The true admission in Trump's speech
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
A minefield laid by Trump is enough to decimate the whole GOP
It was one of those stories that causes barely a ripple of interest anymore, one that we’ve become so inured to that it passes almost unnoticed but that would trigger a massive investigation/impeachment hearing were this any other administration.
Here was the New York Times headline on Tuesday: “Trump Paid $2 Million by South Korean Company Facing Trade Investigation.”
Given the billion-dollar figures that accompany President Trump’s name seemingly each hour, it was easy to dismiss this one. I mean, a measly two million bucks? That’s like chump change now. A rounding error. Yet reading the story brought a fresh perspective on the everyday bribery, grift and graft that drives our criminal-in-chief.
The $2 million payment was revealed on Trump’s mandatory 927-page financial disclosure report, part of the $2.2 billion he earned in 2025. It was made by something called the Base Group, and the document referred to it only as a “nonrefundable development fee” (evidently the latest Orwellian term for payoffs). The Times was told in a statement that the payment was related to “a still-unannounced golf course project.”
Here is where things get still sketchier: this Base Group and its corporate affiliate Korea Aluminum were charged with circumventing U.S. trade duties. The payment was purportedly unrelated to the investigation into the company and its near decade of courting the Trump family. Yeah right.
The article maintained that the financial ties between Trump and this company “illustrate the minefield Mr. Trump has created” with various foreign business interests all over the world.
Of course, a spokesman for the Trump Organization was aghast that anyone could possibly infer that the $2 million had anything close to the whiff of a payoff that it appears to be. He defiantly maintained, “Any suggestion that this transaction was driven by anything other than legitimate business considerations is pure fiction.”
Seriously? Pure fiction? Not even quasi-fiction? It’s like, “Oh, dear me, how could you possibly imply that anything surrounding this president is anything less than completely ethical and above-board?”
Excuse me while I take a few moments to laugh hysterically.
Let me back up a moment to address the Times’ use of the word “minefield” in describing the environment Trump has created in the White House. Because no, it’s not a minefield at all. It needs to be called precisely what it is in the headline of the story.
Corruption.
At the very least – and I do mean very – it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest and calls into great question Trump’s integrity. (And no one understands better than me the absurdity of putting “integrity” and “Trump” in the same sentence.) To pretend otherwise is disingenuous at best and seems to prove the point.
The Base Group is but a tiny piece of at least $125 million in payments that Trump’s holding company collected last year directly from foreign sources in several countries, according to the story.
What’s consistently astonishing is that not even the thinnest attempt is made any longer to hide the self-dealing. Trump is operating like a guy who has Congress in his front hip pocket and the Supreme Court in his back pocket. He appears to believe that the immunity he’s been granted extends to every area of his life, not just his presidency. And at the moment, he’s probably right.
The corruption being enabled and tolerated at the highest levels of our government is an international disgrace. The Republicans, who have not done a single thing to so much as acknowledge it, much less put a stop to it, own it just as much as does Trump and his cronies who are fleecing the country and destroying the rule of law in real time. It would only take 10 of them to put the brakes on this madness, yet they choose to do nothing.
Of course, Trump’s $2.2 billion gross revenue windfall last year – more than triple his $622 million total from 2024 – represents a shamelessly grotesque profiting from the presidency. The blatant grift is likely only to rise in 2026. I mean, what’s to stop this guy from raiding the U.S. Treasury itself and snatching $20 billion, $50 billion, $100 billion?
Let’s take a closer look at the $2.2 billion. We know that a majority of it came from crypto scams. But think about how much money that is. Here’s some simple math:
Over the course of a year, $2.2 billion is:
- A bit over $6 million dollars a day.
- $250,000 an hour.
- $4,167.00 per minute.
- $69.44 every single second.
In the time it will take you to read this column (depending on how slow or quick you are), Trump will have made between $12,000 and $18,000, if we take last year’s income as a gauge. That’s an appalling use of his office to generate massive amounts of wealth. By all accounts, it’s the primary reason he wanted to be back in the White House. That, and of course destroying everything he lays his hands on.
