Opinion
Trump's inner circle caught in cover-up that's enough to end his reign of terror
The biggest political cover-up in American history has been taking place in plain sight for the last two years, and it’s finally reached a point where even the most loyal of Trump supporters are being forced to admit it.
Jeffrey Epstein has been Donald Trump’s political albatross ever since he returned to office. Trump kept promising to release them while on the campaign trail — all while flying around on the repainted Lolita Express, a screaming confession burning fuel above everyone in the sky.
Calling the Epstein Files scandal “Trump’s Watergate” isn’t nearly strong enough. Nixon had some guys break into a hotel room. What Trump has done to this country is exponentially worse because the ripple effect is impacting the entire world.
Along with never challenging the 2024 election, I’ll never understand why the Harris/Walz campaign never used Trump’s well-documented friendship with Epstein against him, especially after thousands of pages of previously sealed evidence were finally released in January 2024. The whole “we go high” thing has never really worked for Democrats in this current garbage fire of a political climate, and it’s well past the time for the party to start playing dirty.
The bombshell revelation that Trump’s staff met nearly a year ago to discuss the Epstein Files is compounded by the fact that they did it in the Situation Room. It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that the most criminal administration in history further sullied the People’s House by using that space to figure out how to keep protecting Trump instead of focusing on bringing justice to victims.
Covering up the Epstein Files, or at least distracting from them whenever possible, has been Trump’s main priority for the last 17 months. It’s why he keeps bombing Iran, because if the Iran War ends, he’ll have to figure out a different country to bomb. It’s why he keeps vaguely threatening Cuba; he’s got to have multiple distractions on hand, just in case.
This cover-up includes literally everyone who works in the White House, with JD “Vladimir Futon” Vance at the helm. If he had the sense of a goat, Vance would’ve sprinted to the press with the Epstein Files to declare to all the world that Trump is indeed implicated.
They turned the Situation Room into the Epstein War Room.
The Vice President and every member of the administration have been complicit in the Epstein Files cover-up all along. Every lie they’ve told the American people matters, especially the ones told during any of the hearings that have already been held.
As an additional sidebar, this is also another example of journalists learning damaging information about Trump and his staff, but sitting on it until their book about it was being released, a la Bob Woodward. I can’t reconcile any reason to sit on the knowledge that Trump understood just how deadly the Coronavirus was, but, then again, I also can’t comprehend anyone choosing loyalty to Trump over our country. Silly me needing to have morals and whatnot.
But returning to the “How is this even happening” of it all, what we’re talking about is far beyond a hotel break-in and enters right into a very serious and real discussion about removing this corrupt regime that has defied everything that the presidency is supposed to stand for and continues to evade any accountability.
They are covering up potential evidence that Trump was part of Epstein's awful crimes. It’s time to stop sugarcoating anything about the Epstein Files and start laying the groundwork to end Trump’s reign of terror.
Article Two, Section Four of the Constitution lays out the framework to do just that. In my heart of hearts, I want to believe there’s already a Shadow Cabinet in place, but I also wanted to believe Democrats were going to fight a lot harder for Kamala Harris. Anyway, it states that the President, Vice President, and “all civil officers of the United States” can be removed from office “if convicted of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
All of those things have already been happening all day, every day, starting from the day Trump wouldn’t put his tiny hand on the Bible when he was sworn in during an indoor ceremony because it was too cold out for him, plus he didn’t want to have to face yet another sparse inauguration crowd.
Democrats need to sweep the midterms in both the House and Senate so we can have our version of the Nuremberg Trials in January 2027. And the Epstein Files need to remain front and center every time Democrats are in front of cameras or are otherwise speaking on the record. That’s five months' worth of daily accountability, and we’re all going to have to stay on our elected officials to stay on message.
Trump's cruel plan requires him to look like a bumbling fool
A Cable TV host did an extended rant a few days ago about how many cases Trump has lost in court, arguing that “these guys are really bad at what they do” or words to that effect. I beg to differ: they know exactly what they’re doing, and getting convictions to imprison protesters isn’t (yet — they haven’t yet finished building out their network of concentration camps) their real goal.
Stop thinking of it as law enforcement and start thinking about it as punishment and intimidation. That’s their real goal, at least for the moment.
The indictment, the predawn FBI raid, the mugshot, the bail hearing, the ankle monitor, the year of massive, retirement-fund-draining legal bills and sleepless nights, and the GoFundMe that a protestor, politician, schoolteacher, or a local trustee has to set up just to defend herself against the most powerful government on Earth: those are the punishments that Trump and his lickspittles are so gleeful about inflicting on those of us they decide to target.
Former Trump DHS Chief of Staff Miles Taylor, noting last week that he’s heard more indictments of Trump “enemies” are coming soon, summarized it this way:
“The Soviet-ization of American life is farther along than most people realize.”
The eventual dismissal in court or quiet non-indictment by a grand jury is just paperwork stapled to the end of a campaign of brutal intimidation that already did exactly what it was built to do.
A prosecutor who only brings cases he expects to win is enforcing the law. But, in Trump’s case, corrupt prosecutors who keep bringing cases that grand juries reject, that judges ridicule, that they themselves abandon the moment real scrutiny shows up, aren’t trying to win at all. They’re trying to make examples of people, to destroy them financially, and to intimidate anybody else who may think of speaking out.
Because making examples of people who criticize those in power is Rule One in the Dictator’s Playbook.
This isn’t even a new or modern idea here in America.
Back in 1798, President John Adams and his rightwing Federalists pushed through the Sedition Act, which made it a crime to publish anything false, scandalous, or malicious about the president. The most dramatic target was a sitting liberal congressman from Vermont named Matthew Lyon, who went to jail for writing that Adams had “an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp.”
Adams had his federal prosecutors go after more than two dozen people, most of them opposition newspaper editors, for the “crime” of criticizing him. It was such a naked abuse of power that horrified Americans swept Adams out of office in the election of 1800 and handed the presidency to Thomas Jefferson, who pardoned every last one of them and expired most of the law.
The Framers had just finished writing into the First Amendment the right of the people “peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” and Adams turned right around and tried to make exactly that a felony.
Everything Trump’s DOJ is doing right now is a sequel to that story, with an even more fascist edge to it.
For example, you can see the whole brutal scam running in a case just outside Chicago. Six immigration-rights allies, including a former congressional candidate, an Oak Park village trustee, and a Democratic ward committeeperson, got hit with a felony conspiracy charge for allegedly surrounding an ICE agent’s SUV at a protest outside the Broadview detention facility.
They were painted as a “violent mob” in the media, each faced up to seven years in prison, and they spent the better part of a year raising money and living with all of that hanging over their heads. It was a living hell, the sort of thing that disrupts lives, loses jobs, and even can stress marriages to the point of breaking, which is exactly what Trump’s malicious legal goons intended.
Then — in a move I suspect they hadn’t anticipated — a curious federal judge pried loose the original grand jury transcripts, and the whole thing came apart in dramatic fashion.
The transcripts show the grand jury had actually refused to indict, returning a rare “no bill,” and that when one juror said out loud that the case was a “crock of s–t,” the lead prosecutor simply dismissed him and sent him home.
It took the ethics-free lawyers still willing to work for Trump and Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche three separate tries before prosecutors finally squeezed out the indictment they wanted, and the judge later said she’d never before seen the kind of misconduct she saw in those pages.
To avoid a public humiliation, days before the trial was set to begin, the U.S. Attorney dropped everything with prejudice, meaning it can never be refiled; one of the defendants broke down in tears and cried out loud in the courtroom when she finally heard it was over.
If Broadview was a fluke, you could chalk it up to one rogue prosecutor having a bad year. But it wasn’t a fluke. It’s the template.
