Opinion
Trump's earth-shattering Senate fight reveals terror at what's coming
Speculating on the basis for President Donald Trump's political and personnel moves is done only at one's peril. The man's mind, always a complex mix of paranoia, confidence, and confusion, is never linear, always leveraged, all in his personal favor.
Despite that reality, it is gravely important to speculate on the reasons that Trump would take on virtually the entirety of the GOP Senate Caucus to install Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI), doing so after pulling Pulte's original nomination to quell GOP outcry — in favor of the more experienced Jay Clayton.
Clayton was set to face a Senate hearing Wednesday, but Trump effectively cancelled that in favor of keeping Pulte in place as "acting DNI" — and did it in the middle of the night before the hearing.
The move may sound to some more like mundane Washington political play, but it is actually earth-shakingly unprecedented and done with such rushed recklessness as to represent something deeply nefarious — a Trump move of the type he's made before, but this one on a level that threatens nearly every move made against everything threatening Trump.
It belies Trump's fear of a possible future, while indicating a fierce willingness to fabricate facts needed to avoid the failure of collapse.
Now we're back to speculating as to what Pulte's real responsibility will entail, and doing so knowing the danger of getting lost in unnecessary specifics. The logical start is a focus on Trump's greatest fear looming on the horizon. The biggest — by far — is a wave election in which Democrats suddenly control Congress and all the inherent investigative power, picking apart the administration, act by act, deals for value-added deals, dollar for dollar, favor for favor.
And everyone already knows Trump's response to such an election: "Rigged!"
Right. Except it's tough to effectively scream rigged when states control the election process in a manner unique to each jurisdiction. If one is going to fight results added up nationally, one needs a national issue, perhaps international, and remember, Trump is the same guy who came up with a theory that Venezuela altered voting machines, and some say used Elon Musk's Starlink to "play" with the returns from precincts to state officials. Both the Venezuela and Starlink theories are untrue, but the truth never mattered less when Trump claims "rigged!"
What better way to concoct a national basis for doubting the results of a blue wave than a Director of National Intelligence, able to pick apart international attempts to alter our elections (Which do occur, largely with no success), and offer up a "basis" for the result, one that couldm— at the very least — hold up suits in court challenging the elections, or — even worse — give Trump the reason to declare the election null and void, refusing to recognize the results, even as the new members are seated and fully in control of Congress.
That the Constitution doesn't allow Trump to make such a move is a cute counterargument, worth less than a value meal at McDonald's.
Anyone thinking that such speculation is too "out there" is likely the type who doubted Trump would do anything to stop a loss in 2020. Shocking even the experts who DID predict something, Trump organized a brutal attack on the Capitol, an attempted coup that, had it happened in some poor Latin American country or former Soviet Republic, would be seen as an act of civil war within the nation — that it was so "bizarre" and foreign here in the U.S., it played more as an "inconvenience" as it failed.
One of this nation's most shameful days is now seen as a sign of strength on the hardened right — and they're ready again, awaiting only instruction.
Pulte has proven he'll play ball in whatever way Trump directs. The sum total of Pulte's work in this administration has been his aggressiveness at the FHFA, attacking Trump enemies like Letitia James, proving to Trump that Pulte is a guy “who will do what I need, no questions asked.”
To be sure, there'd be a tidal wave of "questions asked" when and if Pulte comes up with some "intelligence," throwing the entirety of 2026 results into chaos, which favors Trump and only Trump — the only "True North" in the Trump administration. The fact that such accusations would be all but laughably false couldn't matter less. Nothing about "Rigged" ever came with facts, only a need.
Of course, there is also the "smaller stuff," like the Epstein investigation, or serious reviews of Trump's financial moves. What better counter than to assert that "America's enemies" are planting information to weaken "the American president"?
But now we're back to speculating as to specifics, and that's not only nearly impossible but also nearly entirely irrelevant. Trump wants the wholly unqualified but unquestionably loyal MAGA man in charge of the nation's intelligence, and he's willing to do it over and above a near revolt by the Republican Senate Caucus.
That some reason compels this decision is as obvious as the risk. For some reason, Trump has determined that the benefit of having his man in that position outweighs the risk of a Senate revolt. Perhaps already portending a willingness to ignore Congressional chaos as little more than a nuisance, as he aggregates all power in the White House.
Watch this move — call Senators, create our own revolt. Something bad is brewing, and Trump keeps elevating the bad by the month. This one stands out, as innocuous as it may seem at first glance, with nation-shaking ramifications when examined.
It is that bad and worth your every effort.
Jason Miciak is a Rawstory Columnist, past Editor at Occupy Democrats, political consultant, attorney, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com
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A maniacal fury blinds Trump every time he thinks of this man
Overcompensation is a hell of a thing.
