Trump takes aim at the true Reflecting Pool culprit
President Donald Trump fires the true culprit in his Reflecting Pool disaster.
The latest from Raw Story's Nick Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
Trump's pathetic bleats show he now sees what will destroy the GOP
Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan, declared Thursday morning, seems to have broken the brains of Republicans and the chattering class.
Donald Trump’s pathetic bleats notwithstanding, people voting for progressive Democrats and “democratic socialists” aren’t voting for communism or even socialism; they’re trying to get America to the same sort of economy and form of government that works for everybody — a system somewhat like the one a majority of us had before Reaganism, and that most other developed countries enjoy right now. That includes:
— A healthcare system that covers every American as a right of citizenship, where injury or illness won’t break a family. A half-million of our families lost everything to bankruptcy last year just because somebody got sick; that literally does not happen in any other developed country on Earth, just America. And wanting to free us all of that fear isn’t “communism.”
— An education system that really works for young people, instead of barely maintaining 70-year-old schoolhouses and slapping the Ten Commandments on the wall as if “Thou shalt have no other gods before me … for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me” is going to incentivize students (it won’t).
— A college system like in every other developed democracy in the world where everybody, if they’re capable of handling the work, can get an education and graduate into the working world without debt. And an end to the existing ~$2 trillion in student debt, a crime visited on the generations coming up today by a handful of rich bankers and their Republican buddies.
— A political system where a foreign government, massive corporation, or a greedy billionaire can’t simply buy elections, legislators, and judges. Where citizens can easily vote without having to jump through a million hoops designed to drive down the participation of low-income people and women. Where people can trust that the government and its spokespeople are telling the truth under all circumstances.
— An environment where we can breathe the air and drink the water, the food is safe, and our collective actions have reduced the methane and CO2 that are driving climate change.
— An immigration system that reflects America’s embrace of diversity as “the great melting pot,” a phrase that was popular in the mid-20th century and is now derisively called “DEI.” No more masked secret police, no more concentration camps that lock up children and brutalize people who’ve never committed a crime (immigration violations are civil, not criminal). No more violations of the 4th and 5th Amendments, no more killing Americans for protesting, and no more arrests based on the color of a person’s skin.
— A tax system where the morbidly rich pay their fair share, instead of throwing that burden on working class people and the upper middle class — who often are now seeing their combined federal, state, and local tax rates run over 50% — while billionaires pay a fraction of 4% and absolutely nothing on literally trillions in unrealized wealth gains.
— Respect for international law, particularly the laws against violently attacking countries like Iran, Venezuela, or individuals in boats in the Caribbean who haven’t attacked us first. Defense of those countries who are under attack by Trump’s owner, Vladimir Putin, and his buddy President Xi. And respect for the human rights of Palestinians and acknowledgement of the criminal, genocidal slaughter they’ve faced under international war criminal Netanyahu.
— An economy where at least two-thirds of all American families can have what they had in 1981: the ability to buy a home, a car, take an annual vacation, put their kids through school, and have enough for a comfortable retirement. Instead, as Robert Reich points out:
“Household electricity costs are up 18%, ground beef prices are up 22%, gas prices are up 40%, ACA out-of-pocket premiums are up 58%, [and] inflation is at a three-year high.”
Americans aren’t really asking for that much: Canada has it all. England has it all. France has it all. Germany has it all. Spain has it all. As do dozens of other countries, all the way down to little Costa Rica.
This isn’t rocket science. People simply want a government that will help them and their children achieve their highest potential, an economy that’s not rigged by and for the morbidly rich, and a job that pays enough to sustain a middle-class lifestyle.
The problem we face today is that a large cohort of our billionaire and CEO class are suffering from the mental illness commonly known as hoarding syndrome, a subset of obsessive-compulsive disorder. There’s never enough for them, no matter how much they have, so they don’t care how many people must die or live in poverty for them to maintain their (tax-deductible) islands, palaces, bunkers, yachts, and private jets.
It’s like that popular meme you find these days all over the Internet:
“If a monkey hoarded more bananas than it could eat while most of the other monkeys starved, scientists would study that monkey to figure out what was wrong with it. When humans do it, we put them on the cover of Forbes.”
Those billionaires and CEOs, following the 1971 advice of notorious tobacco lawyer and sociopath Lewis Powell, built out a massive think tank and media infrastructure to transform America from a middle-class nation into a full-blown oligarchy, where every decision made by the Supreme Court, Congress, and most state legislatures would take care of their wants and desires before those of anybody else.
Nixon put Powell on the Supreme Court in 1972 and, in 1978, he authored the Bellotti decision, saying that corporations are “persons” and money is the “free speech.” That let Reagan float into the presidency two years later on a tsunami of oil industry money (along with the treasonous deal he cut with Iran’s Mullah’s to hold the American hostages until after the election), remove Jimmy Carter’s solar panels from the roof of the White House, and kill his plans for solarizing America.
Billionaires began immediately spiffing and sucking up to the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, who returned the favor in 2010 by doubling down on Bellotti with Citizens United. Now fortunes are spent on every election cycle, including tens of millions from groups representing the interests of foreign countries.
A few hundred billionaire families, representing considerably less than one ten-thousandth of 1 percent of the American population, supplied roughly one-sixth of all the money spent on the 2024 federal elections and, in the presidential race, put down 44.5% of all the money spent by outside groups, virtually all of it for fellow billionaire Trump.
As Jimmy Carter told me almost a decade ago, America is no longer a democracy:
“Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery...”
This is what Americans are voting against this year in massive numbers, and no amount of name-calling and red-scare tactics by on-the-take Republicans and corporate Democrats, or hand-wringing by TV pundits and podcasters, is going to stop it.
Voters want fighters, and El-Sayed is a fighter. As are so many others in the Progressive Caucus and among the Zoomers, Millennials, and Gen X’ers now coming up into politics.
Americans know they’ve been screwed over the past 45 years since the GOP’s Reagan Revolution stopped seriously taxing the morbidly rich, killed off our unions, and sent our jobs overseas. And they’re rapidly waking up to exactly who it is who screwed them.
As my dear old friend Dick Gregory told me one brutally hot afternoon in Kampala as the two of us were touring Africa together in 1981 and discussing progressive change and US foreign policy:
“When you’ve got something really good, you don’t have to have to force it on people. They will steal it!”
American voters are in the process of stealing back their democracy and their middle class. Call it what you want, but it won’t be stopped.
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A furious wind just ripped through MAGA — now Trump's going it alone
Obviously, this is not our first warning; indeed, Donald Trump's response to the Michigan Democratic primary fits a pattern that goes back years and will certainly progress through the general election this Fall. But hearing him rail away in theory doesn't shake the spine like seeing it in practice. And for real, it appears as though Trump is putting in serious practice time in Michigan and elsewhere, ready for gameday this fall.
As has been noted here for months, voters are furious over the state of the nation, and that goes for both Left and Right, though most on the Right can't bring themselves to lay their anger at the feet of the man almost solely responsible for the inflation, wars, and healthcare cuts fertilizing that anger. The Reds are most certainly willing to oust incumbents, witness Cornyn, Massie, among others.
Of course, the same is happening on the Left with the rise of outsiders and the Democratic Socialists (who one wishes would simply call themselves FDR Democrats, keeping the commitment, ditching the name; it would achieve everything they're looking for while reminding the country what Democrats are supposed to support and say). The latest example of blue populism is Dr. Abdul El-Sayed from already mentioned Michigan, who beat out comfy party insider Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate.
Now, Trump can't even spell MENSA, never mind read a question, but he has a genius nose for political trouble. He needs MI GOP Senator Mike Rogers in office next January like he needs his Big Mac for lunch. But he also knows that El-Sayed's victory, while not definitive, negates a predictable Rogers versus Stevens race. It also signals voter anger, and that anger may finally clip Trump.
