wrecked the Democratic Party and set the stage for the rise of a deranged White Supremacist, anti-democratic demagogue and soul-less grifter like Donald Trump.

From Bill Clinton’s refusal to step down and pass the torch of leadership to Al Gore in 1999 after Clinton was found to have abused his power and sexually abused Monica Lewinsky, to Hillary’s own refusal to step aside in the summer of 2016, in favor of a Biden/Booker ticket — as Party Chair Donna Brazile was suggesting — after her “abuse of her personal emails” destroyed her own candidacy for President, both Clintons wiped out the hard-fought working class work of the Democratic Party, delivering the Presidency first to George W. Bush, and then, 16-years later, to Trump.

Both Bill & Hillary’s narcissistic blindness to the grave political damage their arrogance directly caused 16 years apart, created the political conditions directly responsible for giving us another horrendous Bush presidency, a War in Iraq based upon false pretenses (which Hillary voted to support as a Senator), Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the U.S. Supreme Court, (to join Clarence Thomas, appointed by the first President Bush), and the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, connected directly to Bill Clinton’s repeal of the Glass-Steagall banking regulation act in 1999.

The consequences of that economic catastrophe were suffered overwhelmingly by millions of working families who lost their homes and modest investments — and were never made financially whole again — while the large banks and financial institutions were bailed out of any losses by the new Democratic Administration of Barack Obama. (NOTE: This week, Barack Obama’s Presidential Library opens to the public, an $850 million fortress which writer David Sirota has tagged “an Oligarch funded shrine” because of the enormous private contributions from “the bankers who cratered the economy” which Obama refused to punish: https://www.levernews.com/the-obama-shrine-brought-to-you-by-wall-street/)

The latest self-serving, Clinton “blame game,” happened this week as reported in the New York Times, on June 16, 2026, in a story headlined: “ Hillary Clinton says Biden’s Re-Election Bid Was a Terrible Mistake.” In the story, Hillary Clinton — who ran an entitled, lackluster and terrible campaign against Donald Trump in 2016 — reportedly told David Remnick of the New Yorker that:

“If Mr. Biden had decided to “pass the torch” and the Democratic Party had held a competitive presidential primary,” Mrs. Clinton told Mr. Remnick, “whoever emerged from that contest — whether it was the vice president, or a governor, or a senator or anybody else — would have beaten Donald Trump.”

Lost on Hillary Clinton, of course, was the irony that the exact same thing was said by many of us Democratic activists who believed that if her husband stepped aside after his power and sexual abuse of Lewinsky and his impeachment, and opened up the Democratic nominating process in 2000 to either Vice-President Al Gore, or some other Democrat — a governor, or senator or anybody else — the outcome of the 2000 election may have been far different. And, the identical thing was said about Hillary’s own candidacy in 2016, crippled by her own arrogance about her emails, which she finally acknowledged to Remnick this week, undid her campaign and helped hand the Presidency to Trump. Anybody else but Hillary Clinton “would have beaten Donald Trump,” in 2016.

Equally suspect in the role elite establishment connections played in the 2024 election was when Kamala Harris’ first act was to call Hillary & Bill Clinton to discuss running to succeed Biden in 2024. Not surprisingly, establishment corporate Democrats running the 2024 Democratic National Convention gave prominent speaking roles to BOTH Hillary and Bill Clinton while many of us progressive Democratic activists — who didn’t want Joe Biden to serve more than one-term in the first place — screamed about how elevating the Clintons in the 2024 campaign would hand the election to Trump.

After having gone all-in for Kamala Harris’ election, I was so infuriated by the prominent appearance of the Clintons at the 2024 DNC that I complained about it in an August 18, 2024 piece on Substack entitled: “Why Are the Clintons STILL in the Spotlight? which I also circulated to members of the Democratic National Committee:

Why Are The Clintons STILL In The Spotlight?

Steve Villano

·August 18, 2024

The pertinent section of that piece :

“If there’s an Achilles Heel in this moment — which should be all about Kamala Harris and our future — it is dregging up the ghosts of Clintons’ past, which, I suppose, was inevitable with the presence of John Podesta and Neera Tandem, lurking among Biden’s team, and the Zelig-like, power-sniffing appearance of Gene Sperling on the new Harris crew.