Donald Trump knows he’s not universally beloved or widely respected like Barack Obama and Joe Biden are, and his entire miserable existence is one of constantly trying to make up for everything he wishes he had. Which is why he’s always making things up about himself that he wishes were real.
It’s why he used to call in to talk radio stations in New York pretending to be his own PR person, “John Barron.” No one would say the things about him that he wished were true, so he did it himself. That’s also where his famous “Many people are saying” thing comes from — because no one was actually saying whatever came next. It was the propaganda he wanted to see in the world, because he didn’t see what he really wanted when he looked in the mirror.
Over the last 11 years, we’ve watched him use the techniques he learned from his dual Daddy Replacements, Roy Cohn and Vladimir Putin. They taught him how to talk about himself like the person he wanted to be, not the loser he was. They taught him to keep repeating the same lies over and over until everyone believed them. There was a point where Trump crossed the Rubicon from knowing he was lying to not caring that he was lying, and then he learned how to use blackmail to compromise his former critics, and here we are.
Trump knows he isn’t respected on the global stage, unlike his two Democratic predecessors, as evidenced by the way he’s behaved and has been treated at the G7 summit this week. Every other world leader has represented like the adults they are, while Trump, fresh from his lame birthday party slapfest that barely made a blip in the TV ratings, was sluggish, hoarse, and seemed fully lost every time the cameras were on him.
It’s just so embarrassing. Look how weak he is. Listen to how weak he sounds. No wonder he railed against Barack Obama every chance he got, just days after a UFC fighter yelled out, “Michelle Obama is a man!” after thanking Jesus for helping him win his not-at-all-gay all-male slapfest in a cage while wearing the smallest and not-at-all-gay white booty shorts.
Trump calling Barack Obama a “son of a b---h” at the G7 is the kind of pettiness we've come to expect from the pettiest PAB in history.
The false bravado posturing is all part of the show for MAGA. Bullying is weakness, not strength. Bullying is rooted in jealousy, growing out of the low self-esteem that all bullies feel, yet can’t quite name. They can’t stand to see anyone they’ve deemed as “less than” succeed, and they also can’t possibly ever be wrong on the internet. It’s honestly impressive that they can even hold their phones with those heavy chips on their shoulders.
Trump’s obsession with the Obamas is similar to his obsession with the Bidens, because he knows they’re beloved and respected on the world stage. Except it’s worse with the Obamas, because they set off every racist trigger he’s got under his thin skin.
MAGA loves it, because they’ve been allowed to be free-range racists for the last 11 years, along with all of the other “-isms” and “-phobias” they deny having. Their fixation with the Obamas long predates Trump’s own assault on our political norms. An early proponent of Twitter, the petty, short-fingered vulgarian was at the forefront of the birtherism BS, demanding Barack Obama’s “longform birth certificate” and always emphasizing that the President’s middle name is Hussein.
That’s just one racist trope Trump and MAGA still use, along with misgendering Michelle out of pure jealousy and spite. Michelle and Melania have nothing in common other than having the same first initials and the title of first lady. But only one has behaved like an actual lady in public, and it’s not the former nude model whom Trump met thanks to his pal Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump is also fixated on the Obamas’ shared track record of success, both in and out of the White House. He hates always being compared to a Black man and coming up short, literally. Shoelifts McCankles can’t hoist himself out of a chair by himself these days, another reason why he’s jealous of Barack and his basketball skills.
Conversely, the Obama Presidential Library is opening to the public in his hometown of Chicago, and this video of the Best First Couple EVER has gone viral for simply showcasing their connection and real love for each other.
MAGA doesn’t have a happily married First Couple or a tight-knit, loving first family to emulate. Both Presidents Obama and Biden are fantastic fathers who have set the standard for being supportive parents while living under the world’s biggest microscope. MAGA can’t stand their goodness, because none of them had a good example of parenting in their own homes.
They compare the Obamas to apes and won’t leave Hunter Biden alone. Since every accusation is a confession in Trumpworld, MAGA fabricated false accusations about President Biden abusing his daughter, Ashley, with Project Veritas going as far as creating fake entries in her stolen diary. Because Trump is in the Epstein Files and used to brag about wanting to date his preferred daughter, Ivanka.
MAGA is boosting a clearly weakened Trump at a time when we’ve learned his entire staff is involved in the Epstein Files cover-up. They got mad when Michelle Obama planted a vegetable garden, but are still making excuses for Trump's Epstein connection while celebrating the vulgar destruction of our White House.
All because Trump’s racist parents taught him how to be a terrible person instead of just loving him. All because he’s in the Epstein Files. All because Trump is jealous of a Black man with whom he can never truly compete.
And he knows it.
Overcompensation is a hell of a thing.