Out in Los Angeles, a former Marine and longtime community activist named Alejandro Orellana got indicted on felony conspiracy and civil-disorder charges, facing up to 10 years, for the crime of handing out protective face shields to people demonstrating against ICE.
The FBI raided his home and ripped it apart; the U.S. Attorney went on social media to brand him part of a “shadowy network funding riots.” Six weeks later, prosecutors quietly moved to dismiss the case. By then, the Los Angeles Times had documented dozens of protest-related arrests that had collapsed or been quietly downgraded, none of them walked back with anything like the fanfare of the original perp walks.
In each case, people were hit with tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of dollars in legal bills, had their lives and homes turned upside down, and were doxxed in ways that, for many, brought death threats and harassment from Trump’s most violent and fervent cultists.
This Russia-like racket runs all the way up to Capitol Hill.
When six Democratic members of Congress, including Senator Elissa Slotkin from my home state of Michigan and combat hero Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, recorded a ninety-second video reminding service members that they have a legal duty to refuse unlawful orders, Trump called it seditious behavior “punishable by DEATH” and demanded they be arrested and put on trial.
His DOJ actually carried it to a grand jury, which flatly refused to indict anyone. The same thing kept happening to other marquee targets: the cases against James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James were thrown out, and a second grand jury refused to charge James even on a do-over, something her lawyer called unprecedented, because it nearly is.
Nonetheless, all of their lives were disrupted, all of them had to raise a small fortune to cover their legal costs, and their reputations were sullied. That was Trump’s real goal.
And it’s not just individuals.
When DOJ leadership went after the Southern Poverty Law Center, whistleblowers inside the department told Congress that senior officials ordered prosecutors to fast-track a “legally deficient” indictment even though they couldn’t point to a single victim or any actual deception, and that the standing instruction was to “go big” and “go loud” against protesters and critics like the SPLC.
That’s why career lawyers — literally thousands — have been resigning from federal positions in waves rather than sign their names to this kind of fascistic, bullying, punitive crap.
The cruelty of the thing is the point: the people running these legal grifts know they’ll lose most of these cases, but they don’t care, because winning in court was never the goal. The goal is to hurt the protestors and intimidate into silence anyone else who may be watching.
It’s the next teacher who thinks about marching in a protest, the next county trustee who thinks about signing an open letter, the next reporter who thinks about publishing a leaked memo and decides it just isn’t worth a year of her life and a hundred thousand dollars in legal fees to find out whether she’d eventually be vindicated.
Joe McCarthy understood this in the 1950s, when he and Roy Cohn (also Trump’s attorney and pre-Putin mentor) barely convicted anybody of anything yet gleefully destroyed thousands of lives. The subpoenas, the televised hearings, and the blacklist did all the work, and careers and lives were turned upside-down on accusations alone.
Watchdog groups like Protect Democracy are now keeping running tallies of these retaliatory cases precisely because the pattern has become too consistent to pass off as a string of honest mistakes, like they keep trying to pretend they are.
So let’s name it plainly: when prosecutors keep bringing cases that grand juries don’t want, that judges openly mock, and that they themselves abandon the instant a real court starts asking real questions, they aren’t fumbling.
They’re trying to bleed and then delete the right to peaceably assemble and petition for a redress of grievances, the right to free speech, the right to hold an anti-Trump or anti-fascist opinion right out of the Constitution, one frightened citizen at a time.
The sentence gets served long before any jury votes, and the verdict they’re actually chasing is our silence.
Don’t hand it to them. Call your senators and your representative through the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and demand real and serious oversight of a Justice Department that’s being run as a McCarthy-like revenge and intimidation operation, and insist that the people dragged through these sham prosecutions be protected and made whole.
Back the organizations defending them, from Protect Democracy to the ACLU, and stand behind the local prosecutors and judges who’re refusing to go along.
Make sure everyone you know is registered at vote.org and find out who’s actually on your ballot at openstates.org, because the surest way to end a weaponized Justice Department is to elect the people who will dismantle it.
The Framers gave us the right to petition our own government precisely so that we’d never have to be afraid of it, and the only way to keep that right alive is to use it loudly enough that they’re forced to remember why it exists.
And if this piece helped you see the pattern more clearly, please share it, forward it, and pass it along, because their whole corrupt, evil strategy depends on people feeling alone and outgunned: the simple act of making sure your neighbors understand what’s happening is its own quiet form of resistance.
You can support this work and find more of it at hartmannreport.com, and every time you share it you make the next person a little less afraid to stand up. And that’s how we rescue our democracy.
Trump risks his presidency with a single night of obscenity
As Donald Trump becomes increasingly untethered to the reality that every regime can fall, that his followers are not necessarily forever in support such that he need not ever worry about a thing — from Epstein to insider trading — he now confidently takes his vanity to new levels in bringing a new stage and spectacle to the White House.
"Showmanship," more testosterone, "cool," ever more "I don't care what people think" nonchalance, betting that his loves and needs match the nation's, Trump is — wholly unknowingly — risking his entire presidency over a UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House, far better known for its beauty and inherent importance, revered as civic sacred, but on this night risks desecration and disgust.
A modern gladiator match looms, one in which you all but expect Trump to reserve the right to turn a thumb up or down over who survives, and yet it may be Trump who dies — symbolically, on this night. Really.
The UFC fight planned for Sunday is a bet of breathless proportions with almost no upside for Trump and a wholly overlooked downside that should take everyone to the edge of their seat. While nearly every reader here desperately wants to see Trump gone, it had better come with a strong commitment to overcoming what a "desperate" Trump might do. Still, this part, at least, is coming, inevitable now, ground broken.
Just to set the scene, the UFC brings the octagon for what will be a "pay per view" event, PAY per view, as an event supposedly celebrating America's 250th yet, like so much else, becomes fundamentally about him as set on his 80th birthday. And if the pay-per-view event is not enough to offend citizenry, there's also the fact that Paramount, the company streaming the fights, is in the midst of a regulatory battle to merge with Warner Brothers. As ever, the corruption is as in the open as the ring.
But that's just the stage. There is real risk in all this pursuit of profit, personal political risk to all involved.
First, it's worth noting that such risk comes without any chance Trump wins political capital on this; he's just showing off around the people whom he reveres as still somewhat cooler than him - show them their place. A president's environment, from helicopters to White Houses, can "out-cool" anyone, always.
But everyone who loves a night of watching fighters commit what would otherwise be first-degree deadly assault is already a Trump supporter, nearly by definition, someone looking for a dopamine hit, incapable of caring about the implications for the people and society that sanctions such in-your-face brutality, symbolic of the arrogant "beat-your-face" corruption they associate with "winning." And even some Trump supporters will be shocked by the level of violence. This is less boxing, more voyeuristic brutality; it's fighting until the opponent is left indefensible, physically incapable of going on.
Perhaps 10 percent of society loves such a potentially deadly spectacle, and yet perhaps the images are unique enough to land on 50% of screens worldwide. The risk is staggering. History is replete with examples of seemingly disproportionate moments that come to define a figure, stuff that really shouldn't matter in comparison to a life's work, yet dominate, as inextricable as unpredictable. Think George H.W. Bush throwing up in the Japanese Prime Minister's lap, something from which he never recovered, the Howard Dean primal scream, Romney's 47% comment, all rather stupid, some totally innocent and unplanned moments among many more important, all taking a person down, no hope of any comeback.