I’m sure some of the old Clintonistas on the DNC and involved with the convention planning who cannot escape the narrow-box thinking that gave us Donald Trump, argued that Bill “must” be featured as a former President, and Hillary must also speak because she almost broke the glass ceiling 8 years ago — although the visual of Podesta delivering Hillary’s campaign eulogy under the still-intact glass roof of NYC’s Javits Center still gives me night terrors.

I’d rather hear from Liz Cheney instead of Hillary — who ran an abominable campaign for President in 2016, utterly ignoring the Midwest, and enabling Trump to get elected — and from Laura or George W. Bush on the night when Bill Clinton is slated to bring his wax-museum presence to the podium. A double-dose of the Clintons is hardly the way to appeal to undecided voters in 2024 who only voted for Trump eight years earlier because they found the alternative not “like-able enough” as Barack Obama hoped Hillary would be.”

But they wouldn’t be the oligarch-loving, self-aggrandizing Clintons — whose minions are STILL trying to resist change and reject new leadership into the Democratic Party — if they didn’t maneuver for protecting the status quo, and the institutions which have supported them, and become ossified, like their supporters.

Ten years ago, after spending $3,000 of my own money to travel to North Carolina for a month and do Voter Protection in an open-carry, swing state for Hillary’s 2016 campaign, I saw the hollowness of Hillary’s own campaign for President from the inside and wrote about it 2-weeks following her loss to the most corrupt individual in the history of the United States to seek the Presidency:

Writing on Medium.com, my piece on November 23, 2016, was entitled “Can a Campaign that Lacked Courage Find it Now?” (https://medium.com/@stevevillano/can-a-presidential-campaign-that-lacked-courage-find-it-now-49be468881d5):

“I was going to wait longer than two weeks after the Presidential Election of 2016 to tell this insider’s story about Hillary Clinton’s campaign for President.

The looming deadline of this Friday, November 25, (2016) for Clinton supporters to step-up and challenge questionable vote tallies and voter suppression tactics in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania has compelled me to come forward now. Bold, legal actions on the part of the Clinton campaign — unlike the tepid response of Al Gore 16 years ago — hold the possibility of setting aside this year’s election results on the basis of constitutional and voting rights violations.

Whether or not the Clinton campaign has the courage to do it is another question entirely. What’s at stake is nothing less than American democracy, and the rights of free citizens to vote.

I experienced the campaign’s lack of courage first hand when I traveled to North Carolina to do Voter Protection for Hillary Clinton for the last four weeks before the election. As a Californian, with friends and former labor union colleagues in Raleigh, I chose to work in North Carolina — at my own expense — for two reasons: 1. The state’s history of voter suppression in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby; 2) the critical importance of North Carolina as a swing or “checkmate” state for the Clinton campaign.

The North Carolina Democratic Coordinated Campaign knew I was an activist writer when they agreed to take me on as a full-time, unpaid volunteer at their Raleigh, NC, headquarters. I was assigned to do Voter Protection, because of my law degree and my expressed interest in the area.

During my first week of working with the campaign, I studied the State’s Election Law, the Federal Judge’s July decision overturning North Carolina’s Voter “suppression” law of 2013 as “surgical discrimination,” and sat in on two training sessions for citizens volunteering to participate in voter protection activities at the polls. I was impressed by the volunteers: law-abiding, fellow Baby Boomers, passionately devoted to protecting people’s right to vote, as their civic duty.

On Sunday, October 16, 2016, following a terrific Voter Protection training session in Wilmington, NC — a city with a history of White Supremacist violence against local Black leadership (not unlike the murder of hundreds of Black people on “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, Oklahoma) I awoke to the news that a GOP campaign office in Hillsborough, Orange County, was firebombed during the night. The office was rarely used by GOP campaign workers, a local Republican operative told me, and the message and technique of the single Molotov cocktail bombing was suspicious. Within hours of the bombing, Donald Trump took to Twitter to pin the illegal act on “Hillary Clinton supporters” and “Democrats” with no evidence. Having worked with both of those groups, I knew those charges were patently false, and smacked of a too-quickly issued cover for a crime, still unsolved five weeks later.

So, I did what I do. I wrote about the incident as someone with first-hand knowledge of the decent people accused of a crime they did not commit. To me it smelled like the “Reichstag Fire,” of 1933, when the Nazi’s blamed the communists and Jews for starting a blaze in the German Parliament — a fire started by the Nazis themselves.