Trump is selling out our nation to line his bank accounts. As he’s found, this presidency thing is the best con going. Kickbacks are his love language. And yet the MAGA crowd still points to his decision not to take his $400,000 annual presidential salary as laughable evidence of his being a patriot, even if he earns that much back in a little over an hour and a half.
Despite overwhelming evidence, the New York Times article failed to prove a definitive quid pro quo link between the Base Group and Trump. Yet the investigation into the company (dating to at least 2022) was dropped as soon as the $2 million payment was made. It’s not difficult to connect those dots.
In Trump’s world, this is what is known as protection money. You take care of the boss, he takes care of you. If you don’t cough it up, well, it’s a matter of, “Nice little company you got there. Be a shame if something were to happen to it.”
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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A crack exposes J.D. Vance as an even bigger creep than anyone imagined
During my Capitol Hill days eons ago, I made friends with a handful of Secret Service agents. It was during my crazy Dewey Beach summers on the Delaware shore.
Once in a while, depending on how many beers I had, and they had, I'd ask them questions about the job, what it was like, and who they liked and disliked. They rarely budged on disclosing any details.
But personalities leaked through anyway. I know they liked Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. And only one time I heard something negative. It was about another very high-profile individual, who I will not gossip about here.
They trashed this person because they did not like them. And the fact that it was so rare to hear them complain is exactly the point. These are people trained not to talk. When I heard them rail on this person, I was shocked, not only because it was surprising to hear, as it was someone I liked, but because they had real antipathy for them.
Which is why the scuttlebutt out this week says so much about J.D. Vance.
MS NOW's Carol Leonnig and Vaughn Hillyard reported that agents assigned to protect the vice president and his family are "fed up" with a pattern of last-minute, expensive, and, I suppose by the standards of every prior vice president, unprecedented travel demands.
The story that broke it open was that agents were mobilized last Thursday to join a Marine Corps helicopter crew and fly Vance's young son across town to a golf lesson at Joint Base Andrews.
The flight only didn't happen because of thunderstorms. Marine Two costs taxpayers somewhere between $16,000 and $24,600 an hour to fly, according to Defense Department estimates. Previous vice presidents had their kids driven to activities in an SUV, like normal people.
That's not an isolated and inconvenient indulgence. The Vances have reportedly used government helicopters on short notice to go house-hunting in Middleburg, Virginia. Warning to childless cat ladies in that area — J.D. might be on his way, but I digress.
Sources told MS NOW the detail has taken to minting its own dark joke about it that includes coins and stickers reading "Bobcat OTR Survivors Club.” Bobcat being Vance's Secret Service code name, OTR meaning "off the record," the internal term for these no-notice movements that blow up agents' days off and force security plans to be improvised on the fly.
"The detail is tired of them not giving notice on things and making everything an OTR," one person familiar with the frustration said. "He thinks he can still move around like a U.S. Senator."
One source put it more bluntly, "That is RIDICULOUS. Pence and Harris never pulled anything like that."
Vance's office responded, of course, with a perhaps disingenuous statement thanking agents for their service and noting the "unique challenge" of protecting a vice president with young children. I am sure behind the scenes the quick-tempered Vance was furious.
Sure, it’s tough to guard kids. I can only imagine. The Vances are the first vice-presidential family with small kids since Al Gore's in the 1990s, and it’s got to be a real logistical quagmire, but also for the Vances. I’m sure they want the maximum protection for those kids, and that’s understandable.
However, the logistics don't explain why career Secret Service supervisors are telling reporters, and on the record no less, that they've never seen anything like this.
Here's what I learned from hanging around agents that are part of a non-talkative profession. When people whose entire job is discretion start finding ways to vent to national reporters, that's saying quite a bit about the nastiness that must exude from J.D. Vance.
The leak means their frustration has busted through professionalism. In a sense they’re just mirroring J.D. because, from the sound of it, he doesn’t appear to have much professionalism.