Now picture the night. Trump sits beside the ring, smug — loving himself primarily, having a ball on his b-day. Above him, for one night, a fighting cage becomes the center of the world, used by people fully capable of actually killing another person in the ring, though there's very little risk of actual death. But there is a real risk that a fighter takes a savage blow so as to be out cold, falling "dead" visually at least, something seen in movies nearly by the hour, but absolutely gut-wrenching for most seen in real life. It would not be abnormal to see a leg literally break in half, and the NFL even gets squirmy over such moments, losing a few fans every time. Blood bursting from a face, gladiators all, a part of them dying in the ring, and a few all but disturbed people loving the moment, Trump being one.
Even that extreme should be nothing. After all, Trump is obstructing an investigation into the world's most notorious child sex trafficker, and yet "moments" happen and, for reasons no one can accurately plan, never mind specifically explain, dominate from that point forward.
There is a significant risk of something far more mundane, yet just as dangerous. A fighter who is already uniquely unlikable wins a match and climbs up the cage, blood pouring from his face, and frighteningly screams in a horrifying way, pointing at people, genuinely disturbed, the camera pans to Trump, who's chuckling with buddies while applauding. A world whispers, "What the f*&% did I just see?"
And even if Trump survives such accidental moments, there is the absolutely planned moment when the viewer sees that lawn, so associated with pride, now taken down to carnival, and an extremely ugly carnival at that. Fighters may actually emerge for matches from the Oval Office - it's being strongly considered. Don't think for a second there isn't a reservoir of "offense taken" by formerly proud Americans, even some Trump voters, who now "see" what they've only before felt, "Okay, we've gone too far, I gotta get out."
Trump is already reeling under terrible economic anxiety, polling as low as 35% in approval ratings, getting chipped away by one or two percent a month. This is the type of thing that could remove five or six of those points overnight. Give it another month to absorb with a "last one out the door" effect, and he crumbles, perhaps into the low 20s, with Congress and the people having to move fast, elections still oncoming, and an economy already out of control.
Is this event now likely to do it? No, probably not, but again, historic moments hit almost by accident. This "moment," however, is nearly invited. There's no chance he emerges somehow better off. He recklessly makes this bet, believing that nearly all people are fundamentally just like him, and most people like what he likes, act as he acts, perhaps never more wrong. At best, at absolute best, it's a non-issue.
At worst, we really don't know. Yes, it could lead to his collapse. Good. But again, it risks what a truly desperate, addled man, with a history of absolute selfish panic - think January 6th, might do as he literally fights to define the rest of his life. We will take his collapse over the ongoing pain, but only when soberly staring at the fact that we'll be tested as a nation, a test we've failed for nearly ten years now, a test in which we're the ones taking punch after punch, beaten, and questions remain as to whether we'll be able to get up.
We must all understand that just because Trump has, over and over and over, absorbed Access Hollywood moments, the January 6th "fight" for the Capitol, crimes in plain sight, obstruction of the Epstein investigation, the pattern never means that he must forever get away with everything, that history remains wholly incapable of tripping him up, or even beating him down.
The bet is just breathless. The images are already trickling in. The event inevitable. No gain, everything to lose. There is little chance anyone can specifically predict what might do it, but as has been said here over and over, with a crumbling economy, the "turn" on Trump becomes increasingly predictable, his full survival unlikely, knocked out in the political ring, perhaps fighting for his life in horrific ways. But this moment is certainly one to be watched.
But don't watch too closely. Perhaps, this time, we throw up. He falls down.
Jason Miciak is a Raw Story Columnist, former editor at Occupy Democrats, an author, political consultant, attorney, single parent girldad. Follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com
Trump's deadly serious and deeply troubling gladiator show is no laughing matter
Friends,
Tonight, Trump is throwing an 80th birthday bash for himself (he says it’s in honor of the 250th birthday of the United States) with a “Freedom250” Ultimate Fighting Championship cage match on the South Lawn of the White House at 8 p.m. ET.
It will be a bloody gladiator fight taking place inside a 600-ton, 154-feet-tall skeletal structure called “the Claw,” painted red, white and blue. Opponents will punch, kick, wrestle, choke, and use jiu-jitsu on each other until one of them is unconscious or verbally concedes, or a referee stops the fight because one is judged too damaged to absorb any more violence.
This is a money-making operation for the UFC (which is offering special-access VIP packages for $1.5 million), for Trump buddy David Ellison’s Paramount (which will livestream it to you if you buy a subscription for $8.99 a month — see here), for Crypto.com and Ram (which are sponsoring it), and for Trump (who’s deciding which of his billionaire friends and CEO buddies will be invited ringside. Last night, Trump held a $1 million-a-person dinner at the Trump National Golf Club at Potomac, Virginia, to benefit his Super PAC, Maga Inc.).
Beyond the usual Trumpian issues of self-dealing and pay-to-play corruption, today’s fight also raises the question: What does a cage match on the White House lawn have to do with America’s 250th anniversary?
Just this: Trump and his regime are seeking to project an America that’s like the winner of a cage match.
Trump sees everything and everyone in terms of dominance or submission, and he’s hellbent on dominance. “You’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong,” he told his supporters on January 6, 2021, before urging them to go the Capitol.
He views America as locked in a zero-sum match with the rest of the world, and there’s no limit to our violence. Unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz, he memorably said, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
Trump’s entire “manosphere” is obsessed with force and violence. His secretary of “war,” Pete Hegseth, threatens “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies” and “maximum violence to the enemy.” When told some fishermen survived the American bombing of their boat, Hegseth reportedly ordered his commander to “kill them all.”
Trump’s secretary of health and human services frequently posts shirtless workout videos in which he’s lifting weights alongside figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kid Rock. He claims Trump has “the highest testosterone level” ever seen in an individual over 70 years old.
Trump’s whole circle — including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and JD Vance — glorify male prowess and power. (In a Twitter exchange a few years ago, Musk said he was “up for a cage fight” with Zuckerberg, who replied: “Send me location,” eliciting from Musk: “Vegas Octagon,” and the suggestion that podcaster Joe Rogan referee.) Musk and Vance champion pronatalism — the belief that the single greatest threat to Western civilization is collapsing birth rates — and argue that Western women must have more children.
Much of the Republican Party is likewise focusing on male virility. Texas Republican senatorial candidate Ken Paxton calls the Democratic candidate “low-T Talarico.”
Part of this comes directly from the fascist playbook, organized around a “strongman” touting male dominance. In that playbook, war and violence are thought means of strengthening society by culling the weak and extolling heroic warriors.
I suspect many Americans find Trump’s neofascist “strongman” attractive because they feel powerless in a society that’s left them behind. The cage match and similar public displays of aggression enable them to feel vicariously powerful.
Young men in particular — who make up a disproportionate share of Trump’s base — have been economically emasculated. Most lack college degrees at a time when such a degree is necessary (although hardly sufficient) for a decent job, and when some 60 percent of university undergraduates and 67 percent of graduate students are female.
In this way, cage matches darkly echo “The Full Monty,” the 1997 British comedy about unemployed steelworkers in Sheffield, England, who form a male striptease act to make quick cash.
But the cage match today on the White House lawn is no laughing matter. It’s deadly serious and deeply troubling.
When so many Americans are struggling to make ends meet, Trump’s gladiator fight suggests that the essence of the nation on its 250th birthday isn’t the democratic ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, nor is it the pull-yourself-up-from-the-bootstraps ambition that’s driven our economy, but zero-sum violence and male aggression.
What do you think?
- Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org
A seething nation gives Trump exactly what he deserves for his 80th birthday
Well, it’s June 14, and we all know what that means. That’s right, it’s the day that we curse President Donald Trump’s father for not having used a condom some 80 years and nine months ago.