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This bloviating fool's short fuse will leave his promises kaput
Why, oh why does everyone jump through hoops when Donald Trump announces yet another deal with Iran? It’s become such a joke that when “breaking news” notifications pop up on my phone these days, I always say to myself, “Trump’s touting another Iran deal.”
Only a fool would believe Trump when he says a deal is “complete.” Because once again, the man who wrote The Art of the Deal, or more accurately, paid Tony Schwartz to write it, says a deal is done. It is set to be signed this Friday in Geneva, and the entire world is responding the way it always does: by believing something Trump says and breathing yet another sigh of relief.
This war has been a shambolic, haphazard pigsty of epic proportions. Come to think of it, didn’t J.D. Vance go to Pakistan to sign a deal? Or was it Marco Rubio? Or was it Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff? Or did they all go together? Or did they go to Qatar?
See what I mean?
Yes, I know there was a preliminary deal signed on Monday, but...
Here’s what we supposedly have. The U.S. and Iran say they’ve reached an agreement to end more than 100 days of war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, lift the U.S. blockade — and God knows what it'll do about Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump stated over the weekend and on Monday that Iran no longer wants to pursue nuclear weapons. That comment defies explanation and forces you to let go of any sense of reality.
The formal signing is scheduled for Friday in Switzerland, mediated by Pakistan and Qatar. I guess you have to invite them at this point. Maybe everyone thinks the third time is a charm? Or is this the fourth attempt to sign a deal?
Trump is telling reporters the actual text of the memorandum “may not be released until after Friday.” Which means nobody knows what the hell they are going to sign on Friday because, just like the war, this so-called memorandum is a shambolic, haphazard pigsty.
But details are leaking. There are reports that Iran will receive a whopping $300 billion for reconstruction. Only an idiotic fool would hand this intensely crooked regime that absurd amount of money,
And Trump says the Strait of Hormuz will be open. But it appears there’s a significant diplomatic dispute over Iran's plan to charge commercial vessels, because the strait’s territorial waters belong exclusively to Iran and Oman,
Tehran asserts it has the legal right to co-manage the waterway and levy charges
Who can trust either side? And more pointedly, who can trust Iran to begin with, let alone trust them to sign something 72 hours away? Then there’s Netanyahu, who you’d think might have an opinion on a deal involving his own backyard. Yet his office released a statement clarifying that Israel isn’t even a party to it.
Iran says one thing. Trump boasts about another. Iran says what Trump says isn’t true. Israel and Lebanon exchange fire. Iran makes an irrational, late stage demand. American officials say that’s not how any of this works.
And on and on.
If this all feels familiar, it’s because we’ve watched this before. Donald Trump has always, from his earliest days, failed to shepherd lasting deals to successful completion.
Back in 1983, a younger Donald Trump bought himself a football team, the New Jersey Generals, and by 1986, it all went bankrupt.
He decided the USFL’s best move was to challenge the NFL head-on in court with an antitrust lawsuit Trump was sure would force a merger or a massive payout.
He testified. He guaranteed victory. He bloviated. And the USFL did, technically, win. A jury found the NFL had acted as a monopoly. The prize? One dollar, tripled to three under antitrust law.
The league folded within days, and Trump walked away from the wreckage of a deal he’d personally engineered with nothing to show for it but failure.
And 40 years later, we have the same mess, but with much bigger stakes, and still the same failure of a man trying to win. He will lose. He always does.
That’s the Trump pattern. Announce it loudly, skimp on the details, let everyone else clean up later. A “very strong memorandum of understanding,” that Trump himself admits is “a little conceptual,” is not a peace deal.
This reminded me of the September 2024 presidential debate, when pressed on his decade-long promise to replace the Affordable Care Act, Trump famously blurted out, “I have concepts of a plan.” Doesn’t that sound familiar to “a little conceptual?”
One wonders what happened to those “concepts?”
Finally, there’s one aspect of this fragile deal that could kaput the whole thing: Trump’s Truth Social ramblings, attacks, and verbosity.
His short fuse and fat, fast fingers could blow the whole thing apart. If Iran makes a noncommittal statement, or if someone says Trump is TACO’ing again, or doing what Obama did with this shoddy Iran deal, Trump won’t be able to control himself. He will flail.
And Iran will say, OK, if that’s how you feel, we ain’t signing. The bottom line is that Iran has Trump over a barrel because he wants to put the war “in the rear view mirror.”
But that looks more and more impossible as Friday looms. Late on Tuesday, the Trump mouthpiece New York Post editorial board posted a column titled, “Trump’s Iran deal gives the Islamic Republic big wins upfront — and America nothing."
Now, if by some miracle this “nothing” deal gets signed Friday without incident, the real test starts the next day, with 60 days of negotiations over the issues that actually matter. Run by Trump’s gut, they will surely fall apart, just like his New Jersey Generals exactly 40 years ago.