So what's a president like Trump to do in the face of a healthy democratic challenge? Well, a sick attempt to cancel the vote, of course. He's done it before, but that was to save his own immediate skin. What he has not done before is broaden his "rigged" claims to... well, save his own skin from investigations, less direct than tossing him from office.
In the face of El-Sayed's win, Trump tweeted:
“Wayne County (Detroit) in Michigan is one of the most corrupt voting areas in the United States, if not the World. It is strictly Third World!... “The Radical Left Socialist has a real shot, and don’t discount all of those fake mail-in ballots that will ‘surprisingly’ show up at the last moment."
Note that Trump nearly always reserves words like "third world," or "s---holes" for predominantly Black communities — and yes, the MAGAs love him for it. But he wasn't done; indeed, he saved his most dangerous clause:
“Get ready for another Rigged Election. In November we must VOTE FOR MIKE ROGERS, and make Michigan TOO BIG TO RIG. God Bless America!"
Whatever else Michigan might be, it will not be a landslide election either way. But, as everyone knows, to Trump, it's not the margin of victory; it's who wins. We heard nothing about his victory in 2024, narrow as it was in Michigan, Musk satellites beaming ballot counts back and forth and all. As clean as an election can be from his point of view.
This result amply demonstrates Trump's obsession with the Save Act, which — despite their protests — goes far beyond requiring voter ID; it essentially federalizes elections. But take little comfort in states retaining control of election results because Trump can nullify wins in many other ways. It just takes genius deviousness.
So it's hard to foresee exactly how Trump and company would nullify those wins, but one can imagine the military moving in to package up ballots for a "fair" recount, all the way to simply declaring that he refuses to recognize the newly seated Congress because it was all rigged. He can say he will write his own laws, not allow a Cabinet member to testify in front of a Democratically controlled committee, or ignore an impeachment. Just spitballing — unfortunately, this column lacks MENSA membership also.
It is beyond cavil that Donald Trump has done more to threaten this democratic republic by casting doubt on the election process than every Republican before him, and that's even after demanding nationalized gerrymandering to a degree that has Karl Rove popping Klonopin chased by whiskey.
Trump's doing it again, getting in earlier, softening the battlefield — no real surprise there. The real trouble comes from the dynamic mentioned above. Voters tired of incumbency rightly expect their hard-earned victories to be recognized, to do something. And just as surely as McConnell refused to have the Senate "do something" in the face of an Obama Supreme Court appointment, expect Trump — having possibly lost the Senate and House, to be prepared to refuse to "do anything" to recognize Congress's powers because "they were all RIGGED" and thus "unfair" (He hilariously tosses around the word "unfair," unaware that his own fairness appeals to him as much as spinach salad.)
But those angry voters damn sure want fairness, and they want it every bit as badly as they wanted and deserved to have Joe Biden sworn in as president. A furious wind will whip us up. We have seen that trouble manifest in the past, and it will only get worse. Except Trump has two advantages this time: First, he's had practice now. Second, as someone who is, in Constitutional theory, on his way out, he may look through his big bag of ducks and find nothing quacking.
Trouble.
Or, more accurately, more trouble. After all, in the same way the country had no experience dealing with a president who refused to leave, there might be even less for a president who refuses to participate. He has spent every minute of his political life trying to be more like his heroes, Putin, Mohhamed Bin-Salam, Xi Jinping, leaders for life, answering to no one. What better way to cap his career than going it alone without Congress. Make up his own laws, his own budget, his own foreign deals, all of it.
What? The SCOTUS is going to stop him? Pffft. He declares a national emergency, and they back out, "It's a political question."
No. That leaves us on a bit of an island, and as sincere as our beliefs, as strong as our fortitude, and as solid as our conviction, never more pure, violence becomes too possible (not the first we've seen of that before, either, but not like this). Violence is different now, mutual assured destruction without nukes. A gun may not be fired. But cell towers and satellites may go offline, power grids shut down, net inaccessible, highways closed. Federal aid is definitely off the table. It's possible to "prevent violence."
The situation has been unsustainable for a while. But in response to Trump's inaction, some states may have no choice but to act in kind. Don't seat or recognize our senators? We hope Trump doesn't miss the money we won't send in. Some have even bandied about the idea of HI, CA, OR, WA, joining BC — "Pacifica" — in an EU-Type relationship with Canada. It won't happen next year. Doesn't mean it can't happen next generation. It would start somewhere.
Anyway.
Back to Michigan. Their candidate has not even lost yet, not Rogers, nor plenty of other worthy candidates. But our more liberal proto-politicians, ones bringing a stronger anti-establishment agenda, are sending a signal that Trump can't ignore. Thus it's started already. God only knows where it finishes. One thing we mortals can know: Donald Trump won't play "fair."
The salad days in which elections settled things definitively may be as far in the past as presidents with MENSA membership.
Jason Miciak is a Raw Story Columnist, a former editor at Occupy Democrats, author, attorney, political consultant, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com
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This dishonorable Trump henchman is robbing fallen heroes — literally
As a veteran, I will go to my grave believing that covering each other's six doesn't end at the grave.
I learned the military mantra, meaning to “protect each other from danger coming from behind,” when I enlisted in the Vietnam War as an armorer after two of my childhood friends were killed in action.
That’s why today I ask my fellow Americans to say a prayer and remember the four warriors who were killed in action last month in Iran, making the ultimate sacrifice for our country — only to be dishonored by the Pentagon and the Commander in Chief.
1st Lt. Tyler Feehan
Sgt. Angel Rampersad
Pvt. Isabella Gonzales
Sgt. Michael Swinton
These names were removed from the Defense Casualty Analysis System due to a supposed "glitch," taking the number of KIA from 18 to 14.
It was then you heard from the current administration that these heroes were killed during a ceasefire that obviously Iran hadn't heard about — like that makes a difference.
When their names were once again added to the list, it was under a new category of Overseas Operations.
By changing their status, the Pentagon not only dishonors their sacrifice but potentially denies their survivors a substantial death gratuity, health benefits, social security benefits and so much more.
It has been widely reported that the Pentagon has been less than honest about the number of casualties that have taken place during this illegal war. Now imagine yourself as a family member unaware of the condition of your loved one due to inaccurate reporting.
If you look at a soldier's rack of medals proudly worn on their chests, they are a road map of their achievement, deployment, valor and character. These medals are the least of which these fallen warriors should receive.
With the reclassification of their deaths due to the vanity of leaders like President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, these four will never receive those honors.
It takes a very special person to raise that right hand and recite the “Oath of Enlistment,” understanding there may come a time where it might cost you everything.
I believe as American citizens we must demand timely, factual and honest reporting of those killed and wounded in combat.
Remember, heroes are born not made.
- Ronn Easton, former Specialist 4th Class, United States Army, served in Vietnam. He is a participant in the Home of the Brave campaign, amplifying the voices of Americans speaking out against the Trump administration.
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These GOP fools were played like a fiddle — and they know it
It seems like only yesterday that Pam Bondi was confirmed as Attorney General and every political type in Washington assured us she was qualified because, after all, she'd once held the job in Florida.
I’m cynical in the most extreme way when it comes to anything involving the Trump administration, so I had zero faith that Bondi would be a guardrail. Instead, she was a drop-off, teetering on the ledge alongside Donald Trump throughout her tenure before eventually being pushed off.
Bondi's qualifications went out the window the moment she walked into the Justice Department. What replaced them was a single operating principle: pleasing Donald Trump, regardless of the humiliation it would cause her and the Justice Department.
Like everyone else who enters Trump's touch-it-and-you-will-burn orbit, she flamed out. She debased herself, sparring combatively with House and Senate committees in a manner no Attorney General in this country's history has ever stooped to. She treated oversight hearings like UFC matches instead of constitutional obligations.
But all that performance was to no avail. She was discarded, not because she went too far, but because, in Trump’s eyes, she didn't go far enough. She wasn't executing the retribution campaign with sufficient zeal. She was flubbing the Epstein files. She looked, to Trump, like a failure, because she would only go half-way down the avenue of illegality.