Happy 80th Birthday, Mr. President. You made it to eight decades. Not that many of us were necessarily rooting for it. But unlike you and your savagely corrupt administration, those of us in the resistance still believe in facts, and the fact that it’s the anniversary of your birth can’t be denied.
Given that, I’m feeling in an unusually giving mood, perhaps against my better judgment. In asking myself, “What do you give the man who has everything but stands for nothing?”, one who already has skyscrapers bearing his name, a pair of disastrous presidencies, a social media platform/revenge site, and all the conflicted interests money can buy?
All of the traditional gift options would seem to have been exhausted for a human being who already has given himself everything of material value. That leaves me bestowing him the following 80 things in honor of his special day:
1. A monument to narcissism so vast that it casts a shadow over three states.
2. A mirror that charges admission.
3. A presidential library consisting exclusively of framed photos of himself and televisions but no books – and, for maximum irony, called, The John F. Kennedy and Donald J. Trump Presidential Libraries.
4. A lifetime supply of orange skin tint and plausible deniability.
5. A third impeachment – just to complete the set.
6. A trophy for turning insecurity into a governing philosophy.
7. A parade featuring everyone he claimed to love before publicly attacking stretching from Florida to Washington, D.C.
8. A second parade featuring everyone he attacked before claiming to love.
9. A third parade for everyone who can’t remember which category they’re in.
10. A museum exhibit entitled, “Victimhood: The Donald Trump Story.”
11. A giant vacuum capable of absorbing every ounce of oxygen in every room.
12. A weather forecast consisting entirely of compliments.
13. A support group for exhausted and perpetually frustrated fact-checkers.
14. A support group for the support group.
15. A giant red panic button labeled, “THEY’RE BEING MEAN TO ME!”.
16. A throne built from useless and discarded campaign promises.
17. A kingdom populated entirely by people nodding enthusiastically.
18. A trophy for Outstanding Achievement in Never Letting Anything Go.
19. A medal for Unmatched Achievement in Self-Pity.
20. A bronze bust sculpted entirely from petty resentment.
21. A documentary entitled, “The Man Who Could Not Stop Auditioning for Himself.”
22. A massive scoreboard tracking promises, boasts and blame.
23. A second scoreboard catching overflow.
24. A weathervane pointing toward whomever he is angry at.
25. A golden megaphone permanently set to maximum volume.
26. A plaque commemorating a lifetime of exhausting the English language.
27. A commemorative stamp depicting accountability fleeing the scene.
28. A state funeral for dignity.
29. A second state funeral for understatement.
30. A third state funeral for irony.
31. A monument to grievance visible from the Moon.
32. A monument to self-regard visible from Mars.
33. A monument to exaggeration visible from Jupiter.
34. A team of archaeologists searching for an accurate and honest statement.
35. A larger team of archaeologists enlisted to rescue the first team.
36. A giant birthday cake decorated with tiny edible lawsuits.
37. A lifetime achievement award for confusing attention with affection.
38. A throne built from discarded cabinet secretaries.
39. A hotline that automatically connected him to himself.
40. A gold-plated shovel for digging deeper.
41. A GPS programmed to avoid accountability.
42. A recording that plays a standing ovation 24 hours a day on an endless loop.
43. A support group for everyone he’s blamed.
44. A support group for everyone who’s defended him.
45. A commemorative coin that lands on “Heads,” “Tails” and “Rigged.”
46. A television programmed to broadcast only footage of himself.
47. A second television in case the first one misses a moment.
48. A third television because the first two felt disloyal.
49. A hosting gig on a reality show called, “America’s Next Top Defendant.”
50. A plaque marking the location of his last moment of humility back in the 1970s.
51. A search team dispatched to find a second one.
52. A crown made from shredded nondisclosure agreements.
53. A special Trump Edition of the Constitution with all the parts he hates redacted.
54. A telescope pointed directedly at his own reflection.
55. A team of historians assigned to separate moth from autobiography.
56. Hazard pay for the historians.
57. A giant eraser for inconvenient facts.
58. A wreath made from the ashes of burned bridges.
59. A gift basket filled with the rotting stench of old promises.
60. A team of scientists studying the conversion of criticism into publicity.
61. A commemorative stamp that refuses to stick.
62. A giant hourglass measuring the nation’s attention span.
63. A map of every person thrown under the bus.
64. An even larger map for those who climbed back onboard against their better judgment.
65. An official state portrait consisting entirely of orange traffic cones.
66. A commemorative coin that flips itself and always lands on the side declaring victory.
67. A lifetime supply of windmills to tilt at.
68. A weather forecast that reads, “Partly cloudy with a 100% chance of self-congratulation.”
69. A mirror that charges admission.
70. A support group for everyone he’s nicknamed.
71. A calculator that only displays crowd sizes larger than those of Martin Luther King Jr.
72. A participation ribbon for every lawsuit he has ever filed or has been filed against him, which laid end to end would stretch 14 times around the globe.
73. A recording that says, “You are right about everything, sir,” on a loop.
74. A therapist who bills by the superlative.
75. A ten-foot-square museum exhibit dedicated to all of the times someone told him, “No.”
76. A giant red button labeled, “Make It About Me.”
77. A stadium filled with cardboard cutouts of people fitted with nodding bobbleheads and holding signs that say, “Yes!”
78. A massive foam finger that says, “#1 At Being #1!”
79. A giant banner that reads, “I (Heart) Vladimir.”
80. A 365-day calendar whose daily inscription reads, “No, That Didn’t Happen.”
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
This lie hides the real Social Security crisis
Friends,
The trustees of the Social Security fund said Tuesday that the fund will be depleted by late 2032, a year earlier than the trustees’ projection last year of 2033. If nothing is done, benefits will automatically be cut six years from now.
The common understanding is that Social Security’s shortfall is due to the huge postwar baby boom, now retiring, and to America’s increasing life expectancy. The usual recommended fix is to reduce Social Security benefits or raise the age of eligibility. As Speaker of the House Mike Johnson warned Monday, “entitlement programs” like Social Security “have to be adjusted and fixed.” He said Republicans will introduce a plan to do that. Brace yourselves.
I used to be a Social Security trustee, and I call BS.
The baby boom can’t be blamed for Social Security’s shortfall. The Greenspan Commission, which in 1983 recommended the reforms that Congress then made — raising Social Security payroll taxes and also raising the eligibility age for collecting Social Security benefits — knew all about the baby boom and figured it into its calculations. (Early boomers like me can now start collecting full benefits at age 66; late boomers born after 1960 have to wait until they’re 67 to collect full benefits.)
Americans’ increasing life expectancy isn’t at fault, either. While wealthier Americans are living longer, that’s not the case for lower-income Americans. The Urban Institute estimates that life expectancy in the top 20 percent of income-earners is 91 years for people born in the 1990s, four years more than people born in the 1950s. Yet the life expectancy in the lowest 20 percent of income-earners is fewer than 80 years.
So what’s the real cause of the Social Security shortfall? What did Greenspan’s Commission fail to predict? Widening inequality.
Remember, the Social Security payroll tax applies only to earnings up to a certain cap. This year, that cap is $184,500. Earnings at or below this amount are taxed at 12.4 percent. The cap rises every year according to a formula roughly matching inflation.
Back in 1983, the cap was set so the Social Security payroll tax would hit 90 percent of total income in America. That 90 percent figure was built into the Greenspan Commission’s fixes. The Greenspan Commission assumed that, as the cap rose with inflation, the Social Security payroll tax would continue to hit 90 percent of total income.
Today, though, the Social Security payroll tax hits only about 83 percent of total income in America. It went from 90 percent to 83 percent because a steadily larger portion of the nation’s total income has gone to the top.