In other words, one can only assume that he must be such an obnoxious jerk, because if he was a terrific and kind man, those agents would gladly, and without complaint, go the extra mile for him.
And it fits a pattern with Vance. In April, on a trip to Rome, Vance stood next to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and cracked that she "could've called me a jerk" in Italian and he "wouldn't even know.” He must have sensed something from her too.
Last week, while in Milwaukee, he tried out a Northern Midwest accent, joking "Wis-cawntin" before trying again with "Wis-cawnsin."
The crowd stared back at him in dead silence.
He's had a similar moment addressing troops, where an attempted joke fell flat. There’s the childless cat lady. John Oliver called him an "abrasive MAGA a--hole.” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear called him “arrogant,” among other things.
Before the 2024 presidential election, I spoke with Republican pollster Sarah Longwell, who was running focus groups that included plenty of Republicans. Referring to Vance, she told me, "I haven't seen as much disdain for a candidate since Mike Pence refused to certify the 2020 election. I mean, the swing voters just don't like Vance"
And neither, apparently, do his Secret Service agents.
I'll say what I can't prove and what I believe anyway, and that is that agents don't do this over a guy who's decent to work for, and gives them the respect they deserve.
Whatever you think of the politics, Secret Service agents endure grueling, thankless hours for people across the political spectrum without complaint. Seriously, they don’t complain, at least in my experience.
So, when the discretion cracks, the person on the other end of it usually has something to do with why.
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Trump's stomach-churning on-air garbage has left vulnerable Republicans horrified
We are, right now, dealing with a war overseas with Iran that has done so much damage to our country’s reputation, military, and economy that the ramifications, serious as they are now, will likely only get worse in the years ahead.
At home, gas prices are climbing. Food prices and mortgage rates are rising. Wildfires are burning across the West. Tornadoes have torn through states like Illinois and Indiana, already shattering annual records. Flooding has once again devastated communities in Texas, Kentucky, and other parts of the Midwest.
Smoke from Canadian wildfires has turned the skies over Chicago and New York City orange. Thousands of Americans are suffering through an unusually severe Cyclosporiasis outbreak courtesy of Trump budget cuts.
And yet, Donald Trump chose not to talk about the war, grocery bills, FEMA, or public health Thursday.
Nope. He used a primetime presidential address, normally reserved for war, tragedy, or moments of profound national consequence, to relitigate, for the umpteenth time, the 2020 election. The biggest lie he’s ever told to the American people that just won’t die.
His nincompoop acting DNI, Bill Pulte, in his short tenure, clearly “found, “coverd-up,” “hidden-from-you,” “shocking” “nefarious” tidbits about debunked election interference for Trump to stop America in its tracks.
It was as underwhelming as Trump’s Great American State Fair. And he looked like what he is — a spoiled, squirming child. Bottom-line, everyone was out to get him, wanted him to lose, they were “wise” to him.
It was all so discombobulated. He, of course, started talking about his achievements, which was akin to a Colbert monologue — full of jokes. Boy, do I miss Colbert. Then, he railed at China, the CIA, burn-bags, deep state, electric voting machines. It was all just too much. A complete rewind from the debunked conspiracies of the past.
Only someone so far removed from reality would drag the country back into a long-settled election simply because he still can't accept defeat. And simply because he just can’t get enough of trying to convince himself and everyone else that the election was rigged.
Gallingly, that about sums it up. And if any GOP U.S. senators were watching tonight, wavering on whether to support Trump’s prohibitive and discriminatory SAVE Act, they can now definitively vote no.
Yet somehow, despite everything happening in America and around the world, Trump once again succeeded in making the week about 2020. Much to the horror of Republicans trying to win the midterms, the country is once again talking about an election that ended nearly six years ago.
Besides Trump’s foolish primetime charade, another reason it’s back in the headlines is Jay Clayton, President Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, and his confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia spent his questioning time asking Clayton a simple factual question: Who won the 2020 presidential election?
Clayton wouldn’t give a straight answer. He kept falling back on the line that "Joe Biden was certified as the president," but repeatedly declined to simply say Biden won. Ossoff pressed him directly, asking whether it was humiliating to have to dodge a question everyone in the room already knew the answer to.