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This campaign slogan has Republicans doomed in a ruby red state
Republican candidates this year face a difficult dilemma for which there is no easy solution: They can’t tell voters the truth and still win.
Take Kurt Alme, Montana’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate. He is accomplished and respected, but he entered the race through a maneuver to avoid a primary and accepted Donald Trump’s endorsement. That ties him to Trump’s record.
Does he support the widely documented corruption in the Trump administration? The use of Nazi-like “brownshirts” in the nation’s cities, often violent and lawless? A Justice Department targeting political enemies? A president who threatens judges and pardons violent offenders and white-collar criminals? How about a disgraceful $1.8 billion “Thug Fund,” potentially rewarding felons convicted of assaulting police officers?
The dilemma is clear: Alme cannot run on law and order while backing any of this. He also cannot run on advancing public health, promoting scientific research, racial justice, environmental protection, immigration reform, balanced energy policy, or free and fair elections — positions Republicans now openly oppose. Nor can Republicans run on the economy, fiscal responsibility, or national security.
Trump inherited a stable economy and blew it up with chaotic tariffs, unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy, mass deportations, and another unnecessary war. Inflation, prices, and the economy are getting worse by the day. Ask anyone. The deficit and debt have exploded. Trump now accounts for more of the $39 trillion U.S. national debt than any previous president, a fiscally unsustainable situation.
Allies are alienated. Dictators and indicted war criminals are embraced. National security is weaker. An unqualified political hack is now the nation’s Director of National Intelligence.
So, what’s left? Republicans can tout a tougher southern border and, for a conservative minority, the end of Roe vs. Wade. After that, a Republican candidate can run on bigotry, corruption, fiscal recklessness, undermining a free press, environmental degradation, disdain for the rule of law, assault on democratic institutions, holding Americans illegally in detainment camps, the Iran War debacle, and support for a president who has already tried to overturn an election once — and may try again.
How about working to ensure that only Republicans can get elected to Congress from the Deep South, while keeping Black Americans out of office? What a great campaign slogan! Jim Crow 2.0.
Then there are fellow candidates and Republican voters who still claim Trump won the 2020 election (63%), think Jan. 6, 2021 was a patriotic event, believe pro-Trump Russian election interference did not occur, and that the DOGE effort was really about waste, fraud, and abuse. All nonsense, of course.
Having delusional colleagues and base voters does not solve the Republican candidate’s dilemma. Nor does having a president who worries about ballrooms, triumphal arches and fascist-style banners of himself on public buildings – and not on problems facing Americans and the nation. All this while his Republican supporters are often referred to as a personality cult masquerading as a political party.
The final dilemma for the candidate is that the Republican Party is no longer considered pro-democracy. Sweden’s highly respected V-Dem Institute now ranks it as an illiberal political party (in other words, “authoritarian”). In 2025 Trump, with Republican support, led the largest one-year drop in the U.S. democratic index since 1789. A Republican in 2026 is, by affiliation alone, running as candidate opposed to American democracy.
It is a sad dilemma. Expect Republican candidates, having little of substance to run on, to call Democrats awful names, lie, rant about culture wars, avoid public meetings and hard questions, and hope the public is ignorant enough to give them a pass.
Let’s hope they are wrong.
David Darby, is political scientist with a background in democracy and foreign affairs, a former federal and Montana state official, and a senior US policy advisor to a dozen former communist countries. He is retired and lives in Billings.
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Trump's Reflecting Cesspool mirrors a much more festering mess
As Iran festered and inflation rose earlier this month, Donald Trump talked about a far more urgent matter. The Reflecting Pool.
It’s inexplicable why Trump pays so much attention to his ballroom, his arch and the Reflecting Pool. Maybe, as he watches his approval ratings plummet to historic lows, he is turning to real estate since he thinks that’s the only thing he was ever good at.
He wasn’t, of course.
Using a chart he’d had prepared for the occasion, Trump compared the scale of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to the height of three famous buildings. The chart had an absolutely ridiculous and childish title, “Our Pool is Bigger than Skyscrapers.” And for the rumored size-challenged Trump, brilliantly depicted in South Park, it seemed like a desperate attempt to heighten his manhood.
Trump announced that the final coat of protective seal had been applied, completing the repairs in preparation for the nation’s 250th birthday. Happy birthday, America! The whole country, we were told, should be beside itself with exhilaration about the Reflecting Pool paint job.
There was just one small problem. By the weekend, the pool was green again.
Days after the basin was refilled in its new “American Flag Blue,” algae bloomed across the surface, turning the reflection of the Lincoln Memorial into a mossy swamp. Interior Department officials insisted this was merely “residual algae” left over from supply lines that had sat dormant during construction, and that nanobubblers would soon keep things pristine.