In 1983, the richest 1 percent of Americans got 11.6 percent of total income. Today, the top 1 percent takes in more than 20 percent.
This year, someone earning $1 million in wages stopped paying any Social Security payroll tax at the beginning of March. Jeff Bezos probably stopped a few minutes past midnight on January 1. Elon Musk, a few seconds after midnight on January 1. (In point of fact, Bezos, Musk, and other robber barons of this Second Gilded Age get all the cash they need by borrowing against their fortunes, rather than bother with pesky wages, so they probably pay a pittance in Social Security taxes.)
Logically, then, to get back to 90 percent, the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax has to be raised.
If all income in excess of $400,000 were subject to the Social Security payroll tax, Social Security’s solvency would be guaranteed forever. We could also expand Social Security benefits.
So there’s no reason even to consider reducing Social Security benefits or raising the age of eligibility. The logical and necessary response is simply to raise the cap, Mike Johnson and other Republican shills for the oligarchs to the contrary notwithstanding.
Additional background:
Social Security is America’s most effective anti-poverty program. Last year, it lifted 23.5 million Americans out of poverty, including 16.5 million seniors. Before its creation, about half of our nation’s seniors were living in poverty. Today their poverty rate is just 10.3 percent. Without Social Security, nearly 4 in 10 seniors would have had incomes below the official poverty line.
Hollowing out of private pensions makes Social Security all the more important. One in 5 Americans 50 and older have zero retirement savings. Meanwhile, the average Social Security benefit at the start of last year was $1,975 a month ($23,700 annually).
Social Security is also the federal government’s biggest children’s benefit program through its disability and survivors’ benefits. In 2024, 1.7 million children received Social Security benefits, and the vast majority are eligible to receive survivors’ benefits if a parent were to pass away. Additionally, millions more children are part of a household where all or part of the household income comes from Social Security. Social Security is estimated to lift close to 1 million children out of poverty each year.
Other fixes that have been introduced in Congress:
1. The Social Security Expansion Act
Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have introduced this plan for several Congresses. (It is cosponsored by Budget Committee Members Merkley, Whitehouse, Van Hollen, and Padilla.)
The bill imposes Social Security taxes on wages above $250,000 and applies the same 12.4 percent rate to capital gains and business income. That would boost benefits for almost all retirees by $200 per month, using a more generous measure of inflation to calculate the cost-of-living increase, and setting a minimum benefit at 125 percent of poverty. When estimated in 2023, it achieved 75-year Social Security solvency solely by increasing taxes on incomes above $250,000.
2. Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act
Sen. Whitehouse and Rep. Boyle introduced this bill starting in the last Congress. Budget Committee Member Van Hollen is a co-sponsor. It adopts the tax increases of the Sanders bill, adjusted to start at $400,000. The bill has no benefit increases, so it significantly overshoots solvency, and there would be extra revenue. The bill achieves 75-year solvency for both Social Security and the Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund.
Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org
This plan will make Trump's birthday his most miserable yet
If you’re GenX or older, then you’re old enough to remember the excitement around America’s Bicentennial in 1976.
I was only seven years old, and my memories are hazy from that time, but I do recall that my family spent the celebration at a resort in upstate New York. I can’t remember which one, but it was probably one where a lot of Jewish families stayed. I don’t remember who else was there, but I know I went shopping for special outfits with my mother for the trip, probably at KMart. Everything was red, white, and blue that summer and everybody talked about their plans for the bicentennial and basically nothing else. I know my dress to “go down to dinner” on the 4th was a sleeveless red-and-white gingham sundress with frills on the shoulders.
Everyone was so happy and so loud. All of the adults were drinking and smoking, kids were running around with sparklers and, of course, there were fireworks. A proper slice of Americana, like something out of a movie.
And here we are again, on the brink of celebrating America’s 250th birthday, and it’s going to yet again be like something out of a movie.
Except that movie is called Idiocracy.
The White House is currently obscured by a giant UFC Octagon ahead of Toddler Trump’s 80th birthday party on Sunday. Of all the mortifying things Trump has done, this has brought the kind of global embarrassment that can’t be calibrated by even the most advanced of scientific instruments. Shirtless men are going to beat the crap out of each other in front of what’s supposed to be a symbol of leadership.
Now, it’s the White Trash House.
It looks like the three-ring circus it is. It breaks my heart every time I look at it. Because, despite everyone joking about it and making clever memes about it, Trump has deliberately destroyed the People’s House because he hates America.
Tara Dublin/X
But they need a ballroom to feel safe?
None of this destruction should have been allowed. He could’ve built it on his own property, and it would even be on brand for Florida. But instead, he used who-knows-whose money (not his) and turned the South Lawn into a Carny Paradise. The attendees will revel in the spectacle of shirtless men beating the crap out of each other as a birthday present for an 80-year-old criminal fraud at the center of the biggest political cover-up in American history.
We’re still learning even more about the Epstein Files cover-up, something our Founders never could have imagined when they created this non-Christian nation conceived in liberty. While Trump was fixating on turning DC into Mar-A-Lago on the Potomac, his entire staff was meeting in the Situation Room to figure out how to keep protecting him, instead of giving the victims the justice they all deserve. They’ve all known for far too long what’s in those files, and they’ve done nothing about any of it.
Also, the mere thought of them meeting in the Situation Room, where important decisions about national security are made, is just another infuriating mental image to add to all of the terrible real ones we’re subjected to every day.
Now add what it’ll cost to have a proper backyard barbecue this year, thanks to skyrocketing grocery prices, and everyone staying closer to home because a road trip like the one my family took in 1976 is out of the question, thanks to the current gas prices.
So yeah, you’d have to forgive us for not feeling all that proud to celebrate the country’s upcoming birthday.
However, I always want to inject optimism and positivity wherever I can. We have reasons to celebrate this year, I promise!
As I write this, workers are removing Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center, an actual victory for America instead of the pyrrhic ones we’ve been forced to endure thanks to that dozy bulldozing ingrate. People held watch parties across the country to see it happen in real time, just like people had Knicks watch parties all over Manhattan to resolutely boo the most unpopular person to ever fall asleep behind the Resolute Desk.
There’s been terrible weather in Washington all week, with thunderstorms predicted on Sunday to make Trump’s party a literal washout. You can almost believe in divine intervention when the weather seems this targeted.
You love to see it! Too bad they can’t move the event inside to the incomplete Epstein Bunker, huh?
If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere with great weather on Sunday, No Kings protest marches are scheduled all across the country to make sure Trump has the most miserable birthday of his entire life. It’s going to be 92 degrees here in Portland, and along with the main march downtown, there’s going to be a more family-friendly carnival-type thing in a park with A LOT of trees providing shade. I think I might opt in for that instead of baking in the streets and feeling mad.
Speaking of Portland, I’m extra proud to be an Oregonian after learning that our state was the first to drop out of Trump’s dumb “America 250” State Fair. I’m sure Oregon won’t be the last Blue state to drop out. It’ll be just like when all of the artists dropped out of Trump’s dumb “America 250” concert, which is now just him and Vanilla Ice. The “State Fair” will probably just be Alabama by the time July 4th rolls around.
One last bit of good news: Democrats now have an 82% chance of taking back the House in November! And those odds might even increase now that we have a new catchphrase to use against Trump in every campaign ad for the next five months.
This is Trump's birthday message to America — it might be the dumbest thing he's ever said
My 62nd birthday was this past Friday.
I celebrated by running nine miles with a guy from my gym who is 32 years younger than me and has the most insane 90-minute workout regimen you’ve ever witnessed. I’m proud to be 62. But after June 12, it all goes downhill.
That’s because two days after my birthday, Donald Trump turns 80.