And the 2020 election popped up again during Todd Blanche’s Attorney General confirmation hearing yesterday. He gave the same non-answer as Clayton.
It’s stomach churning to watch middle-age men shove their nose up the wide-load derriere of an 80 year-old bad-tempered buffoon.
As we all know by now, the 2020 election has become a loyalty litmus test for anyone Trump wants confirmed. It’s the price of admission cowardly fools pay to get a seat at the table of power.
For you, dear and knowledgeable reader, I do not need to list the many ways the 2020 election was, in the words of Chris Krebs, who ran election security for Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security, the most secure election in American history. Krebs said flatly there was no evidence of vote-flipping by any foreign or domestic actor.
That should be the end of the story, but this convulsive obsession of Trump’s won’t end. Hopefully the courts and the thousands of voting jurisdictions around the country were watching Netflix, or NBC, ABC and CBS, all of which declined to carry the primetime speech.
A primetime presidential address is one of the rarest and most powerful tools any president possesses. It is reserved for war, national tragedy, catastrophic disasters, or moments that demand the country’s immediate and undivided attention.
By interrupting regular broadcasting, the President’s goal is ostensibly to unify the country’s attention, offer reassurance, project stability, and lay out vital, decisive action.
Ronald Reagan comforted a grieving nation after the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. I remember that speech vividly. George W. Bush addressed the nation in primetime after the 9/11 attacks. I remember the sorrow and solidarity I felt after that broadcast.
So here’s the question worth asking: Why, with everything actually happening in this country right now, is Trump going on primetime to talk about 2020?
Well, the answer is simple. He’s a selfish, petulant, indignant, malcontent crybaby. He doesn’t give a damn about the war, your bills, your flooded house, your dry heaves, or your irritated stomach.
But if you didn’t know that by now, well, I don’t have much use for you.
I had to watch the speech tonight because I had to write this column, and now I’m having dry heaves and an irritated stomach and violent diarrhea, and that’s probably the most useful thing Donald Trump accomplished all night.
While wars rage overseas, towns flood, grocery bills climb, wildfires spread, and Americans worry about tomorrow, the President of the United States used one of the most powerful platforms in government to refight an election he lost nearly six years ago.
Millions of Americans tuned in because they assumed the President of the United States had something important to tell them. Instead, they got a 60-minute reminder that the only crisis Donald Trump still cares about is the one that ended in November 2020.
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Trump's primetime speech will expose his biggest con yet — or its collapse
Tonight at nine o’clock Eastern, Donald Trump will look into a television camera and tell America he’s rescuing democracy. He teased the address to reporters this week, promising “really big news” about “free and fair elections” and adding that “it doesn’t get bigger.”
For once, he and I agree. It doesn’t get bigger.
An administration official told Reuters that the speech will center on newly declassified intelligence about the 2020 election and what the White House calls voting machine vulnerabilities open to foreign hackers; multiple election experts quoted in that same reporting warn he’s laying the groundwork to contest Republican losses this November.
To understand what we’ll actually be watching Thursday night, we have to go back to 1973, to a Manhattan night spot called Le Club, where a 27-year-old Donald Trump, freshly sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to Black families, met the most feared lawyer in New York. It’s a story I tell in detail in The Last American President.
Roy Cohn had made his reputation as Joe McCarthy’s chief counsel, wrecking careers with accusations he never had to prove. His advice to young Trump, as Cohn’s own cousin later recalled it, was blunt: “You might be guilty; it doesn’t matter.” Don’t settle. Don’t apologize. Attack the accuser.
So instead of quietly signing the consent decree his father’s regular lawyers recommended, Trump called a press conference and countersued the federal government for $100 million. A judge tossed the countersuit, the Trumps eventually signed roughly the deal they’d been offered at the start, and Cohn declared total victory anyway.
He understood something that’s become the operating system of Donald Trump’s entire life: the court of public opinion matters more than any court of law, and a lie defended with absolute commitment will usually beat a truth defended halfheartedly.