National Park Service workers were photographed wading in with hand tools to scoop it out but, by the next morning, the green was back.
The renovation, which Trump originally said would cost $1.5 to $2 million and take about a week, instead took six weeks and ran to $14.2 million, awarded through a no-bid contract to a firm that had previously done work at one of Trump’s golf clubs.
According to the New York Times, the renovation is largely cosmetic. The crumbling underground pipes that actually circulate and filter the water, which has been a documented problem for decades, remain untouched.
The basin may be freshly sealed and painted American Flag Blue but the infrastructure underneath is still rotting, which means all that slime will keep coming back.
Which brings us to Bill Pulte.
Trump’s plan was to install Pulte, the 38-year-old director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, a man with zero, zilch, intelligence experience whatsoever, as acting Director of National Intelligence, handing him oversight of the CIA, the NSA, and 16 other agencies that form the backbone of American national security.
If the Reflecting Pool is Trump’s favorite metaphor for shining restoration, Pulte is its antithesis, a dark mirror.
Pulte didn’t build his thin résumé and questionable reputation by fixing things. He built it by digging. At FHFA, his signature move was using access to vast mortgage records to excavate dirt on Trump’s political enemies and refer them for prosecution, turning a boring regulatory backwater into an opposition research shop for his real estate crony in chief.
Most people had barely heard of the guy until he turned up as the wacko behind that infamous AI-generated image of Trump as a Christ-like healer, the one Trump gleefully posted to Truth Social.
The plan was to seat Pulte on June 19, even before Tulsi Gabbard’s official departure. It set off a bipartisan revolt.
Lawmakers from both parties balked at handing the nation’s entire intelligence apparatus to a mobile-home-park financier with no background in the field, and Democrats made clear they wouldn’t support renewing Section 702 of FISA, one of the country’s core surveillance tools, while Pulte was anywhere near the job.
Facing the fallout, Trump did what Trump does. He TACOed. Trump announced he would nominate Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and former SEC chairman, and Trump loyalist and toady, as the permanent Director of National Intelligence.
The Senate was to confirm him at lightning speed, circumventing Pulte’s acting duties. Pulte, it turns out, eroded faster than the Reflecting Pool pipes.
But Trump, on a whim, impulse and switch-a-roo, decided to stall Clayton’s confirmation Wednesday to compel Congress to pass the SAVE America voter ID bill and to force the renewal of FISA Section 702.
Furthermore, Trump seeks to keep Clayton in his current SDNY role until his successor is confirmed, while accusing Democrats of reneging on a deal regarding surveillance programs.
So, what this means is that Pulte will now be allowed to run amok, because the SAVE bill has no chance of passing in the Senate.
Gabbard already hollowed out the intelligence community, pushing out veteran analysts and draining institutional knowledge on her way out the door, so it’s hard to even imagine just how devious Pulte will be while Clayton waits his turn — if he ever gets it.
Our adversaries, Russia, China, Iran, no doubt saw the gaping holes Pulte’s ineptitude will open up, regardless of how temporary the appointment might have been. And our allies see Pulte approaching and questioning just how safe the intelligence they provide to the U.S. will be.
But Trump couldn’t care less about any of that, which is why he’s still focused on the simpleton stuff. Like the Reflecting Pool. It may look clean again by July 4th, but who cares in the whole scheme of things?
Yes, the surface may gleam in the summer sun as fireworks light up the sky over the Lincoln Memorial to celebrate the 250th. But the pipes underneath will still be cracked. And the algae will still accumulate.
And in the halls of the intelligence agencies Pulte is now destined to control, the damage to those leaky pipes is far more ominous.
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Bragging Trump is suddenly tight-lipped — and it proves he knows what he's done
I don’t know much, but I’m starting to think that maybe this Trump Administration isn’t so honest. Do you think it’s possible they’re being (gasp) less than straight with us?
Mercy.
Take this whole Iran thing. Call me suspicious, but it doesn’t sound to me like Trump and Veep JD Vance and all of their partners in crime got everything they were looking for in their MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) leading to a potential peace deal.
How do I know this? Well, see, if you’re proud of what you were able to generate in terms of progress and concessions, you scream it from the highest mountaintop, not cover it up and leave it for everyone to guess. And then on top of that, you don’t dispatch Vance to hit the damage control interview circuit to justify why more than $300 billion would be going to Iran from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers while at the same time claiming that nation had been brought to its knees.
It's pretty clear to anyone with functional synapses that Trump had to sell his soul — I mean, that is, if he had one — to get the Strait of Hormuz open again so oil could once again flow through and gas prices could drop and every Republican in Congress might stand a slight chance of not getting wiped out in the midterms.