The National Memo, published my piece, and I circulated it on my blog and on medium.com. The piece was a powerful defense of the North Carolina Democrats and their respect for the rule of law and The National Memo’s headline reflected that: “Why North Carolina Democrats Would Never Bomb Orange County GOP Office.” Among the reasons I gave was that Orange County, NC — which contains the University of North Carolina — was one of the most reliably Democratic counties in the nation, giving Barack Obama over 70% of its vote each time he ran.

Monday morning, October 17, when the article was read by The National Memo’s 300,000 subscribers, the Clinton’s Campaign, was so upset by my article (particularly the paragraph where I wrote of the role the Reichstag Fire played in German political history) that they told me to either “take the piece down” or leave the campaign by the end of the day. The young, campaign operative who directed me to to “take down the piece” had no idea what the Reichstag Fire was.

I refused to “take down” the piece, citing my First Amendment Rights to write what I pleased, both as a professional writer and as a private citizen. I was an unpaid volunteer doing Voter Protection, who traveled from California to North Carolina on my own dime and the campaign could not censor me. The Clinton Campaign’s 20-something-year-old- paid staffer was officious and inflexible, fearing any fallout that could come from my article. He insisted that I “take it down”, or leave the campaign office immediately. Again, I refused to “take my article down” — a preposterous request, since the piece had already been circulated nationwide around the internet. I was physically escorted out of the campaign’s Raleigh office by mid-afternoon for being “too radical.”

I spent the rest of my four weeks in North Carolina extensively covering the elections across the state, interviewing Trump and Clinton voters, attending events from the State Fair to rallies with both Obamas, Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton, closely examining the history of voter suppression of African American voters in the state, and writing a half-dozen stories for various media outlets. I came away with an in-depth view of the kind of cautious, take-no-chances campaign waged by the Clinton team in North Carolina and across the nation, that made it possible for the hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners Trump campaign to prevail.”

Now, 10 years later, the attention-starved Clintons — knowing full well that an even more malleable and insatiable media STILL can’t resist anything they say — have focused on a new and easy target — Joe Biden — for their endless circle of blame that goes back at least two decades, and never, ever, ever includes themselves.

Who will be Hillary — or Bill’s — next target for blame? Bernie Sanders? Oh right, they attacked Bernie already. Graham Platner? The Maine Senatorial candidate that establishment Dems love to hate? AOC, when she primaries Chuck Schumer in New York State in 2028? Candidates rejecting AIPAC money, and calling Israel’s actions Genocide in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon? Candidates campaigning for a Wealth Tax on oligarchs in California and around the country?

Just go away, Hillary and Bill. No one wants to participate in your blame game anymore. It’s not now, nor has it ever been, productive. Stop wasting precious air, and internet (and print) time attacking us — the enemy is already within the gates, destroying the White House, and the nation, and taking a wrecking ball to every single human and constitutional right. Why are you still searching for others to blame? Accept your own responsibility and move on.

Fold up your large shadows, and let a thousand new flowers bloom. Your season under the kleig lights is over. Get out there and raise a ton of money for Voting Rights in local communities around the country or for Jamie Raskin’s Freedom Summer Initiative.

But, please: have the good sense to be anonymous about it, which according to Maimonides is the highest form of giving. Your day in the sun is done. Have the grace to know when it’s time to go.

The political piling on of Graham Platner of Maine is an insult to all people, with many attacks being orchestrated by Right Wing/Christian Nationalist operatives weakening Women Rights for decades.

Steve Villano

Jun 12, 2026

(Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testifying under oath, before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018, concerning her sexual assault allegation against Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Despite Dr. Blasey-Ford’s compelling, credible, non-partison and under oath testimony, Maine Senator Susan Collins cast the deciding vote in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the US Supreme Court. Four years later, on June 24, 2022, Justice Kavanaugh—who told Senator Collins he believed Roe v. Wade was settled law, voted with the Court’s right-wing majority to overturn the 50-year old decision which gave women autonomy over their own health care decisions. It was the single most damaging blow to Women’s Rights in half-a-century in the United States. Contrast the sworn Congressional testimony—under penality of perjury—of Dr. Blasey-Ford, with the unfounded accusations made by GOP operative Lyndsey Fifield, a long-time employee of the Extreme Right Wing Heritage Foundation—the authors of Project 2025, a religious screed against Women’s Rights and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,—which crusaded for decades for the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Fifield also led a group of pro-Trump Republicans to support Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court in 2018, and campaigned for Susan Collins, Graham Platner’s opponent, for Senator from Maine. Fifield’s statements were politically motivated, extremely biased, and made on social media and to the press,, where she was not under oath, nor under penalty of perjury for false ore misleading statements.)