Over their 13 years together, Cohn drilled three rules into his student: Attack, never defend. Deny everything, admit nothing. Claim victory no matter what actually happened.
When Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation in 2017, Trump reportedly demanded of his aides, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He was mourning a fixer who’d been dead for three decades.
It took him eight more years, but he’s finally found his Roy Cohn. He’s found several of them, in fact, and he’s installed them at the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
That’s the machinery humming behind today’s speech. The acting Director of National Intelligence is now Bill Pulte, a nepo-baby real estate guy with no intelligence experience who referred Trump’s political enemies for criminal prosecution based on mortgage records he pulled from government databases, and who Democrats say was installed precisely to help Republicans rig the midterms.
A White House task force has been combing through thousands of pages of classified documents, timed to land in the middle of an election season. Federal agents have already raided the Fulton County elections office and carted off 700 boxes of 2020 ballots, something I covered here at the Hartmann Report earlier this year.
Steve Bannon has promised ICE agents at the polls come November, and Trump’s new Postmaster General has confirmed the Postal Service won’t deliver mail-in ballots from states that refuse to hand over sensitive voter data to the federal government. And Jay Clayton, Trump’s pick for permanent DNI, faced his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, one day before the speech, having already auditioned for the job by echoing Trump’s phony claims about “election integrity” on CNBC.
Standing in front of Mount Rushmore on the third of July, Trump told the crowd that if Senate Republicans kill the filibuster and pass his SAVE America Act, with its proof-of-citizenship, driver’s license-must-match-birth certificate (that kicks off millions of married women), and photo ID requirements, then Republicans “will not lose an election for 100 years.”
He tried holding a bipartisan housing affordability bill hostage to force the Senate’s hand, and now GOP leadership is trying to attach SAVE to the national security spending bill this week. Even Dan Abrams, hardly a flamethrower, opened his radio show this Monday by saying it’s time to admit the president of the United States is “trying to cheat” in the midterm elections.
One detail gives the whole con away: Tulsi Gabbard, before she resigned as DNI last month, commissioned a forensic analysis of voting machines seized in Puerto Rico. That analysis, Reuters reports, found security flaws but no evidence of hacking — none — and Gabbard’s own follow-up report recommending fixes has been sitting unreleased at the White House for months.
They went looking for proof of fraud, found none (but perhaps a way to hack machines in the future), buried the report that could have helped states harden their systems before November, and are now preparing a primetime address built on the fumes of the very investigation that came up empty.
Roy Cohn would be proud. Claim victory no matter what the facts say. When you’re in the wrong and on the defensive, lie and attack.
I lived in East Germany’s shadow for a year in the 1980s, working for an international relief organization in a small village a few miles from the border, and in 1986 I passed through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin. Most Americans probably don’t remember or even know that the DDR held elections; regular ones, with polling places and ballots and officially reported turnout levels that were typically north of 98 percent.
What they didn’t have was any possibility of a surprise. The regime had hollowed out every institution that could have made the outcome uncertain, so the election became theater, a ritual performed to legitimize a result already decided.
Putin ran East Germany’s KGB at the time, and he’s now Trump’s mentor. Authoritarians rarely abolish elections. They keep the shell and kill what’s inside it, and it appears that Trump is following the path Putin blazed at multiple levels.
So will it work here? There’s no secret button that flips vote totals: more than 98 percent of American ballots are cast in jurisdictions with paper records, and when Trump signed an executive order that would have forced the decertification of voting machines, a federal judge permanently blocked it based on the Constitution handing the running of elections to the states.
The weapon Trump and his corrupt GOP will use is chaos, not hacking: seizures of ballots and equipment, decertification fights, litigation that delays counts past deadlines, ICE vans parked outside polling places in Democratic neighborhoods, and a pre-built national narrative, launched tomorrow night, that gives every Republican candidate permission to refuse to concede when they lose.
David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights attorney, thinks the document dumps will fall flat with most Americans, and the primary results this spring suggest voters aren’t buying what Trump’s selling.