So out went Bondi. In came Todd Blanche. Trump has always wanted his Roy Cohn. Now he's got him.
Blanche was already the White House's point man on the Epstein files, and he mishandled that assignment badly, but in a way that benefited Trump. It’s appalling what Blanche has done, by meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, by releasing documents with the victims' identities unredacted, and by his treatment of the survivors when he was forced to meet with them.
But where Bondi merely disappointed Trump, Blanche has been building an entirely different résumé: the indictment of James Comey, the subpoenaing of family members of New York Times reporters over the Air Force One story, and his dithering over the Epstein files.
Most tellingly, though, was his willingness to greenlight something Bondi reportedly balked at: an "anti-weaponization fund" worth $1.8 billion, a slush fund that looked, for all the world, like a mechanism to compensate the president's allies and January 6 defendants, crooks, cop abusers, property destroyers, gun-toting Confederates, and all.
That fund is what nearly sank his nomination. Two Republicans, John Cornyn and Tom Tillis, held out until Blanche put his signature on a document narrowing the IRS audit protections and formally rescinding the fund. That's what got him through committee Tuesday, 12-10, straight down the party line.
Cornyn and Tillis are presumably smart men, but they're leaving in January 2027, and they surely know the paper Todd Blanche signed was counterfeit.
Donald Trump has spent months maneuvering toward a $1.8 billion pipeline, audit immunity for himself and his family, and a payout mechanism for the people who stormed the Capitol on his behalf.
You think all that evaporates because Blanche supposedly rescinded the fund days before his confirmation vote to buy the two votes he needed? Trump is laughing hysterically today. He played Cornyn and Tillis for fools.
That fund will get resurrected, restructured, or reborn under a new name the moment Blanche is confirmed. I guarantee it. He will find a way to say he didn't lie when the entire world sees otherwise.
This is the pattern. RFK Jr. told the committee what it needed to hear. Brett Kavanaugh told the committee what it needed to hear. Kash Patel told the committee what it needed to hear. Then each of them got the job and did precisely what they wanted all along.
They lied through their teeth and had no remorse about doing so because they knew they'd face no repercussions. Senate Republicans are just a cast of cowardly Wizard of Oz lions with no teeth and no growl.
Why would Todd Blanche, a man who was Donald Trump's personal defense attorney before he was ever a public official, be the exception to this pattern of conceit and deception? He lied like the rest of them, because he was clearly told by Trump to do so.
Nobody makes a move without checking in with the Dear Leader.
Bondi was the warm-up act. She proved a Trump-aligned Attorney General could survive public embarrassment and committee hostility. Blanche is the main card: a nominee who has already shown, before he's even confirmed, that he'll pursue indictments of the president's critics, subpoena journalists' families, and quietly engineer nine-figure slush funds on Trump's behalf.
Just imagine what he does with the full authority of the office and no more confirmation votes standing between him and Trump's wish list. And if he gets called before committees about his behavior, if it's unseemly? You know he'll just conveniently lie because the truth doesn't matter in Congress anymore.
If the full Senate confirms Todd Blanche, the Department of Justice stops being a department of justice in anything but name. It becomes what critics have warned about for months. It will be, for all intents and purposes, Donald Trump's personal law firm, funded by the American taxpayer, aimed at his enemies, and shielding his family.
I don't think most people have fully reckoned with how far that could go. Dark days are ahead, and they arrive the moment he's confirmed by the Senate.
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A spine-chilling new Trump scheme is laid bare by this absurd Smithsonian lie
It seemed so trivial. Trump ordered the Interior Department to post signs along the walkways leading up to several of the museums that make up the Smithsonian system in Washington, D.C., warning people that they’d find “inaccurate information” therein. It was based on a bizarre “report” written by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council and released without fanfare on the 4th of July.
The council itself was packed by Trump with leftovers from right-wing think tanks and activist groups like American Compass, Heritage, the Manhattan Institute, and Stephen Miller’s America First Policy Institute.
It claims that the American Museum of American History has displays that cover the fights for women’s and civil rights and to end slavery, along with the positive role immigrants, women, and queer people have played in our country, which it finds deplorable and un-American. It wrote that Smithsonian leadership and museum curators:
"Have directed the museum’s mission away from historical education and scholarship of a shared national inheritance to be celebrated, and toward extreme political activism, rooted in Marxism, to divide, dispirit and discourage Americans. … [And have] denigrated and displaced whites, males, Christians and Americans” while focusing on “race in areas where it has little to no historical relevance.”
Wild, over-the-top nonsense complaints that our museums are accurately portraying American history notwithstanding, this is far more sinister and dire than it seems.
Pretty much every dictator in history, both ancient and modern, has rewritten his nation’s history because, as Orwell noted, those who control the past can use it to reprogram the future.
Dictators and wannabe dictators rewrite the past to legitimize their rule, typically portraying themselves as representing the inevitable culmination of history, as the nation’s savior (“I, alone, can fix it!”), and as the rightful heir to a mythical glorious tradition like Trump is doing by trying to reinvent America as an exclusively white Christian nation.
In the process, they typically erase their rivals (Trump has replaced Biden’s picture in the White House with a photo of an autopen), reframe negatively their political opponents (ditto), and use the threat of erasure from history as a weapon against their own allies to keep them bowing and scraping (ditto).
Dictatorial regimes frequently use rewritten history to justify wars of aggression, suppress minorities, and gut civil liberties. Modern American examples include how Sam Alito cited a 17th-century witch-hanging British judge to justify ripping the right to abortion away from women, or how Trump has reinvented (with extensive lies) Obama’s peace deal with Iran to justify his and Netanyahu’s illegal war.
They rewrite history to bind themselves to the country’s majority group with simplified stories of the nation’s “glorious” past, claiming members of that group must rally around them to maintain national unity, strength, and a shared destiny. Diversity, in this context, is seen as a weakness as it doesn’t support this kind of dictatorial framing, which is why Trump called Kamala Harris “a DEI hire” on the campaign trail and has essentially criminalized the phrase.
Rewriting history is also a powerful way to shift the Overton Window to the right, causing the previously unthinkable to become “common sense.” When the history of protest, democratic movements, and civil rights efforts are reframed as chaos or crises in the nation’s history, young people are less likely to engage in them. When citizens fail to learn about successful alternatives to authoritarian rule, it can make democracy or pluralism seem unnatural or even impossible, particularly to young people.
— When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BCE, he rewrote Egyptian history to make himself the son of the god Amun, the seniormost of the gods and arguably the one we acknowledge to this day when we end a prayer by invoking his name.
— Joseph Stalin removed purged officials from photographs, rewrote textbooks, and reshaped official government accounts of the Russian Revolution and WWI to magnify his own role.
— Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime taught a racialized version of German history that portrayed Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and other racial and political minority groups as enemies and Germany as the victim of a “stabbed in the back” betrayal after World War I.
— Mao Zedong oversaw repeated revisions of Chinese history, especially after the Cultural Revolution, with history textbooks and official records regularly being edited or radically changed to meet his political needs. To this day, for example, they’ve elided the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
— Even small-timers like Saddam Hussein do this; he linked himself to ancient Mesopotamian rulers and promoted a personality cult through museums, monuments, giant banners with his face on them hanging from federal buildings, and school curricula.
The simple reality is that in democracies it’s historians, journalists, courts, archives, universities, and scholars who write history and can challenge official narratives. Debate is expected, and interpretations can change as new evidence comes to light.
In dictatorships, on the other hand, the state typically monopolizes education, media, and archives, suppresses competing interpretations of history, and punishes those who publicly contradict the official version.
All of which is why it’s so important that we don’t treat the efforts by Trump and his neofascist lickspittles to rewrite America’s history into a sanitized white male supremacist mold as if it’s just some sort of aberration or sick joke.