Again, they’re not releasing any details of the MOU until Friday or disclosing why it’s taking several more days to put it out there. Not that anything we’ll be fed is anything close to the truth, a concept with which these people haven’t the thinnest association. The more secretive they are, however, the worse the reality tends to be.
Let’s remember that Barack Obama had carved out a much more equitable deal when he was president. The strait was also wide open for years and years until Trump got the bright idea to invade Iran, only to quickly lose interest and struggle to brainstorm a way out. It turns out he found one, but it cost him — and us — dearly.
And then, of course, Trump began crowing that he was alone among American presidents in figuring out a way to make peace with Iran, conveniently forgetting that it was him who had launched the hostilities in the first place. The man remains the King of Shamelessness.
As part of his talk show propaganda tour, Vance is claiming that it’s actually Qatar and Saudi Arabia that will be paying the $300 billion in “reparations” that Iran is demanding. But that is plainly untrue. The fact is, it’s going to cost America and only America (i.e. you and me), and that doesn’t count the $70 billion the war has already cost us — to say nothing of the lives of the 13 American service members killed in action that we know of, or the thousands of Iranian civilians.
Oh, and there is also this: the MOU that Iran has released and is likely more trustworthy and forthcoming than the one our own Department of Defense will be putting out says not a thing about Iran giving up its nuclear material or ballistic missiles and drones. There is also nothing that specifically says, “Iran will give up its nuclear program and forego creating a nuclear weapon.”
The only provision Iran agreed to involves a promise to only enrich their uranium for “non-weaponization” purposes. But there’s nothing in there about oversight by international investigators, as Obama’s much better deal had.
Interesting, isn’t it?
You may recall that when asked if the everyday economic struggles of Americans factored into his negotiation to end the war with Iran, he famously replied, “Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran is they can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
Evidently, Trump changed his mind and it’s cool for them to have one now.
None of this should come as even a tiny shock to anyone, naturally. Our “leader” has nothing that would ever be mistaken for convictions. It’s all just about whatever he happens to feel at any moment in time. Nukes, no nukes, it’s all the same to The TACO Man.
The MOU, as Iran understands it, also allows Iran and Oman to control the Strait of Hormuz and to charge ships fees. This sort of toll system didn’t exist prior to the invasion. It was open and free for everyone under Obama’s treaty.
Who would have imagined that Obama – who never claimed to be a businessman – would be far better at making deals than the “Art of the Deal” dude? Oh, that’s right. Everybody.
As ever, the Trump plan is that if people don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. If they never see the actual particulars of the MOU, then whatever outrageous claims he makes (read: alternate facts) will be the truth. It’s reminiscent of how he handled the COVID crisis in his last term. Remember? If people didn’t see the grim statistics, then his declarations of it all being overblown would preside as the reality.
This is also how Trump can stand there and lie, cheat and steal his way through a presidency. Keep the information from getting out and no one is the wiser. And if it gets out, simply deny, deny, deny. When the country collapses, as is happening in real time now, just say it’s someone else’s fault (Obama, Biden, liberals, fill in the blank) and move on.
One of the true tragedies of the Trump era is the deceit has taken hold as the default for a sizable portion of the populace and, of course, his entire staff. If you’re Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that means claiming, “I’ve never seen him fall asleep.”
Delusion now predominates in both our domestic and international dealings. So does insincerity and misdirection. And it’s all because one man’s ego can never get enough fuel.
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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This confession proves Trump's terrified cronies know what's coming for them
Donald Trump is already telling us he’s going to try to steal the 2026 election, and the fact that he’s saying it now, months in advance, is the whole tell.
Back in February, he stood up and declared that “Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” floated taking over the vote in 15 states his party doesn’t control, and returned to the lie he’s been pushing for a decade, that mail-in ballots are crawling with fraud.
They aren’t. Americans have voted by mail for more than a century and a half, and the Brennan Center has shown over and over that you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit mail-ballot fraud.
The fraud claim was never an argument: it’s an excuse for voter suppression, its own form of election fraud. When you convince tens of millions of people that the only way your side can possibly lose is if the other side cheats, you’ve prepared them to swallow whatever you “have to do to protect the vote,” and to reject the result as illegitimate if you lose anyway. That’s the groundwork, and they’re laying it right now in the open.
The measures themselves are extraordinary. This spring, Trump signed an executive order trying to seize federal control over how states run their elections, and when the courts blocked most of it, his administration found a back door through, of all places, the Post Office.
The Postal Service has proposed a rule that would let it refuse to deliver mail-in ballots in any state that won’t first hand over its complete list of mail voters to the federal government, a rule the NAACP says is built to disenfranchise voters and that 23 Democratic-led states are now suing to stop.
Steve Bannon went on his podcast and promised that “we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November,” and when reporters asked the White House to rule it out, the press secretary wouldn’t. More than forty-eight million Americans voted by mail in 2024.