But Roy Cohn’s method never needed a majority to believe the lie. It only needed enough confusion, enough delay, and enough intimidation to change who shows up and what gets counted. It’s worked for Donald Trump for 50 years.
Remember, though, how it ended for the teacher. Roy Cohn died in 1986, disbarred just weeks earlier for dishonesty, fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation, abandoned by nearly everyone he’d ever helped, including Trump, who dumped him when he got sick.
The con, in other words, always works right up until the moment it doesn’t.
Whether tonight marks the beginning of the biggest con in American history or the beginning of its collapse depends less on what Trump says than on what tens of millions of us do between now and the first Tuesday this coming November.
Congress is voting this week on whether to bolt the SAVE Act onto the national security spending bill, so call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell your senators and representative where you stand, and don’t forget to mention Todd Blanche to your senators.
Check your voter registration right now at vote.org, because purges are already underway in Red states, and track what your own legislature is doing to protect or restrict your ballot at openstates.org.
Democracy has survived con men before, but only because ordinary Americans refused to become the mark. As Jefferson told us, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty…”
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Frantic Trump knows it's all over if this devastating message lands
Some of the less imaginative in the media refer to the "Blue Tea Party" to label the zeitgeist that is taking hold of the nation as young Democratic Socialists are making noise, winning elections, and being "nice" about it.
Please. This wonderful development, long in the making, is hardly a retread of the Koch-financed, centrally planned, tri-corner hat, muzzleloader-carrying red coats of the 2010s. The Tea Party was little more than a corporate response primarily to the Black president, moderate as he was, who wanted to moderately raise taxes on the rich.
But today's movement on the left is powerfully organic, born of anger and abject terror over the right-wing extremism shoved down American throats; it's a movement comprised primarily of left-of-center younger millennials and just coming-of-age Gen Zs. They are hungry, and there is evidence they're ready to really win.
The country has taken notice, and that's great. But it comes with a few concerns.
It is breathlessly wonderful watching a renewed awakening of the true American Left, the one of FDR, Ted Kennedy, Sherrod Brown, and, yes, Bernie Sanders. And as needed as they were, this movement, this time, is headed up by late twenty-somethings, maybe early thirties.
Zohran Mamdani is the sin quo non of the "next step Left," the essential official, the one succeeding, and a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2028 (Assuming we hold regular elections). Of course, we have the ever-reliable AOC, indeed the entire "squad," now looking a little more mainstream, especially when one considers primary wins by Melat Kiros, a Social Democrat who beat a 15 term House Dem, and the unapologetic leftist in Texas, James Talarico, whose Christian background actually enhances his leftwing views because, by all appearances, Talarico actually read the words of Jesus and plans to carry out that mission for the "least of my brothers."
If you doubted the power of this youth movement and its danger to the Republican establishment, consider the comfort Donald Trump takes in facing off against the obviously tired Chuck Schumer or ever-banal Hakeem Jeffries, versus AOC and Talarico. Trump has always used extreme hyperbole to scare the bejezus out of the typical Fox News viewer, but he's found another gear in describing this crowd.
“These are hardcore, godless communists,” Trump said at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference last month, adding, “This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence.”
The most serious threat to the nation's existence, ever? Forget that he skips right over a damned civil war over slavery that killed 500,000 Americans, which is really, really rude to that generation if you ponder it momentarily. But it's a near certainty that Trump mismatched some words in his assertion.
It might be the most serious threat to his presidency and his existence in the White House. Which fits, because it seems as though Trump doesn't believe anything real happened before he took office, nothing of importance, for sure, since he alone defines the nation, owns the nation, and alone moves the nation. Yes, he has good reason to fear populism born from the ground up, politicians 50 years younger than him, with 50 fewer years wasted on self-indulgence over maturation.
Oh, and yeah — Trump, call Talarico "Godless" without turning to stone. It takes presidential-level hubris to exude the hedonism of the womanizer and sexual abuser, having almost never stepped in a church, to turn against a true Christian like Talarico (or Biden, for that matter) and compare who carries forth Jesus and God's message (Whether one considers it divine or secular, the message is progressive through and through).