This is serious stuff, and serious people within this administration are dedicated to destroying our and — particularly — our children’s understanding of the truly revolutionary and progressive history of this nation.
They’re trying to induce a national amnesia, stretching back through the history of the Klan, the Civil War, and even the American Revolution.
We must push back against them boldly and loudly, and when they’re gone we’re going to have a huge job cleaning up the fascist mess they’re making.
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Todd Blanche made a fatal error — and it will punish him
As I write these words, Todd Blanche is cruising toward being confirmed as Attorney General for the United States. What looked improbable just a few days before quickly became, essentially, a done deal after Blanche did the bare minimum to assuage the concerns of lame-duck Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC).
We pretend that Blanche’s approval was ever really in doubt. It wasn’t. Sufficient smoke and mirrors were always going to be employed to satisfy the senators.
They initially said they wouldn’t vote to confirm unless Donald Trump’s former (current?) personal lawyer met with several Epstein survivors. So, he did. He went into a room with them, let them know he had no use for them, cared not at all about them, wouldn’t so much as look at them. He told them to “hurry up” and “get to the point” and to take their complaints to the FBI.
This is what passes for a productive meeting in the Republican Party circa 2026.
That requirement apparently satisfied, the senators stipulated that, after long refusing to do so, Blanche must put in writing the fact that the nearly $1.8 billion slush fund – you know, the one designed to financially reward felons for destroying the Capitol and subverting democracy – was officially dead.
Blanche did that too, though the one-page document he wrote up stipulating to drop the fund was signed only by Blanche. In other words, literally every other person in the country could potentially resurrect it in some form, in particular the man who calls himself president. It wouldn’t stand up in court. It’s the equivalent of swearing something with your fingers crossed behind your back.
Yet that was good enough for Cornyn and Tillis, since Blanche also wrote up something about Trump’s immunity from the IRS for himself and his family and all of their businesses was now merely retroactive rather than in perpetuity. So, it’ll only save Trump $100 million or so for his and his family’s sins of the past.
And the Republican Senate was once again one big happy family. The end.
Not to harsh on anyone’s mellow here, but this is all just more of the same rubber-stamping of transparent corruption. Not only does it further dismiss and diminish the Epstein victims; it drives home the point that the Department of Justice is essentially Trump’s personal law firm operating entirely in his interests.
I’ll also be counting the minutes after Blanche’s ultimate confirmation until his sole client is helped to successfully resurrect the slush fund. We’re now down under three months until those midterms, so there isn’t a moment to lose to get those payoffs out to the pardoned January 6 felons.
Yes, these would be the same cop-beating, window-smashing, feces-smearing hoods who did their damnedest to overturn the 2020 election by force when the judicial system failed Trump. Blanche’s job is to sufficiently assist Trump in distributing the payoffs before November and motivate the troops to do their dirty work of intimidation in tandem with ICE.
The hope is, of course, that the vote will be such a blue tidal wave at least in the House, if not the Senate, that no amount of voter suppression or rigging will overturn the will of the voters. But that naturally remains to be seen.
Having Blanche in place as his guard dog in the AG seat is designed to be a fallback, along with the hopelessly crooked Supreme Court, in case direct violence and bullying aren’t quite enough. I’m convinced that the courts aren’t the front-burner strategy anymore, but instead a just-in-case. That, and whatever Elon Musk might be planning to do with his satellites and potential electronic chicanery.
The one strategy Trump isn’t seriously considering is winning the midterms outright. He’s acting less like a man who's desperate than one who doesn’t care, who thinks it’s already in the bag one way or another. How else to explain the administration doing away with a Medicare prescription drug coverage subsidy program so close to the election, as they did last week.
Between that and the ongoing Iran War and runaway gas and grocery prices and bringing back tariffs at full throttle, Trump seems to be doing everything in his power to assist the Democratic cause.
The reality of the moment is that an entire political party is play-acting that Blanche isn’t shady to his core and that this “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is really dead.
I can just hear Blanche now at the coming hearings.
“Oh, you thought I meant it was dead dead?” he would reason with faux sincerity. “No, it was always only sorta-dead, like a patient in a coma waiting to be revived.”
“Do you mean like Mitch McConnell, Mr. Blanche?”
“Oh no, never quite that dead.”
To this Republican Party, the immoral ends justify the unethical means. And when it comes to Blanche, though he’s skilled at flashing a hangdog poker face that makes him look innocuous, he carries not a shred of remorse in doing all of Trump’s bidding. He sold his soul for a title, and I’m not talking about something so lofty as AG. He peddled it for the handle of “Mr. Trump’s Errand Boy.”
How else to explain his providing for the deplorable Ghislaine Maxwell a transfer to a country club lockup despite her being one of the most monstrous convicted enablers of sex trafficking in world history.
Make no mistake, Todd Blanche is a master of deception and manipulation without an ounce of integrity. That naturally makes him both a perfect fit for Trump and poisonous for the United States. He is, remarkably, the worst imaginable person to be put in charge as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, like assigning a fox to preside over an egg farm.
The sad part is that he imagines loyalty from a man who knows none. That, sooner or later, will prove to be his punishment.
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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Trump's fantasy blows up thanks to a drawling Republican — who's not as dumb as he seems
Hey, here's a thing. Donald Trump, the United States President, aged 80, managed yet again to go full North Korea "Glorious Leader" and win his golf club's championship for the 43rd straight time. Our full-time golf pro and part-time president tweeted: "The Winning Shot in the Bedminster Club Championship! ... so honored... I’m given very little time to practice, because I’m focused on many other things. It’s called TALENT, and I have it, and they don’t!”
An adult tweeted that. Really.
But now other adults can really respond that while Trump may still wield absolute power at his miniature rules golf course, he no longer has such power in and around Washington, where the most macro of worlds pushes back. And now, that pushback is coming as much from GOP Senators as anywhere else.
Not a single word in this column exists to heap unearned praise on Republican lawmakers. Not one. But it would be irresponsible and inaccurate not to note that there has been a shift in the political force in Washington, one that people can see and feel, and that shift has been "away" from Trump and "toward" a broader, more shared outlook on the use of political power at the federal level. It would also be irresponsible not to respond with a nod and mumble, "good." Not great, not wonderful, not finally, just "good."
Oh, and it doesn't hurt that the GOP remains down a vote, given Mitch McConnell remains "out" enough as to be unavailable, though not so "out" as to be replaced in Kentucky.
But the shift has been real anyway and has been happening over the last two months as the Senate stood firm while Trump rage-tweeted over the "SAVE Act" as he contemplated the upcoming November elections. Some Republicans chose to save their power if soon to be in the minority with the filibuster intact, rather than give it up now, all to possibly save Trump a much tougher last two years (assuming Trump actually adheres to the two-term rule, which we assume solely for this column's purposes, but not in real life).
You are right to be cynical in every way and yell back, "So what! They're awful." Fine. Yes. They are. We good? But do not doubt that the power shift of the last two months didn't vastly accelerate last week, to wit:
Those Sunday shows remain relevant despite it all as we saw one of the smartest U.S. senators in existence do a Cajon shuffle onto the set of Meet the Press to play abjectly stupid and yet be right in spite of himself. Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana addressed that dadgum Trump slush fund. Kennedy said he "would not provide the Trump administration with a 'blank check' for the proposed “anti-weaponization” fund and that rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, should not be allowed to benefit from it," later noting the issue is too emotional.
Except, actually, not really. The issue is one of right and wrong, but Foghorn-Leghorn is in the general vicinity of being right enough, and that's not the point anyway. The point is that Trump really, really wants his slush fund. It's important to send a message to his inchoate private army so they know if they fight for him in the future, they won't just be pardoned but also handsomely paid. And despite its incredible importance to Trump, Kennedy remains unmoved.
Good. Not great. Just good. Want more? You're gonna get it anyway. May as well...