((In a column released on June 12 across multiple media platforms, the brilliant Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Melinda Henneberger, who has written for the Kansas City Star and the Sacremento Bee , presents her perspective of “The Platner Problem: When Principles Meet Power.”

The column, which is easily accessible on Substack or via Google, could just as well have been headlined: “The Platner Problem: When People of Principle Who Care Deeply About Women and Women’s Rights are Manipulated by Malevolent Forces Dedicated to Destroying What They Care About.”

Melinda Henneberger’s writing and perspectives on life and humanity are often superb, but in the case of her writing concerning Graham Platner—in the context of decades of blatant destruction of human rights, and women’s health care equity which have been central goals of the Heritage Foundation, the GOP, Christian Nationalists and the Trump Administration—Henneberger’s writing is woefully short of facts, and long on comparisons that are not based in the lived reality of what’s going on in this country regarding economic injustice and civil & human rights—the biggest victims of which are women, the poor, people of color and the LGBTQ community.

I posted a streamlined version of this rebuttal to Henneberger’s column on her Substack page, and offer my fuller response here for my own readers. Henneberger is an important voice for all to hear, and because of her great credibility in the past, it is imperative that those of us who respect her abilities & insights, but disagree with her conclusions, speak out loudly and clearly, while freedom of expression still exists in the United States.

Here is my response, expanded for my own social media:

**

“Melinda: This column is so unscrupulously foul on so many levels. First, let’s examine some fundamental elements of fairness I expect from a Pulitzer Prize winning writer/journalist:

1. Did you go to Maine? 2. Have you interviewed Platner? His wife? 3. Did you interview Hannah Pingree, the young, progressive Democrat running for Governor? 4. Did you interview Representative Chellie Pingree, the long time women’s right advocate whose family has deep roots in the State, and she has long been a leader of Progressives nationwide? 5) Did you interview in person the ethically challenged Lyndsey Fifield, long-time political operative for the Heritage Foundation and opponent of Women’s Rights?

I expect nothing less from a writer of your stature and ability, yet you tell us you divined this perspective from a retreat, not from speaking with Maine citizens. That’s like Trump saying he knows “cheating in elections,” just because he knows it. Where’s your testing of the credibility of your sources, and your information?

Secondly, your Nader comparison is not even close to reality and ripped apart from any historical context. Yes Nader, and Susan Sarandon, were wrong in 2000, especially because the public records of Gore and Bush on all fundamental questions of human rights , and the composition of the Judiciary, were miles apart. Even those of us activists who detested Bill Clinton, and his sexual abuse of Monica Lewinsky and sense of arrogant entitlement, saw the clear difference between the political and personal philosophies of Clinton (Bill) and Gore.

Many of us ripped into Nader for being so narrowly focused on corporate influence in both parties, and being blind to the difference between the two Presidential Candidates on social justice issues, human rights, environmental justice, and the composition of the nation’s Federal Courts. Your brief plane ride of epiphany next to Nader, ignores all nuance and the depth of those differences, as Nader did. And, to make matters worse, you are doing the same kind of shallow, out-of-context reasoning that Nader did, which gave us George W. Bush, the War in Iraq, Justice John Roberts Justice Samuel Alito, and the cratering of the US economy costing millions of people their homes and livelihoods..

Before we even get to Susan Collins sell out of women by enabling Brett Kavanaugh, an accused sex offender, to become a Supreme Court Justice, it’s important to note that It was George W. Bush, guided by Karl Rove, Nicole Wallace and Steve Schmidt, who gave us John Roberts and Sam Alito, two of the most destructive voices on Voting , Civil and Human rights since Justice Roger Taney and his decision on Dred Scott. Nicole Wallace, who now Podcasts on “The Best People,” along with Schmidt, a self-righteous, self-aggrandizing scold, led the campaign out of the White House to put both Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court. I’m not even mentioning their cheerleading for Sarah Palin. They were merely doing what they were told by their boss—indefensible from a moral standpoint, especially when two decades later the extraordinary damage done by Roberts and Alito, has ripped apart the US Constitution and this country’s desultory attempt to civilize itself on Civil Rights.