These men want the power to decide whose ballot gets carried to the mailbox and who feels safe enough to show up in person.
If you’re wondering why they’re working this hard to keep you from voting, the answer slipped out of Todd Blanche’s mouth this spring.
Standing on a stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside Dallas, the man who’d been Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer and who now runs the Justice Department as acting Attorney General told the crowd, “[E]verybody’s afraid that the next administration, if we don’t win, we’re going to all be investigated and indicted.”
He meant it as a rallying cry. What he actually delivered was a confession: you don’t spend your evenings bracing for an indictment unless some quiet part of you already knows what you’ve done.
A reckoning is coming for the people breaking the law for this president, and they can feel it.
And now the White House is even discussing completely blowing up the Constitution and the right of habeas corpus, which dates back to the year 1215 when the British elite forced King John to sign the Magna Carta on the plain at Runnymede. As the New York Times reported:
“Suspending habeas corpus was one of two radical ideas [Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen] Miller had been pushing that alarmed [White House Staff Secretary Will] Scharf. The other was invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military to enforce the law on American streets as protests grew against deportation sweeps.”
Todd Blanche, in particular, has every reason to be worried: he knows who Trump really is, and what he’s capable of.
He’s the lawyer who defended Trump in the New York hush-money trial that ended in 34 felony convictions, and in the federal cases over January 6th and the classified documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago.
He’s also the guy who’s now hiding three million Epstein documents and cut the cushy, puppy-filled deal with Ghislaine Maxwell for keeping her mouth shut.
Now he presides over a Justice Department that he and Trump have remade into a personal instrument of vengeance, complete with a Hitler-like 60-foot banner of Trump’s leering face on its façade, and the president has just nominated him to hold the office permanently.
So when Blanche says out loud that he’s afraid, he isn’t being paranoid. He’s being a good lawyer, reading the room, and the room he’s reading is called “history.”
It reminds me of two lawyers I learned about when we lived in Germany, because the men doing Trump’s legal dirty work today are walking a road that better-dressed men walked 90 years ago, and, as a result, we know exactly where it leads.
The first is Hans Frank, who started out as Adolf Hitler’s personal attorney, defending Hitler and his Nazi thugs in court all through the 1920s the way Blanche once stood behind Trump at the defense table.
When Hitler took power, Frank was rewarded. He became the Reich’s chief jurist, president of the Academy for German Law, and eventually Governor-General of occupied Poland, where he presided over ghettos, mass plunder, and slaughter on a scale that’s still hard to grasp.
Frank was the respectable face of the regime, the man who insisted there was a legal theory for everything. At the Nuremberg trials he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and on October 16, 1946, the respectable lawyer was hanged.
The second man is Roland Freisler, and if Frank shows you what happens to the enabler, Freisler shows you what happens to the judge who decides — like Blanche has argued and John Roberts went along with — that the law is simply whatever Dear Leader wants it to be.
Freisler ran the Volksgerichtshof, the People’s Court, a tribunal stood up outside Germany’s constitutional structure for the express purpose of producing the verdicts the regime demanded. He handed down thousands of death sentences in three years.
He screamed at defendants from the bench, ordered their microphones cut, condemned the young students of the White Rose resistance to the guillotine for the crime of printing leaflets, and sent the officers of the July 20th plot to be hanged within hours of their show trials.
Freisler never faced a Nuremberg of his own, but only because an American bomb fell on his courthouse in February 1945 while he was reportedly clutching a defendant’s case file. The defendant lived; the judge did not. There’s a grim justice in the fact that the one man who most weaponized the law against his fellow citizens was killed holding the very file he was using to destroy one of them.
I stood in the small plaza at the University of Munich back in 1988, the Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, named for Hans and Sophie Scholl, where the two of them were caught scattering their leaflets from the gallery before Freisler sent them to die. They were the Renee Good and Alex Pretti of their time.
The university has since pressed bronze replicas of those scattered leaflets right into the pavement, so that today you walk over them and have to stop.
You think, standing there, about how ordinary the machinery of all this was. It wasn’t run by monsters in uniform alone. It was run by men like Todd Blanche and John Roberts, men with law degrees, men who told themselves they were just interpreting the statutes, just following the orders, just serving the head of state.
And every honest accounting that came afterward, from Nuremberg onward, rejected that excuse and established the principle that a directive from above does not protect the man who carries it out.
That principle is precisely what must be keeping Todd Blanche awake, because we’re already watching the American version, as Mark Twain once said, rhyme.
When Trump wanted his enemies prosecuted, the career professionals balked, so the administration installed Lindsey Halligan, another former Trump personal lawyer with no prosecutorial experience whatsoever, as a U.S. attorney, and she promptly indicted James Comey and Letitia James.