He doesn’t seem nearly as proud of getting older as I do.
Watch the man for five minutes and you’ll understand why. The bad paint job on his face. The mangled wire of cheaply dyed blonde hair sitting on top of his head. The foundation he cakes on before he goes on camera. He’s phoney like baloney.
Everything about Donald Trump’s public presentation is designed to make you forget that he is, by any measure, an old man. He’s an octogenarian. A person who, if he were anyone else, might be spending his weekends at a great-grandchild’s soccer game rather than posting unhinged memes at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
But Trump isn’t aging gracefully — at all — and the fakery of his facade is starting to bust out like his cankles.
When he was on his way back to Washington after attending the Knicks vs. Spurs NBA Finals on Monday night (I believe the Knicks lost because he was there), he stepped off Marine One, and lit up social media. Trump serpentined across the tarmac like a senile old man who forgot the difference between left, right and center.
He clutches railings going up and down the steps of Air Force One, wobbling gingerly and slowly. It is only a matter of time until, like Joe Biden before him, he gets quietly rerouted to the smaller, lower stairs tucked underneath the plane.
The ones reserved for men in their 80s, said with all due respect to President Biden.
For his 80th birthday, Trump is planning a blood-and-gore celebration UFC match on the White House lawn. What better way to mark eight decades of life than watching people getting punched in the mouth — which, even on a good day, should happen to Trump.
But while Trump parties, the rest of America will be celebrating his birthday differently, by paying for it due to his ineptitude and mistakes.
This week, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that annual headline inflation accelerated to 4.2%, the highest level in three years.
Inflation is surging. Grocery bills are climbing. Gas prices are up. Electric bills, car prices, flights, vacations, the basic architecture of a decent American life is getting more expensive by the day.
Trump is so happy that you are paying more for everything. On Wednesday, in what may be the most honest — and stupidest — thing he’s said in months, Trump told the country, “I love the inflation.” That’s your birthday message from the White House.
Happy Trump’s birthday, America. You'd better live it up, while you can still afford to.
Meanwhile, Americans are watching what was once described as a two-week “excursion” into Iran stretch into its fourth month, with no end in sight and no deal materializing despite Trump’s near-daily promises that one is just around the corner.
On Thursday, he went from “taking total control” of Iran’s oil industry with military action, to canceling military strikes. Why? You guessed it. Because a deal is near — BREAKING NEWS!
And here’s another thing you didn’t ask for, but you’re getting from Trump for his birthday. A new ballroom. At your expense — trust me, we’ll pay for this somehow. Trump is tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build us all a ballroom.
Oh, wait a minute. It’s his ballroom. A ballroom, he has assured us, “the finest ballroom anywhere in the world.” He will celebrate in it. His donors will celebrate in it. You will never set foot in it.
But perhaps you’ll feel better about the inflation and the war and the ballroom knowing that at the White House, there is another very beautiful room that you are not allowed to enter — a new gold-plated luxury bathroom in the Lincoln bedroom where you will never lodge.
In April, in a speech (or diatribe) at The Villages in Florida, surrounded by senior citizens, Trump mocked the very demographic he belongs to. He stood before a crowd of older Americans and sneered at them, “Look at you old guys.” The proverbial pot calling the kettle black.
At himself, though he’d never see it that way. The man has no capacity for self-awareness, and apparently no capacity for shame, and no capacity for realizing that those “old guys” in front of him were probably in better shape than he is.
Trump wears his age the way he wears everything, as a lie and a con job, masking the truth with unadulterated B.S. Trump’s age is a thing to be managed and obscured. He is declining in plain sight, and the country is watching a man who cannot admit weakness preside over a government that is increasingly cracking apart because of it.
And because the damage being done in his name, to real people, in real time, is nothing to celebrate. And because a man who sneers at the elderly, denies his own frailty, and tells Americans he loves inflation while they struggle to buy groceries has earned nothing in the way of goodwill or good wishes.
So, maybe you will go to the grocery store this Sunday, and be horrified at the number that appears on the cash register as you check out. If so, then think of that as Trump’s costly birthday present to you.
This Bible-thumping propaganda now has its own government website
ICYMI, the Republican Party has been heavily invested in trying to control the American population by controlling women’s reproductive rights for decades.
I will forever contend that no government has the right to micromanage the bodies of its constituents, and I also will never understand how the GOP was ever allowed to turn any of our bodies into their personal battlegrounds. They have always ignored the basic human rights of women in this country, regardless of skin color or political party.
The Evangelical Christians somehow managed to take a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and weaponize it, rather than support it in a loving and Christlike way. As my friend John Fugelsang writes in his essential book, Separation of Church and Hate, Jesus never once talks about abortion, although there are passages in the Bible that describe how to perform one to save a woman’s life. Neato, huh? Keep that in your back pocket the next time a self-avowed “Jesus follower” in the MAGA cult mentions the Bible in a discussion about an often life-saving medical procedure that’s literally no one’s business except the doctor’s and the patient’s.
I also like to bust out a snarky, “And which of Trump’s qualities is the most like Jesus? Point to the passage in the Epstein Files to support your argument.”
They really don’t like that one, especially since I identify as an atheist.
Anyway, men who have no business anywhere near a uterus are doing all they can to make sure they get to decide when women start families, not the women themselves. Seems like a weird way to run a country, yet that’s what they’re doing.
It’s bad enough that RFK Jr has been put in charge of our nation’s healthcare systems (thanks for nothing, Rep. Bill Cassidy), seemingly out of spite on Trump’s behalf. He’s been joined by fellow buffoons Dr. Mehmet “I Put the MEH in Mehmet” Oz, Dr. Phil “All Oprah’s Fault” McGraw, and others who should all have already lost their medical licenses — if they even had one. Trump keeps nominating egregiously underqualified and unlicensed medical practitioners for Surgeon General while also hiking insurance premiums. The pro-life party? Not even close.
Not when they’re cutting Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security next year. That’s fine, only the Libs need any of that, right MAGA?
The Trump regime just keeps proving that it wants all of us dead as fast as possible. The deliberate decimation of the FDA, CDC, and NIH is frightening and all part of the Project 2025/2026 plan from the heretics at the Heritage Foundation. Controlling women’s bodies has always been their focus, and they’ve already begun the process of turning America into the White Christian haven they all think America was founded to be.
While real medical doctors are being prevented from sharing information at medical conferences, the FDA is now deciding to also once again “review” the use of Mifepristone via an “anonymous” outside researcher. The drug, which is used as the first in a two-step process for a medical abortion, is used in combination with misoprostol (hey, guess what they’ll go after next) to stop a pregnancy from growing. It’s been safely used for the last 25 years, but now that RFK Jr — who works out topless in jeans and boasts about snorting coke from toilet seats — is in charge, look for that “review” to take place later this summer.
At the same time, a new government website is being promoted as a resource for “addressing the needs of mothers and fathers who face difficult or unexpected pregnancies and ensuring the well-being of mothers and the health of American families.” It’s even got a super-patriotic and pro-woman-sounding name: “Moms.gov”
Except it’s some serious anti-choice propaganda, sending a user to faith-based resources that will end up encouraging those seeking abortion care to alternative options.
It’s as if the government took all of those people who protest outside abortion clinics, who yell things like, “We’ll take your baby!” and made them into a website that guilts and shames people already facing one of the hardest decisions they’ll ever make.
“I don’t call them the pro-life party,” says Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), “I call them anti-choice.” Bonamici, who I’m proud to say is my Representative, told me on Tuesday that she and her colleagues will be investigating the website.