Even such a civil rights advocate like Joe Biden bears responsibilty for enabling the Supreme Court to be poisoned by not giving Anita Hill’s testimoney enough credibility, nor giving her Congressional protection, and running away fron the false and performative “racism” claims pushed by Clarence Thomas—himself an enemy of civil rights for others— and the deeply cynical forces of racism in this country—not unlike what’s being done by the Heritage Foundation and Christian Nationalists on the matter of misogyny right now, in Maine. Those groups of trolls and troglodytes wrote the book on mistreating women, winked at rape and sexual harassment laws, undermined women’s economic equality, and are actively working to turn the clock back in this country to before the time women were granted the right to vote.

Some of us, going back 30 years, excoriated Biden for his abject failure as the then- Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mario Cuomo, with whom I worked at the time, was furious over Biden’s failure to use his position to defend Anita Hill and her testimony, and his outrage of such terrible timidity on Biden’s part came close to pushing Cuomo to overcome his personal misgivings, and run for President.

You ignore all of this history going back some 30 years, which made Susan Collins support of Kavanaugh—even more egregious—despite her constant blathering of giving nothing but lip service to the urgency of maintaining the health care and human rights protections of Roe v. Wade.

Some of us who crusaded for a Women’s Right to choose going back over 50 years, to when New York State passed it’s liberalized abortion law in 1970—3 years before Roe. v. Wade—find Collins caving in to 50 years of women’s health care, and civil rights progress, unconscionable—not to mention her 90% voting record in concert with the most misogynistic federal administration in US history.

NONE of that forgives Platner’s stupid , offensive decisions about insensitive,, tough-guy tattoos, unacceptable sexting, and misognyistic comments. Yet, you repeatedly glide over the clear political motivation of his primary accuser, a GOP right wing operative, out of the Roger Stone school, who worked for the most anti-women GOP organization of the past 40 years, the Heritage Foundation.

I suggest you re-readProject 2025, it’s attacks on DEI, on women, people of color and the LGBTQ community. To write as much about Platner’s past—without examining precisely where his primary accuser is coming from, is not “victim blaming”—since her public support for Heritage, Kavanaugh and Collins make her far from an innocent victim. Fifield is a perpetrator of pernicious policies against women’s rights. She is no Virginia Roberts Giuffre, and Platner is no Jeffey Epstein, Donald Trump or any other of the malevolent misogynists and pedophile protectors who have changed laws and bastardized institutions—like the military—to flagrantly discriminate against women. How can you ignore those actual, practical, catastrophic consequences of Lyndsey Fifield’s well-funded political activity over the past decade?

NONE of this occurs in a vacuum, nor without historical and personal context, yet you continually bulldoze all of that concering Collins, and her political and financial cronies campaigning against Platner, under the guise of “misogyny” when their own actual enacted policies have caused grave harm and been violent to women’s rights These duiplicitous, cynical, abusers of fairness and justice gave us Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court; covered up the Epstein files and Trump’s involvement in them, ripped apart Roe. v. Wade protections at the federal level and in state after state, and are working hard bury women’s rights back to the Dark Ages, How can you ignore all this?

Finally, your writing fails to mention the other major source of opposition to Platner coming from AIPAC, because of his outspoken opposition to Israel’s Genocide in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, his strong statements about cutting off all US military aid to Israel, and his determination to lead the Democrats into taking a powerful anti-war position. With Susan Collins unblemished record of supporting the past four wars, and of unquestioningly doing AIPAC’s bidding on Israel, how can you not examine this as a motivation to bring Platner down, and disenfranchise the voters of Maine?

As a superb journalist, I am suprised you have not questioned the integrity of the New York Times assigning reporter Katie Glueck, a past “AIPAC Activist of the Year” to cover BOTH the NYC Mayoral Campaign of Zoran Mamdani—where support for Israel was a key issue—AND the campaign of Graham Platner for Senator from Maine, when his criticism of AIPAC and Israel—and Susan Collins slavish support— is very well known. How did that egregiouis violation of journalistic integrity escape your notice? Does it matter to you that the Times reporter has a political axe to grind against Platner, as does the Heritage Foundation operative whose unverified statements Glueck relies upon? How can the working women and men of Maine not feel that cultural elites outside of their own communities and billionaire-backed financial interests are working overtime to keep them down?