There is Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who doesn't give a lame duck that Trump is huffing and puffing about blowing the Senate down if he doesn't get Todd Blanche confirmed with that slush fund again (Must be really important. Puzzling.) It was only for a short time, but Cornyn threatened to block Blanche's confirmation as Attorney General unless the Justice Department nullifies that $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and even limit the scope of green-flagging Trump from filing the most laughably corrupt tax returns in history. On Monday, he backed down — claiming he'd got what he wanted. But for a few days, he'd stood up to Trump.
More? How about it coming from leadership now. As reported by this website:
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has grown increasingly testy as he explains to reporters he cannot "wave a magic wand" and create the votes needed to pass the SAVE America Act, a non-citizen voting ban that critics warn is both redundant and dystopian.
Wow. Testy? We feel it, impossible to ignore, actually. Moreover, not only is Thune telling the White House that he cannot wave a magic wand, one detects a sly message left wholly unsaid: "And I don't wanna wave that wand anyway, because maybe I DO have that magic, just not here, not now, not for you." Maybe. Good. Not great, just good.
See where we're going? It goes all the way down to criticism over the dadgum... that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool and the vandalism that wasn't. We all know that D.C. US Attorney Jeanine Pirro dropped charges against U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn, accused of vandalizing the pool. Ironically, this brings us right back to one of the smartest men in the U.S. Senate playing stupid again. Sen. Kennedy said:
"Well, the whole thing is a multiple vehicle pile-up. Let me start with the president. [The] president says it was caused by vandals. I don't know whether he really believes that, or it's part of his political messaging, or he's just thinking out loud."
He went on to note:
"Now, the stakes are a lot higher for U.S. Attorney Pirro. You can't lie to a federal judge. If she can't prove her case, she was right to pull back. Because if you fool around with a federal judge, you will find out."
Look, don't be fooled because despite the drawling Louisiana act, Sen. Foghorn-Leghorn is smart AF. That intelligence is now sending a message Trump can't ignore. Kennedy basically just accused Trump of living in a second world, one in which the truth is whatever Trump says it is — that world may well be real to Donald Trump, but it's not real enough in front of a federal judge... or an American voter.
That's what this all gets down to. Republican Senators know that they will have to face American voters soon enough, and voters of every color, ultra-violet to infra-red, are furious. Most of that fury is directed at any whiff of incumbency, any taint of status quo, any narrow glimpse of serving a billionaire-first agenda, by anyone, of any party. But it's really bearing down on the guys pictured alongside Trump, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, the entire rat-pack, or just pack of rats.
So, yes — any power reclaimed by Republican Senators is primarily driven by self-interest, a feral survival instinct, little more; and yet some of it has to be associated with the fact that none of them see Trump as powerful enough to keep their mouths shut any longer. Good. It is good practice.
It might come in handy this fall. If Trump wants to send troops out to monitor elections, or to snatch and grab votes from local officials, one wants GOP Senators more comfortable with pushing back and criticizing such action; it actually does matter. Trump certainly wants to wield unlimited power, but he, too, has a survival instinct premised on pulling back right at the edges of the frontlines, across which all the political support he needs dissolves.
Yes. Yes. The cynics have a case — they are right in many ways. We have heard all this before.
But not all of it. Consider: What if one saw the opposite, the GOP Senate coalescing around "our president," throwing out the filibuster, allowing the slush fund to go through, ushering in the Save Act that exists to destroy liberal votes. We have seen that before, too. Take yourself back to the first few months after Trump took office and recall the damage done by a wholly-owned subsidiary on Capitol Hill, Trump mowing over Senators like they were merely other golfers at his club, winning that championship, all that talent unleashed on a quivering GOP Senate.
Whatever that was and whatever this is, this isn't that.
Good.
Jason Miciak is a Rawstory columnist, former editor of Occupy Democrats, author, political consultant, attorney, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com
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The latest Mitch McConnell rumor is just too wacko to be believed
I'll admit for a few days last week, I started to believe it too.
Today is Aug. 3, the deadline for Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear to call a special election to fill Mitch McConnell's Senate seat if it becomes vacant. And for weeks, a theory has been metastasizing across social media, gossip sites, and even political discourse.
It’s that McConnell is already dead, and that his staff, his family, and half the Senate Republican caucus have been sitting on the news until this exact deadline passed, so the GOP wouldn't have to risk losing his seat to a special election in a state with a Democratic governor.
Can you imagine having a reputation for unbridled ruthlessness so deep and pervasive that people would actually assume you would hide your death for raw political advantage?
McConnell’s reputation precedes him, and it will surely follow him to his grave. But for the moment, I think McConnell is alive, maybe not completely well, and every bit as stubborn as he’s been throughout his political career.
Look, I get why people believe all the innuendo and conspiracy theories, but I, for one, will paraphrase a famous Mark Twain line: "The reports of McConnell’s death are exaggerated."
McConnell was rushed to the hospital on June 14 after being found unconscious at his D.C. home. Since then, there have been no public appearances, no video, no audio, nothing but a couple of staged photos that conspiracy theorists have picked apart like a Thanksgiving turkey.
His hands are discolored, he looks younger than he did in May, the sports section was from years ago, his wife’s arm is awkward. Even to the point of someone taking umbrage that his wife is wearing a see-through shirt with a black bra. Too many "suspicions" to count. Media outlets have even consulted Photoshop experts to dissect the photos.
You know a conspiracy theory has gone mainstream when the likes of Laura Loomer flatly claim he's brain dead. And even when Newsmax hosts demand proof of life. Beshear sent a letter telling McConnell's office to prove he's still capable of reading and responding, or resign.
You might say that McConnell’s death has really taken on a life of its own.
It’s understandable. When an 84-year-old man vanishes from public life for nearly two months and his office responds with vague statements about him "continuing to improve" while working remotely on unspecified matters, people are going to fill that silence with something scandalous for sure.
And it doesn't help that we're talking about a man who spent 40 years being one of the most calculating, cold-blooded operators in American political history. This is the man who rammed three Supreme Court justices through for Donald Trump.
There’s only one person to blame for the overturning of Roe, for virtually carte blanche presidential immunity, Citizens United, and all the horror from SCOTUS, and that’s Mitch McConnell. He’s responsible for all this darkness.
This is the man who plainly said Trump was "practically and morally responsible" for Jan. 6 and then astonishingly voted to acquit him anyway, clearing the runway for a second term.
So yes, if there's one politician in Washington capable of orchestrating a fake-death cover-up to protect his party's razor-thin Senate majority, it's "Grim Reaper" McConnell. By the way, for those unfamiliar with the nickname, he earned it long before the actual Grim Reaper allegedly came calling.
But I don't think he's dead. And it's not because I think he's incapable of deviousness and deception. It's because I don't think anyone around him, not Elaine Chao, not his kids, not his staff, would agree to sit on his corpse for six weeks. If you think about it, that is totally whacked!
The whole idea is so tawdry and demented it would almost erase everything else McConnell ever did. None of it was good, but I digress.
And whatever else is true about the man, he has spent his entire career obsessed with his own legacy. Faking his death to save one Senate seat seems beneath even the bottomless McConnell.
This isn't 2007 or even 2017 McConnell: he voted against some of Trump's second-term Cabinet picks, seemed genuinely pleased to work with Joe Biden, and has little reason to sacrifice himself for the Republican Party Trump remade, and McConnell dislikes.
I don't think McConnell has any interest in martyring himself, secretly or otherwise, to protect this version of the Republican Party from a special election.
Here's what I actually think is happening: Mitch McConnell is old, frail, and too proud to admit either one. I had a grandfather like this, a man who would rather suffer quietly than let anyone see him struggle because admitting frailty felt like admitting the end.
Watching that power drain out of you, watching people stop needing you, becoming irrelevant, that has got to be its own kind of death. I think he would rather disappear from view than let the cameras document what that looks like.
For a very stubborn and very proud McConnell, getting old, losing relevance, and exiting the Senate, well, you’re going to hold on to your seat for as long as you can, infirmity be damned.