Just check some of the language on the Moms.gov landing page about resources for “pregnancy centers”:
Pregnancy centers provide supportive services for mothers and families. Many centers offer pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, STD/STI testing and treatment, parenting support, childbirth classes, medical referrals, and material goods like clothes and diapers—at no cost to you. There are more than 2,750 pregnancy centers across the country. The majority of pregnancy centers offer limited medical services.
“Limited medical services” means the “pregnancy centers” linked from this government website won’t offer any abortion care. And all of the “centers” are Catholic- and Christian-based.
It also includes a link to “Enroll Eligible Children” for a Trump Savings Account that’s not at all another grift from the Grifter-In-Chief. Despite my curiosity, I’m certainly not clicking through to find out what makes a child “eligible” for a Trump account. Maybe who their dad voted for? I don’t know, but I bet even checking it out puts you on a special list where you start getting weird emails or ads about “Pregnancy Centers” or “Adoption Resources.” I mean, I’m waiting for my turn to be added to the White House “Leftist Influencers” Enemies List, plus I’d never ask this regime for help with anything.
No site ending in “.gov” can be trusted right now except for the official pages for Congressional Democrats. If you need a proper resource for reproductive healthcare, look no further than Planned Parenthood.
Pentagon evacuated as hazmat teams swarm — but the real danger was missed
The Pentagon was locked down Thursday and partially evacuated after a hazardous materials alarm triggered a full emergency response, gas masks, hazmat teams, the works. Multiple floors and corridors were locked down and others evacuated before sources confirmed to CNN it was a false alarm.
Officers in chemical suits rushed through corridors, protecting a building from nothing.
Fitting, really. Because Pete Hegseth has been pulling false alarms at the Pentagon since the moment he walked through its doors.
Hegseth was sworn in on January 25, 2025, as the 29th Secretary of Defense, after the Senate deadlocked 50-50 and Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaking vote. Everyone knew he’d be a disaster, a metaphorical hazard human who wreaked havoc on our nation’s defense.
That’s why the squeaker of a confirmation was a warning. What followed has been a systematic evacuation of experience, dignity, and any pretense of seriousness.
He started with the people. In February 2025, Hegseth fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female chief of naval operations, and recommended that General Charles “CQ” Brown, the second African American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, be removed for his focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.
That decision left no women in the top ranks of military leadership. It didn’t stop there. Hegseth intervened to stop the promotions of four Army officers, two Black men and two female soldiers, who were on track to become one-star generals.
It was highly unusual for a defense secretary to intervene. Scratch that. It was a racist and misogynistic move by the defense secretary.
And he did it again last week, personally intervening to remove numerous highly decorated Black and female Navy service members from military promotion lists, preventing them from advancing to one-star general or admiral.
The pattern is impossible to ignore: the only generals welcome in Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon are straight, white, and male. Everyone else gets evacuated.
Then came the language. He replaced diplomatic and peace-driven messaging with rude, macho and warmongering bloviating. His chest-thumping (not to be confused with his chest presses), testosterone-drenched vocabulary of a man auditioning for a B-war movie rather than running the world’s most powerful military.
His garbage tongue wagging about “Warrior ethos.” “Lethal.” “Annihilation.” “Unleash overwhelming and punishing violence.”
He replaced strong and bold leadership with insecure and dubious chest-thumping. In the single most embarrassing moment in modern Pentagon history, Hegseth summoned 800 generals and admirals from around the world to Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2025 for an unprecedented and needless gathering where he dressed them down like a potty-mouth, crazed football coach.
Pacing back and forth in front of a giant American flag, Hegseth declared it “completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals” in the Pentagon. He railed against “dudes in dresses,” “climate change worship,” and “fat” soldiers, rattling off a long list of culture war grievances before the assembled brass.
Men and women who had served in combat zones across the globe, who had commanded forces, buried colleagues, and carried the genuine weight of war, sat and listened to a lowly and combustible former Fox News host tell them they weren’t skinny enough.
His garbage tongue again wagged, bragging about his plan to “intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country” and how America would no longer be constrained by what he called “stupid rules of engagement.”
Hegseth talks like someone who has a screw loose, and is so insecure about himself that he tries to sound like a leading character from an action movie versus rather than somebody with the decorum of a defense secretary.
Retired generals called the speech “shocking” and “offensive.” It was not a warrior’s address. It was a Fox & Friends segment with a live studio audience of four-star generals.
Of course, all of this preening about warrior culture comes from a man who ordered a makeup studio installed in the Pentagon so he could freshen up for TV appearances and motor-mouthed speeches to generals.
In the process, he evacuated humility from the Pentagon and replaced it with vanity, arrogance and conceit.
He posts videos of himself bench-pressing 300 pounds with his teenage son spotting him. He frequently participates in physical training alongside deployed U.S. service members and works directly with new recruits at military entrance stations.
He’s doing that, not as some goodwill gesture, but to show off.
He was caught applying makeup with his personal supply before a key war meeting with top Ukrainian officials. He wears a pocket square flag to press briefings, thinking that makes him patriotic.
He’s trying to evacuate a Defense Department driven by peace and replace it with one that is obsessed with War.
On September 5, 2025, Trump signed an executive order authorizing the use of the titles “Secretary of War” and “Department of War,” a rebranding that virtually no one outside of MAGA media takes seriously, and that most of the world’s military establishment greeted with bewilderment.
Nobody, not allies, not adversaries, not career defense officials, uses it with a straight face. And certainly not journalists, unless it's Fox News. Hegseth, like Trump, believes renaming something makes it so.
Thursday's false alarm at the Pentagon was resolved within hours. The real evacuation, of competence, of inclusion, of decency, and decorum, has been ongoing for 17 months and shows no sign of stopping.
The building was briefly cleared of bad air, but the foul odor of Hegseth still lingers.
Trump's massive new corruption would make 1870s Great Barbecue era crooks blush
American political history is rife with examples of corruption. The period after the Civil War was known then as the Great Barbecue, when ethics broke down in public life. There were embezzling treasurers, bribe-giving lobbyists, purchased newspapermen, and swindlers at the public trough. But the Trump administration has just tried to pull off a corrupt deal so brazen it would make Reconstruction-era crooks blush. Good people, including West Virginia’s Congressional delegation, cannot look the other way.
In West Virginia, we’ve had our share of corruption, but usually we have been able to right the ship and send the scoundrels packing, sometimes off to jail. Neither political party is immune. We’ve sent Governors Wally Barron (a Democrat) and Arch Moore (a Republican) to prison. And the entire political structure of Logan County has to be cleaned out periodically. But Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and his proposed settlement are something else entirely. They set up a massive raid on the U.S. Treasury to be paid for by taxpayers.
Trump v. Internal Revenue Service
Most Presidential candidates disclose their tax returns. Trump frequently promised to do so, but never did. No wonder. In 2016 and again in 2017, Trump, a billionaire, paid $750 in taxes. In 10 of the previous 15 years, he paid no taxes whatsoever. We know this because a contractor for the IRS copied and then disclosed Trump’s tax returns to the news media. This was a crime, and the contractor is now serving a five-year sentence.
In January 2026, Trump sued the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion. He did this as a private citizen, not as president. In his lawsuit, Trump claimed that the contractor was an IRS employee who was improperly supervised. But the last time I checked, President Trump was in charge of the entire executive branch, including the Treasury Department and the IRS. He appointed the Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of the IRS and can remove them whenever they displease him. So Trump is essentially suing himself. But wait, the cheese gets even stinkier.
A court has no jurisdiction over a made-up controversy because there is no true adversity to resolve. That would include situations where one party is trying to sue himself, say to recover insurance money. When Trump v. IRS was filed, the judge questioned whether this was just such a made-up case. But before the Justice Department answered the judge’s concern, or put up the first defense, the parties announced that they had “settled” the case and asked the judge to dismiss it. The lawyers for the American people caved to a lawsuit filed by their boss without a fight.