In contrast with Germany in 1933, a federal judge threw both cases out, ruled her appointment unlawful, and other judges in the district were so disgusted that one of them now puts an asterisk beside her name on every court filing.
Thankfully, at least so far, these are not the actions of a legal system that’s fully surrendered (although Aileen Cannon may soon have a word). They’re the actions of one that’s still fighting back, and that fight is the whole ballgame.
But it gets worse, because that same executive order about mail-in voting also directs the Department of Homeland Security to build its own state-by-state lists of who’s eligible to vote, exactly the kind of national database you’d assemble if your real plan was to pressure states into purging their rolls.
If that sounds like paranoia, it’s only because we’ve already forgotten that we lived through it. In 2000, Jeb Bush’s secretary of state, Katherine Harris, who also happened to be co-chair of his brother George’s Florida campaign, hired a private firm to scrub the voter rolls using a list of supposed felons that included eight thousand names shipped in from Texas.
The matching was deliberately loose, flagging anyone whose last name was an 80 percent match to a felon’s, and the Brennan Center later found that at least 12,000 eligible voters were wrongly purged, 22 times George W. Bush’s 537-vote margin. Black Floridians were 11 percent of the electorate and 41 percent of the people thrown off the rolls.
Bush took the presidency by that sliver, and the Florida Supreme Court-ordered recount that would have caught the theft was shut down by a Supreme Court whose deciding majority included a justice his own father had put on the bench, Clarence Thomas, whose wife was at that very moment collecting résumés for a Bush administration, and Antonin Scalia, whose sons worked for firms representing Bush, neither of whom saw any reason to step aside.
That’s the voter merge-and-purge playbook, and they’re dusting it off on a national scale for this November with new, borrowed-from-Putin tweaks. Or at least they’re trying their hardest to.
When the Reichstag finally voted itself out of existence in March 1933, uniformed storm troopers lined the walls of the chamber so the legislators would understand the price of voting no.
That’s the tradition these men are drawing from, and we’d be fools not to be clear-eyed and ready for just about anything between now and November. After all, we all watched what Trump and his lickspittles did on January 6th, 2021, killing four police officers as they tried to “hang Mike Pence.”
But here’s the difference between Germany in 1933 and America in 2026 and, as Wendy Lawrence argues in a brilliant recent essay, it comes down to timing.
The Germans got their decisive vote after the seizure of power, when a newly seated Reichstag rubber-stamped the Enabling Act and handed Hitler everything. We get ours before. Which is why they’re so frantically trying to suppress the vote.
The November midterms will arrive while the courts are still ruling against this administration, while subpoenas can still be issued, while the power of the purse still belongs to whoever controls the House.
A Democratic majority doesn’t need to convict anyone to change everything. It can deny the appropriations that fund the deployments and the detention machine, it can compel sworn testimony and drag the concealed directives into daylight, and it can restore a Justice Department willing to enforce laws like Section 242, the Reconstruction-era statute that makes it a felony for any official to strip any citizen of their constitutional rights.
The Supreme Court’s immunity ruling shields the president’s official acts, but it shields no one beneath him. The agents, the contractors, the lawyers who signed the unlawful papers, all of them remain fully exposed, and a future attorney general can act on that.
Trump understands this perfectly, which is why he told House Republicans that they have to win the midterms because otherwise “they’ll find a reason to impeach me.” It’s why his people muse about ICE at the polls and write rules to choke off the mail. It’s why Stephen Miller is reportedly pushing to suspend habeas corpus. It’s why Trump promised to “pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval [Office].”
These lawyers and judges aren’t afraid of impeachment as an abstraction: they’re afraid of the reckoning that oversight makes possible, the same reckoning Hans Frank met at the end of a rope and Roland Freisler escaped only by dying.
The coming reckoning — unless they can stop it this fall — isn’t vengeance. It’s the rule of law standing back up after being knocked down, and in this country that recovery still runs through a ballot box which the members of the Reichstag of 1933 no longer had.
So, make sure you’re registered, and make sure everyone you know is too, at vote.org, and if you vote by mail, request your ballot early this fall and send it back early so no postal rule can run out the clock on you.
Save the nonpartisan Election Protection hotline in your phone, 866-OUR-VOTE, and call it the moment anyone tries to intimidate you at a polling place, because no badge and no uniform has the right to stand between you and your vote.
Call your representatives through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and remind them that funding lawless deployments, gutting oversight, suspending habeas corpus, and letting the Post Office police our ballots are against the Constitution.
Keep an eye on your own statehouse at openstates.org, where this fight is being waged district by district.
And if this piece helped you see the stakes clearly, please share it and support independent journalism here at the Hartmann Report, because the people counting on you to look away are counting just as hard on you to stay home, and the single most dangerous thing you can do to them is to show up.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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