And let me add a rather abrasive addendum. I state all of this without feeling any sympathy for the man. That stubbornness and egomaniacal win-at-all-costs mentality is the reason it feels like the Grim Reaper is haunting this country right now.
While many will be expecting the announcement of McConnell’s death in the coming days, I'll be expecting more silence, followed eventually by McConnell shuffling back into the Capitol to collect the retirement tour, the floor speeches, and the commemorative dinners his colleagues will absolutely throw for him.
That's the ending he wants, and it’s one I don’t think he deserves.
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'60 Minutes' legend Scott Pelley knifed in the back — by his own partner
When history looks back on the unraveling of 60 Minutes, one question will loom larger than all the others: What do you do when the institution you love is no longer the institution you joined?
Scott Pelley answered that question with clarity. Others who resigned — or were shown the door after refusing to compromise the editorial independence that made 60 Minutes the gold standard of television journalism — answered it with courage. They understood that there comes a point when staying no longer preserves an institution. It merely legitimizes its decline.
Lesley Stahl chose a different path.
Her apparent belief that she could somehow "save what was left" by remaining inside the building may ultimately be remembered as one of the great miscalculations in modern journalism.
By the time Pelley made his stand, the damage to 60 Minutes had already been done. Editorial independence — the program's defining principle for nearly six decades — had already been called into question. Once viewers begin wondering whether powerful interests are influencing what appears on screen, the magic is gone. Trust is journalism's only real currency. Once it's spent, no amount of prestige, ratings, or famous correspondents can buy it back.
That's why the notion of "saving" 60 Minutes from the inside feels so detached from reality. Especially if she was witnessing the same implosion the rest of us were. You don't save a house on fire by dusting the furniture.
If the foundation has been compromised, staying behind to straighten the paintings on the wall isn't preservation. It's denial.
Stahl's decision, at least from the outside, seems rooted in a familiar impulse: stay calm, keep the peace, avoid making things worse, and hope that time somehow restores what has been lost. That instinct may work in families or businesses. It rarely works in journalism. No greater example of this than boss Bari Weiss’s recent hiring of far-right-wing nut Ross Douthat. Apparently, Stahl had little to no input on that.
Journalism depends on public confidence. It depends on audiences believing reporters will walk away before surrendering their independence. Once respected journalists demonstrate they're willing to absorb compromise in the name of institutional survival, the institution itself becomes the compromise.
Perhaps Stahl believed that an experienced insider could slow the erosion. Perhaps she felt she owed the staff, the audience, or the legacy of 60 Minutes one last effort. Those motivations would be understandable.
But noble intentions do not guarantee wise decisions. And not in the immediate aftermath of a colleague’s courageous stance.
By choosing to remain after Pelley walked she inadvertently diminished the power of his sacrifice. Her decision had the exact opposite effect she desired. One wonders how someone so in tune with the public pulse could be so obtuse? Or, was it ego?
Resignations are meaningful because they send a clear message: this line cannot be crossed. Their moral force comes from solidarity. When respected colleagues instead choose to stay, management receives a very different message — that the crisis isn't quite serious enough for everyone to leave.
The symbolic impact changes overnight.
Instead of presenting a united front defending editorial independence, the newsroom appears divided over whether the compromise is tolerable. That's precisely the ambiguity powerful executives rely upon.
History is filled with people who believed they could moderate institutions from within, only to discover that institutions change them far more than they change the institution.
That is why Stahl's decision evokes comparisons — not because the circumstances are identical, but because the underlying instinct is similar — to former Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland was widely criticized by many observers for believing patience, restraint, and institutional preservation were sufficient responses during extraordinary circumstances. His defenders viewed that approach as principled. His critics viewed it as paralysis masquerading as prudence.
Whether one agrees with that assessment or not, the comparison captures a broader point.
Sometimes protecting an institution requires refusing to protect its leadership.
Sometimes preserving a legacy requires sacrificing your position within it.
And sometimes resignation is not abandonment at all. It's the last act of loyalty available.
The tragedy is that Lesley Stahl hardly needed to prove anything. She has spent decades building one of the most respected careers in broadcast journalism. Her interviews, reporting, and professionalism secured her place in television history long ago. She had nothing left to gain by staying.
She had everything to gain by standing beside colleagues willing to risk their careers for principle. And now, history will forever remember her as a capitulator to power. An appeaser at a time defiance was needed.
Imagine the image history might have recorded: Scott Pelley walks out. Lesley Stahl follows. Other correspondents join them. Together they send an unmistakable message that 60 Minutes is bigger than any corporate owner or executive suite.
That moment would have been impossible to ignore.
Instead, the public conversation shifted toward who stayed rather than why others left.
That's a loss not only for the journalists who sacrificed their positions, but for the audience that depended on them.
The lesson extends far beyond one television program. Institutions do not preserve themselves through reputation alone. They survive because people within them are willing to pay a personal price for their integrity. Once enough people decide that staying is more important than drawing the line, the institution may continue to exist — but only as a recognizable shell of its former self.
There may still be excellent reporting on 60 Minutes. There may still be talented producers and correspondents doing outstanding work.
But if viewers no longer believe the newsroom is willing to risk everything to defend its editorial independence, then the program's defining promise has already been weakened.
In the end, the greatest irony may be this: by trying to save 60 Minutes, Stahl may have helped normalize the very transformation her departing colleagues were desperately trying to stop.
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MAGA denigrated as the man it tried to destroy flips the tables
Let me start this off with the understanding that I’m a very big fan of vaccines and have no patience for, or understanding of, anyone who isn’t — in particular our clueless Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr.
Just as a quick refresher, diseases like polio and smallpox used to kill and badly cripple people by the millions. The vaccines effectively eliminated them from the list of maladies plaguing humankind. This is not opinion, it is fact. Hundreds of millions of lives — maybe billions — have collectively been saved by vaccines. Period. Full stop.
Considering the above, the “antivax” movement is insane. It posits that illness is preferable to health — that death is better than life. It’s like favoring cancer over the surgery to remove it.
I know this sounds completely absurd to even have to point out. Those who rail against immunization strike me as among the least-informed and (let’s just say it) idiotic people in our midst. The worst part is that they don’t harm only themselves and their families, but the larger population with their crackpot notions of health.
This was why in 2020, when word came down that a COVID vaccine was in development that would potentially greatly curtail a viral scourge that was at that moment killing people by the thousands every week, I never hesitated to sign up for the Pfizer vaccine clinical trial.
I became one of the first group of 30,000 volunteers to get jabbed with that early COVID vaccine. Friends and family members praised me for my “courage,” which sort of confused me. I didn’t see it that way at all. Instead, I felt incredibly lucky to have jumped the line. To me, it was like winning the lottery.
I emerged none the worse for wear from my clinical trial experience. I didn’t get sick. In fact, I felt protected from a pandemic that was still raging globally — because I was protected. I gambled at that early stage that getting the vaccine would be safer than getting the disease. And it was. Imagine: a vaccine that worked as it should.
This is not to say there aren’t risks in getting shot up with any vaccine. Medical science isn’t perfect. But to pretend that the idea of immunization is somehow, in the main, potentially more hazardous to public health than getting nothing at all gets it precisely backwards.
The truth is we live in an age of medical miracle, when receiving a shot can prevent disease and extend lives. Any other conclusion is madness. Why are so many compelled to question it?
With this as background, let’s take a look at what happened to the great Dr. Anthony Fauci this past week when he was unfathomably grilled by a disrespectful and downright hostile Republican establishment led by the execrable Senator Rand Paul.
I will admit to you right here that I don’t even get it. At all. I still don’t understand what Dr. Fauci was being accused of. Was he being blamed for the purported COVID lab leak in Wuhan, China in 2019? Was he somehow held responsible for the estimated 22 million deaths from COVID worldwide? It wasn’t entirely clear.