I challenge you to layout, side-by-side, what Platner has done and said about women, next to what Brett Kavanagugh (and Justices Thomas, Roberts & Alito) have done.

I challenge you to research and write about the extraordinary destruction of human and civil rights, of women’s health care, and economic justice, being implemented right before our eyes every single day by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, Christian Nationalists, and the Trump Administration, and their enablers, like Senator Susan Collins.

In an extraordinary hour-long interview with the New York Times (and available on YouTube) Scott Pelley recounts in detail the story behind Bari Weiss’”Murder” of CBS News’ 60 Minutes.

Steve Villano

Jun 07, 2026

(YouTube cover photo of the New York Times interview with Scott Pelley. Please click on the link BELOW these two introductory paragraphs to get direct access to the Interview.)

I struggled for days to write something that mattered about the Bari Weiss-driven “murder” of 60 Minutes, the flagrant $16 million bribe the old ownership of CBS paid Donald Trump to get the Paramount merger approved, and the importance of high-integrity journalists, like Scott Pelley, to the truth, to honest and fair jounalism, and to the very essence of dermocracy itself.

Then Pelley gave this video interview to the New York Times, answering all those questions, and making anything any of the rest of us have to say on the subject not relevant. So, I am making this full and remarkable interview available to all of my readers/viewers, right here. I urge you to spend the time viewing this incredibly important event in our country’s history, and consider it the final hour-long episode of a full, truthful, and no-holds barred episode of 60 Minutes with Scott Pelley:

A new documentary film entitled “Mario” premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival next week. I had a front-row seat observing Mario Cuomo for 8 years, and my unedited film still runs in my mind.

Steve Villano

May 30, 2026

(Mario Matthew Cuomo, r., speaks with my son, Matt Villano, following an exhibition basketball game in 1990; the inscription on the photo says “Matt, You make the shirt look good!” (photo by Ted Kaplan).

The brilliant Kunhardt Film Family—father Peter W, and son’s Teddy & George—have produced the first, first-rate documentary about former New York State Governor Mario Cuomo debuting at the NYC’s Tribeca’s Film Festival on June 4, 2026, at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in Manhattan.

The multiple Emmy Award winning family film team—which has made many HBO Original documentaries— has a long and superb track record of making movies that matter about individuals who have had a positive impact on improving our lives. Their filmography includes docs about transformational leaders like Barack Obama, John McCain, Gloria Steinem, and the Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson. This new film, entitled “Mario” fits squarely into that genre.

“We are trying to make moral leadership the core of many of the films we do,” said Peter W. Kunhardt, now 73, who founded the Kunhardt Production Company in 1987 (now Kunhardt Films) with his father, Philip Kunhardt, Jr., and his brother, Philip Kunhardt, III.

The Kunhardt family, which dates back to Peter’s great-great-grandfather who was a Major in the Union Army in the Civil War; his great grandfather Historian Frederick Hill Meserve; and his grandmother Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt, who wrote the classic children’s book, Pat the Bunny, merits an HBO documentary about their own unique place in U.S. history. Peter Kunhardt himself—not to be confused with his son Peter, Jr., who has run the Gordon Parks Foundation for the past 15 years—worked on ABC News “20/20” for a decade before founding the family film company in 1987.

“What we are really after is the kernal of character who is universal, whom people can identify with, which is the driving force within someone,” Peter Kunhardt told Westchester Magazine (November 18, 2018, “Reel to Reel,” by Gale Ritterhoff’).