Terms of the settlement
Neither Trump’s lawyers nor the Justice Department disclosed the settlement agreement to the judge. If they had, she would have seen that Trump demanded a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people he believes were unfairly treated by the federal government, including the people who were involved in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. These are the same people who attacked police, paraded through the Capitol with Confederate flags, and defecated on the floor. Many of them were convicted of federal crimes for this, but were later pardoned by our President. This giveaway would be funded by U.S. taxpayers.
In response to a huge backlash on this proposed compensation fund for criminals, even from his own party, Trump is backing down — for now. This followed a ruling in Virginia on May 29 that halted any activity to set up the fund or make payments from it. But in testimony before Congress, Todd Blanche, acting head of the Justice Department, refused to put in writing that the Trump Administration is abandoning the idea permanently.
There is a second aspect of the settlement Trump refuses to abandon that is blatantly corrupt. Trump demanded a provision in the settlement agreement that the U.S. be “forever barred and precluded” from examining or prosecuting Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization over past tax filings. This is complete overreach. Immunity from past tax infractions has nothing to do with the leak of Trump’s tax returns, which was the reason for the lawsuit in the first place. But the Justice Department was happy to give Trump anything he wanted.
An IRS inquiry now pending could reveal that Trump owes over $100 million in tax liability, penalties, and interest. Who will make up for the shortfall in revenue if these millions aren’t paid? The taxpayers will. The Wall Street Journal has called this deal “extraordinary and unprecedented.” The New York Times called the immunity from audit a “staggering public benefit.” Why should Trump get a deal no other taxpayer can get, at huge taxpayer expense, to settle a made-up lawsuit? He got this self-serving deal because he controls almost everyone involved in making it.
Where we go from here
But Trump does not control the federal judge who is presiding in the case. She received a friend-of-the-court filing from numerous retired judges who pointed out that Trump and the Justice Department colluded in settling and committed fraud on the court, enabling her to reopen the case. She has set a hearing on these issues for June 12, 2026, and the tone of her order indicates she is not pleased.
The West Virginia Congressional delegation can also play a role in rectifying this corruption.
- Trump announced that he intends to make Blanche “permanent Attorney General.” Given Blanche’s glaring public disservice and conflicts of interest, West Virginia’s Senate delegation should reject him.
- Trump’s supporters in Congress are desperately trying to solve the funding problem for ICE. West Virginia’s Congressional delegation should join in the bipartisan effort to oppose any budget reconciliation until Trump withdraws his lawsuit against the IRS without the compensation fund for criminals or immunity from IRS tax inquiries.
One thing we should have learned by now is that corruption can fester only so long as we allow it. The corrupt settlement deal proposed by the Trump Administration is plainly wrong. Anyone can see that.
West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com.
Trump sparked war the moment he botched this ironclad deal
No matter how the US’s illegal military assault on Iran ultimately turns out, Trump’s war was lost before it even started. The war was justified by a flagrant lie and constitutes among the worst, most irresponsible misuses of American military power in modern history.
Trump’s claim that Iran posed an “imminent threat” to the US by building nuclear weapons was patently false. America’s former national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard testified before Congress that Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon, which was corroborated by UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi who said in June 2025 that Iran had no plans to build nuclear weapons.
Trump had no legal justification for attacking a sovereign country under the UN charter’s Article 2 (4) prohibition.
Only one person bears responsibility for Iran beginning to enrich uranium in 2018 beyond the level needed for domestic energy use: Donald Trump. Iran had been enriching uranium at a maximum level of 3.67% for domestic energy production in keeping with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement negotiated in 2015. As president, Trump pulled the US out of the JCPOA coalition in 2018 and renewed economic sanctions on Iran. Trump’s actions ostensibly blew up the agreement and Iran retaliated by beginning to enrich uranium at an increasingly higher level.
There is every reason to believe that had the US remained in the JCPOA, the agreement would still be in place today with Iran abiding by the nuclear restrictions, which were monitored and verified regularly by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) between 2015 and 2018. First, the nations involved formed a powerful coalition: Iranian allies Russia and China along with the United States, Germany, Great Britain, and the EU. If needed, they could put overwhelming pressure on Iran to abide by the agreement, both through the threat of reduced economic and military support from Russia and China and renewed economic sanctions from the other countries. The agreement was as close to ironclad as it could be.
Second, after the agreement was signed, Iran began enjoying an economic resurgence as decades-old sanctions that had crippled the country were removed. To remain sanction-free with the opportunity to continue improving its economy after decades of hardship, Iran’s abiding by the nuclear restrictions in the JCPOA agreement was a no-brainer.
Third, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, there has been no credible evidence that Iran has decided to build or manufacture a nuclear weapon. Although critics remain skeptical, that fact flies in the face of US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s claim in a Congressional hearing that the US must destroy Iran’s nuclear “ambitions.” Hegseth’s uncanny ability to peer into the black hearts of Iranian leaders is more reliable than any verifiable evidence.
Fourth, if Iran ever actually developed a nuclear weapon, do Iranian leaders really have a death wish for their country? If Iran attacked a country with nuclear weapons, it would be destroyed in short order by vastly more powerful nuclear forces. The one thing that has prevented every nuclear country from launching attacks for over 70 years is the most powerful evolutionary motivator in mankind: self-preservation. Iran would be no exception.
The 2015 coalition agreement is vastly superior to anything that Trump ultimately negotiates. Trump has scaled down his initial lofty goals to one: ensuring that Iran doesn’t get nuclear weapons. First, there is no evidence that Iran ever planned to get nuclear weapons in the first place, and second, the 2015 agreement accomplished the same thing Trump is trying to negotiate with a much stronger international coalition to enforce it. By comparison, any Iranian nuclear agreement solely with the US helmed by an incompetent, capricious, and untrustworthy president couldn’t be more tenuous.
Beyond that, the 2015 agreement was accomplished diplomatically without bloodshed or destruction. Trump’s agreement will come following the US-Israeli bombing of Iran and the deaths of 2,000-to 3,000 Iranian civilians, including 250 to 500 children, 13 dead American soldiers and hundreds more injured. It will come with the destruction of Iranian schools, hospitals, infrastructure, and homes, the displacement of over 3 million Iranian civilians, a humanitarian crisis with a scarcity of food, drinkable water, and adequate health care, toxic clouds of pollution hanging over the cities, and the loss of thousands of jobs.
It will come with the war spreading across the Middle East, costing even more lives and increasing infrastructure damage. It will come with the international economic disaster brought on by extreme oil shortages and skyrocketing prices. It will come at a cost of $100 billion to American families between increased military spending and higher oil prices. It will take the world’s eyes off of the continued Russian onslaught in Ukraine and the killing of over 3,000 Lebanese civilians by Israeli forces.
Trump’s war is an unmitigated disaster, illegal, unnecessary, and bringing abject suffering and death to the Iranian people and economic hardship to the international community. It will bring Iran no farther from building nuclear weapons than it was in 2018 when Trump blew up the JCPOA agreement that was working successfully to restrict Iran’s level of uranium enrichment.
Trump started an illegal war against a country that the US intelligence community and the General Director of the IAEA concluded posed no nuclear threat, leaving behind a trail of death, misery, and wreckage in his wake. Trump could not have put America’s great military might to a more shameful, dishonorable, or unjustifiable purpose.
Copyright © 2026 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 |
Masthead
|
Privacy Policy
|
Manage Preferences
|
Debug Logs
For corrections contact
corrections@rawstory.com
, for support contact
support@rawstory.com
.