Here was a now 85-year-old man who, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), had been the only person in the Trump administration to, early on, fight COVID with science. His knowledge was backed by decades of experience battling infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, Ebola and SARS. He used that lifetime of expertise to save countless lives, rallying for the vaccine that was believed to have spared several million from COVID deaths in its first year alone.
How is it that this guy became a villain? It’s inconceivable. By any measure, he is an American hero who deserves a medal, not a witch hunt.
Instead, Dr. Fauci’s personal, unredacted diary got leaked, and Sen. Paul — who has, for whatever reason, had it out for Dr. Fauci for years now — came after him to make him answer for his imaginary sins against pandemic infection. He had to take the Fifth over a hundred times to prevent prosecution that could have sent the doctor to prison.
Again, all of this is simply unimaginable. In no rational world should Dr. Fauci be held accountable for anything except helping get the vaccine out to the world in record time. But it seems he committed the unpardonable sin of describing the president in his diary variously as “rambling,” “crazy,” “desperate,” “bumbling,” “incompetent,” “an idiot,” “a true embarrassment,” “totally nuts” and “truly an obnoxious adolescent.”
In my world, this would mark Dr. Fauci’s primary sin as being entirely too mild in his diary assessments. But, in order to demonstrate absolute devotion to their audience of one, Sen. Paul and his cohorts put on a show that denigrated only themselves. The doctor emerged without a mark on him.
I return to the question, however, of what this salacious sideshow was even all about. In what way did Dr. Fauci purportedly harm civilization? Are they still pissed off that we had to wear masks? Are they upset that schools got closed, businesses shut down, gatherings restricted for a couple of years due to the COVID threat? Do they continue to resent having vaccines be mandated to reduce severe illness, prevent hospitalizations and save lives?
Dr. Fauci used his best understanding from what was known at the time to keep people as healthy as possible during a frightening outbreak and spread of a virus whose origins and transmission remained largely mysterious for many months.
Yes, a lot of us went overboard with disinfecting groceries and mail and steering clear of anyone with a sniffle. But the guidance evolved as more became known about it. Dr. Fauci’s gravest sin, if you want to call it that, was to err on the side of caution. Yeah, let’s lock him up for that.
You know we’re living in mighty insane times when the associates of Jeffrey Epstein roam free while the man who did everything in his power to minimize and halt an international pandemic is held out as a pariah.
The level of shame and injustice here are nearly impossible to calculate.
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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Trump's lightning-fast decline is confirmed by this ironic betrayal
It happens every four to eight years at a minimum; we see presidents gradually lose power as they sense a political world moving on, either looking toward the "next president" with candidates in either party, or just the calendar flipping away as it always does, sapping a president's power as surely as it saps all of us "getting older."
But with Donald Trump 2.0, that process is happening both early and lightning fast. The signs are everywhere.
Take heart. He is in major decline. Take heed, as we know what he does when desperate.
Ironically, it took little more than the made-to-order, regular old "GOP War in the Middle East," brought to you by every GOP president since George H.W. Bush, to bring about Trump's major decline, and not one of the innumerable scandals that would take down any other presidency, seemingly obstructing the Epstein prosecution, airplanes, all of them. It took an unwinnable war, started, at least in part, to get some of those Epstein headlines off our screens. Somewhat fitting.
As one might expect, the rest of the world, at least the "good countries," caught on first regarding Trump's waning ability and decided they will no longer acquiesce, nor "try to teach or woo Trump," as it looked like Emmanuel Macron used to do from time to time.
Trump beat up every non-corrupt nation within NATO and the G7 — most likely because he couldn't make personal corrupt deals with them, as he could with the world's most despised dictators. Look no further than to "Governor Trudeau" and Trump's approach toward Greenland.
Now Trump is furious that all those countries are turning away in the Middle East; not a single one will fire a gun on Trump's behalf. They are tired of him and are done listening, never mind acting.
They certainly do see Trump's horrifically conflicted deal with Saudi Arabia to nuclearise the Middle East, a deal so scandalous that he even somewhat tried to "modify" it by tweet. Trump asserted that "his" deal requires Saudi Arabia to openly recognize Israel, sort of, maybe. It took less than 24 hours for Saudi Arabia to say that written agreements override tweets and there's nothing in the deal about Israel.
You might normally think that disrespecting Trump on that level might get the leader blasted. But, given the blatant conflict of interest, Saudi Arabia joins that handpicked tiny "bag of nations" that near-enough own the American president. They have all the power over him, and he has no one to blame but himself.
Sit back and see what the world sees. The United States is friendlier with Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, even China, than Canada, the U.K., South Korea, you know – the "good countries." We are the bad guys.
So his power around the globe saps.
Now sit back and see what this country sees. The MAGAs see Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel calling the shots for Trump. He assures the world it's not true, but when you're spending your time denying appearances, you're losing. Not for nothing, but given the sudden horrific anti-Semitism that has arisen within the GOP, it's an even bigger red-on-red hammer than a Middle East war would otherwise be. Israel gets everything they want? Some MAGAs see that as worse than giving Saudi Arabia nuclear material.
We have been in this war for six months, a blink of an eye in international relations, a lifetime for Trump, who is not used to having to focus on any one thing and work hard. And no matter how intensely he tries, he just can't tweet this damn thing over. Every single flip of that calendar brings that reality home, and the impact is devastating.
No one knows it more than the man who has spent a lifetime promoting his "brand" over his substance. Americans have noticed.
It has become both cliché and sport for the cool kidz on the Left to toss aside and laugh at any media analysis noting Trump's power is waning. Most of these people once expected an old-school scandal, one that would happen overnight and recognize that simply won't happen this time. Good. Focus instead on the drip, drop, in poll after poll, supporters pulling away, one or two percentages at a time. After a while, and especially during a war, especially right before a midterm election, those points add up, and no one knows it better than a GOP Congress.
After all, when Republicans have little better to do than bring out Dr. Anthony Fauci for a good lashing, going back to the "Trump's Greatest Hits" album, rather than addressing the war or the cost of living, the drips continue, from the middle to the right.
The Senate may or may not confirm Todd Blanche, Trump's handpicked loyalist, as Attorney General. Ironically, the Senators that are leaving, whether by choice or by vote, who Trump never endorsed, are now the ones standing in the way. (You can put Mitch McConnell down as a "No," since he's not there to record a "Yes.") Similar to the war, some GOP senators see that slush fund and get-out-of-jail-free card, and just can't stomach it anymore. Same thing with the "Save Act," with Republicans choosing to "save" the filibuster, almost certainly knowing what's coming.
For a guy who has actively boasted about being the most powerful man in the world and that, as president, he can "do anything," this is devastating. It's almost like his tweets have lost their magic powers.
If you need something concrete upon which to wrap your hands as you grasp the waning power, note that Wall Street once made a game out of playing to his announcements — usually by tweet — about the next move in the Iranian war; they're largely on to him and don't really trade on those announcements anymore. Go ahead and laugh; the irony is just stunning, but Trump has been so crazed and all over the place, trying to win this war by tweet, the banks are ignoring him right as he's trying to monetize access to his deepest thoughts, giving some brokerage firms a "first shot," but only for money up front.
Some firms will pay it — it's an easy way to bribe him, which is about the only sure way to move stuff through the U.S. government these days, but not many. They no longer believe his statements have all that much power. He lies. He huffs and puffs. In the end, everyone gets TACOs, but not the good kind.
Look back at the calendar because it's all right there.
It is the summer before the midterms, a summer of discontent on so many levels. Other than the appearance of White Nationalists on the Mall supporting Trump, we Americans have largely behaved ourselves. No midnight protests; Portland isn't burning down. Only the polls, showing drips and drops. Republicans keep eyeing those midterms, terrified of losing, more terrified about Trump's possible response.