The Kunhardt’s could not have found a more fitting person to apply their storytelling knack to for “moral leadership,” than Mario M. Cuomo, whose unshakeable sense of values, integrity, morality and personal purpose was the focus of my book “Tightrope: Balancing a Life Between Mario Cuomo & My Brother (Heliotrope Books, NY, 2017) I have since published a number of articles profiling Mario Cuomo as the “Anti-Trump.” One such story appeared in the Albany Times Union at the time of Trump’s first Inauguration in January, 2017. Link here: http://socialvisionproductions.com/2017/mario-cuomo-the-anti-trump/

I wrote the book (and many subsequent articles) because I became increasingly infuriated when I was asked at weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and every event where people knew I worked with Mario Cuomo, if it was true that Cuomo opted out of running for President because he had “mob connections.” Time after time, that thoughtless comment triggered me, and I transformed into the skunk at many “garden parties” by pugnaciously retorting “you wouldn’t ask that question if his name didn’t end in a vowel.”

I decided it was time for me to tell the story as only I could: that I knew from first hand experience that Cuomo had NO mob connections, because I did, and that my brother’s mob associates, considered Mario Cuomo “untouchable,” because of his impeccable integrity. Then, when people asked again, I could simply say, “Read my book,” and walk away from them, with my temper a bit more in check.

In Tightrope, (pages 118-120) I detailed my first-hand observations of the moment, in my judgement, that I knew Mario Cuomo would never run for President:

“ In early September, 1986, the Governor was already in a testy mood. His re-election, vb was never in doubt, but he was no longer having fun. The press, led by the New York Post,was pummeling (his son) Andrew’s law firm for allegedly doing business with State agencies, and for accepting clients who were seeking to curry favor with the Governor by hiring a law firm in which his son was a partner.

Halfway to the speaking event we were headed for (I sat in the unmarked State Trooper’s car directly behind the driver) the car phone rang. It was Andrew. I watched Mario Cuomo pick up the phone and listen quietly to his son for several minutes, deeply massaging his forehead with the large hand that wasn’t cradling the phone to his ear. Suddenly, the Governor staeted shouting into the receiver.

“What do you mean you’re a liability to me? What kind of talk is that? You’re tired, you’re working too hard on this campaign and you need some rest. Don’t let me hear you talking like that,” Mario Cuomo said to his oldest son, slamming down the car phone into it’s cradle.

There was complete silence in the car for a few moments. Finally, the Governor spoke, seething with anger.

“Imagine that. My own son, thinking he’s a liability to me. This is some god-damned business,” Mario Cuomo said. “You go into government because you try to do some good, and what do they do? They attack your kids. They spread rumors that somehow you must ne connected to the Mafia because your name ends in a vowel. And for what? All because you want to serve? At what price? And when did my kids ever agree to pay the price.”

I watched him look out of the passenger-side window of the black, unmarked State Police car, his anger barely contained and knew at that precise moment that Mario Cuomo would not run for President of the United States; he would never subject his children to the brutality of a Presidential campaign.

“Ah, the whole thing stinks,” Mario Cuomo said, waiving his right hand as if chasing away a fly, swatting his frustration into the air; brushing away the stench of stories which hurt his son and his family, and gagged him. With one wave of his large hand, he pushed aside any of the tightly reasoned arguments being advanced in favor of a “Cuomo for President” campaign in th next (1988) Presidential election.

“Mario Cuomo understood how news, rumor & innuendo worked better than any American politician of his time. He knew that a story, no matter how far-fetched, took on a life of its’ own, once reported and repeated. . .The damage was often subliminal, a mere suggestion to a jury quickly withdrawn, and it became impossible to erase from public consciousness despite detailed rebuttals or outright denials. All that was necessary for the phony charge to pass for fact, was for it to be repeated over and over again, until it became one with the Cuomo name, indivisible.

“Above all, he would not allow his children to be maligned by anyone or used as props in the no-holds barred media reality show which political campaigns were quickly becoming. His family had not asked for a life in public service; he had, and he would stand as a bulwark against their being bullied. I loved him for leaping to Andrew’s defense, and admired his certainity in being an unflinchingly protective father.”

In the Tribeca Film Festival synopsis that accompanies the information about the Kunhardt’s documentary “Mario,” one line jumps out and underscores the truth I observed first-hand over eight years:

“As he finally ends his political life and turns more deeply to family, Cuomo’s story is more than just one of leadership, but one of love, empathy and commitment to service that goes beyond a chronicle of political life.”

Only a multi-generational film-making family like Peter Kunhardt’s, with deep roots in American history, a passion for moral clarity, a track-record of uncovering universal “kernals of character” and with a fierce loyalty to those they love, could do justice to telling the story of the humanity of Mario Cuomo.