Some presidents, especially pathological narcissists, overcompensate in such an environment. Obviously, that's the danger here. Most likely, Trump will — for now — take it out on Iran, provided we have enough missiles left. But the same guy capable of killing thousands of Iranians to save himself from horrible headlines regarding Epstein is more than capable of turning all his weapons on a real "enemy," Americans that might unseat him, might expose him, the dangerous enemy. Us.
We will see something, if not this summer, certainly this fall, as Trump eyes congressional hearings and investigations, and votes to impeach him; the pattern is that Trump will start a battle, if not a war, here, fueled by personal fury. There is, however, some hope in the fact that Trump doesn't move the pieces around the board as easily as he used to. It's probably best to fear that reality as well; it makes him more desperate.
He brought this desperation on himself. It took a war somewhere else to avoid a war about those damned Epstein files — something worries him about those. Puzzling. He certainly needs Blanche overseeing the whole thing. Remarkably, even with a Republican majority, Kalshi only puts Blanche's odds of getting in at basically 50%, in large part because of senators that Trump has primaried out, now coming back at him.
If the Senate blocks Blanche, look out because Trump needs Blanche controlling the investigators, the federal police. If and when Blanche's nomination is turned away, the ultimate sign that Trump is losing it, his outer war will turn in, and he knows that mean tweets no longer do it.
Meanwhile, out in "America," meaning everywhere other than the White House, American voters are actually somewhat unified in our demands — shocking. Americans of absolutely every color want their shot at the "Epstein class," the billionaires, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, hated even more than Trump, and voters want it so badly, lashing out against datacenters, wars, the corruption; if Trump gets hurt in the process, so be it — according to many Republicans, who also "drip away," poll by poll.
He likes to wear hats and joke about "Trump 2028." Voters joke back, "Obama, 2028." Maybe third-term talk would work if he were 60; the Constitution never stopped him before. But he is not 60 and, just like the rest of us, he gets older with every flip of the calendar. Unlike the rest of us, Trump has, like many second-term presidents, overstayed his welcome, putting up prize fights on our White House lawn, hosting parties no one attends, making sick jokes about any opponent or media figure, and making those side deals for cold cash. He is doing it in front of everyone, from a new plane to a new A.G.; every step toward increased corruption is another step down from his legitimacy and power.
Do not read this to say that he doesn't still have immense power that he will use. He absolutely does, so long as he occupies that office; that's the danger. What does Trump do when desperate? He goes to war.
But he's not winning wars abroad, and that should be a major indicator here. He'll fight, but it won't look as powerful in practice as it does extreme on the tweet. Just be on the lookout: every corrupt deal, every nap during a meeting, every flip of the calendar — he is losing it; he is losing the power and the clear major MAGA support he had just a year ago, the type of support needed to get him through to the other side.
It is scary. But it's well beyond debate. He sure acts like a guy whose brand drips with every flip. Maybe this summer represents everyone holding their collective breath, watching and waiting. Meanwhile, the calendar never stops.
Jason Miciak is a Rawstory Columnist, former editor of Occupy Democrats, author, political consultant, attorney, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com.
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Parasitic Katie Miller buried herself with her own revolting words
The ungrateful, parasitic, and contemptible Katie Miller, wife of the equally ungrateful, contemptible and parasitic Stephen Miller, wants you to believe Dr. Anthony Fauci was never really anything to her.
Not her doctor. Not her friend. Not the man who calmed her down over the phone when she was 10 weeks pregnant and terrified by a virus nobody yet understood.
Just a "work colleague."
That's the story she's selling now, no matter how many pages of Dr. Fauci's own deeply personal diary say otherwise.
Just as contemptible is Sen. Rand Paul, who released a massive 1,141-page tranche of Dr. Fauci's pandemic-era diary entries that were meant to humiliate him. But the joke is on Paul, because all that did was humanize Dr. Fauci, and would prove his truth-telling over the detestable Mrs. Miller.
Whatever you think of Dr. Fauci's pandemic leadership, which to me was herculean, these excerpts weren't polished memoirs or pandemic talking points. They were intimate, contemporaneous observations from the middle of an unprecedented crisis.
And that's precisely why they're so revealing.
On May 9, 2020, Dr. Fauci wrote that he was "calling Katie frequently to check on her, sometimes twice a day."
"She is very anxious about getting very ill since she is 10 weeks pregnant," he wrote. "Tonight she had an anxiety reaction. I calmed her over the phone."
He also wrote that he remained in close contact with both Katie and Stephen Miller during Stephen's COVID infection and even reached out to the physicians treating their child. Elsewhere, he described Katie as "tough, smart, but great" and someone he viewed as an important ally on the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
Dr. Fauci came to the aid of a scared, pregnant young woman during the most frightening public health emergency in a century. And during one of the most consequential points in her life.
So you might think she would show some humility and gratitude to Dr. Fauci for his selfless help. But she is a Miller, and you would be wrong to believe she possessed any humanity at all.
Here is her putrid and pathetic response to Dr. Fauci’s diary entries about her:
"Every man who has a journal is a narcissist.
"Dr. Fauci was neither my friend nor my doctor, but a work colleague who weaponized my pregnancy and child for his gain to aggrandize himself.
"As they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
"I can say with certainty after witnessing his con up close, this man should be in prison.
"Justice for the American People."
What an absolutely awful person. Then again, she'd have to be if she were compatible with her husband.
To accuse Fauci of "weaponizing" her pregnancy is outrageous, and makes no sense at all. It requires turning reality completely inside out. These weren't public remarks intended to burnish his image. They were private diary entries that he never expected anyone to read. If Rand Paul hadn't decided to publicize them, none of us would know they existed.
Which raises an obvious and easily answerable question.
Who sounds more credible: a world-renowned doctor writing contemporaneous private notes in the midst of a global pandemic, or a conniving, conceited Trump lackey rewriting history years later because showing gratitude to Dr. Fauci would make her persona non grata with Donald Trump?
The answer becomes even clearer when you read what else Fauci wrote.
The diaries reveal a man honestly wrestling with his own unexpected celebrity, writing his thoughts freely. They capture uncertainty, self-doubt, frustration, and moments of reflection. It’s the kind of candid observation that only exists when someone believes no one else will ever read them.
He marveled that the media attention had become "explosive and really unimaginable." He wrote about being stunned that Barbara Streisand reached out to him. He described his embarrassment when Julia Roberts called him her personal hero. He even recorded a conversation with Katy Perry.
Those passages don't read like pages in an edited memoir. They read like someone trying to process an utterly surreal period of his life, documenting his vanity, awkwardness, amazement and humanity in real time.
That's exactly what gives the Katie Miller entries their credibility.
The journals don't present Fauci as a saint. They present him as a human being.
Which makes Miller's about-face all the more revealing — and sickening.
This is the same woman who privately accepted Fauci's reassurance while pregnant, leaned on his expertise during a terrifying moment and benefited from his generosity, only to later demand he be imprisoned once attacking him became what Donald Trump, and her domineering husband, wanted.
Ever the subservient Handmaid’s Tale of a wife, Mrs. Miller dutifully obliged..
Even more revealing, Miller has acknowledged that she deliberately cultivated her relationship with Fauci because she wanted to make sure he "did not leak against me or my husband."
What a horrible person. It got me thinking of an old saying my grandmother used to describe one of her terrible neighbors, paraphrasing a bit here, "If you were a character in a book, nobody would believe you." And nobody believes you now, Mrs. Miller.
Fauci believed he was helping someone who genuinely appreciated his concern. Miller now says she was simply managing him for political reasons. As her former boss, Donald Trump, would say, what a “sleazebag.”
One of those people comes away looking much worse than the other.
Finally, would you trust anyone who thought it was a normal and good idea to marry the vile, repugnant, ruthless, misanthropic, misogynist, racist, homophobe, xenophobe, Nazi, alien-look-alike, Stephen Miller?
I rest my case.
Katie Miller's response reveals something else entirely. Not once did she deny needing his help. Not once did she dispute the diary entries themselves.
And not once, not once, not anywhere did she simply say, "Thank you."
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