Actually, the irony in all this is just delicious. This new crop, the Mamdanis, Talaricos, AOCs, the ones that talk about poor people, are actually the ones taking up Jesus's true message and, in time-honored tradition, Trump plays the role of the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the Temple — absorbing the true threat looming if the poor and downtrodden ever did hear such a message and felt emboldened to take on the system.
Back then, they killed Jesus over the threat; for now these messengers will just get dragged on Fox and Truth Social.
Trump and the MAGA Right do know the power of branding, though, and, as seen above, have quickly labeled such liberals as "communists." This is, of course, ludicrous. A communist believes that the government should own every business; no one is above or below anyone, CEO or janitor. They are comrades.
Not a single current candidate is even close to advocating such a position. Oh! Wait, it was Donald Trump who demanded 10% of Intel go to the American government for a sweetheart deal, and when challenged that such a relationship was "un-American," even a little communist, Trump stated he couldn't think of a deal "more American." He finally said something without lying.
A lesson in the purely transactional presidency, dear reader.
A true socialist believes that citizens should own businesses and produce goods and services — capitalism continues, but with strong regulation, a robust welfare state, and heavy redistribution through taxation. If this sounds familiar, it is because the United States has always had some socialist tendencies, as all stable democracies must — Medicare, SNAP, and the 2009 bank bailouts come to mind. It's all in one's priorities.
A Democratic Socialist of the Bernie Sanders, Mamdani, and Kiros type still believes in capitalism; they just believe in stronger redistribution to the poorer classes. Note, the U.S. government already promotes strong socialist programs for the elite; the latest example is picking up the tab for a big tungsten mining operation, and you'll never guess who benefits. According to a report in the New York Times:
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump hold investments in business entities connected to a massive $1.1 billion tungsten mining project in Kazakhstan, which was negotiated by the Trump administration. The venture is backed by up to $1.6 billion in proposed U.S. federal financing, sparking scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest.
Guh.
Momentarily forget the obvious conflict of interest — that's just business as usual now — and simply note the "socialism" proudly extended by the U.S. government to wealthy investors. Socialism in some form or another is comfortably woven into the fabric of this country; it gets down to priorities, $1.6B for mining that should be an entirely private investment with private profits, versus $1.6B to add money to SNAP to get families extra grocery money to fight off inflation? Fox News calls it "Free Stuff!" Maybe, just who gets the free stuff?
Well, we know which side Trump falls on, and we definitely know where the current crop of "New Democrats" land. And so here we arrive at some small quibble.
To this powerful and brave new crop of leaders, how about just dropping the "Socialist" label and simply run as a Democrat? Indeed, run as a "true" mainstream Democrat, run as an "FDR Democrat," run as a "Ted Kennedy Democrat," use the progressive angle to wake the real members of the Democratic Party establishment up.
Why?
Because.
It makes a difference in branding, and though it may have helped Mamdani locally, or Colorado's Kiros, it most certainly will not help nationally. No, they should not be ashamed or mute their views or positions. In fact, the shame should go the other direction, shaming conservative establishment Democrats as having lost their way. Dropping the label "socialist" from their party identity provides two benefits: It makes it slightly easier to navigate the Fox News hate machine (slightly), while also reminding current Democrats of the definition of a Democrat — a real one.
And there's never been a better time to present a new Democratic Party led by a youth movement ready to take on Trump, Thune, Alito, and every other "establishment" figure they're against. Of the group, it's likely they'll be relying on a Gen-Xer to lead the ticket for president. At the presidential level, there is no substitute for experience. But the good news is there is a great crop of Dems just waiting for their chance — Klobuchar, Newsom, Buttigieg, and the man I wish would get really involved in possible presidential politics but seems shy, Sen. Commander Mark Kelly of Arizona, able to fly a fighter jet, land a space shuttle, be a great senator for Arizona standing up to Trump — put that man in the White House.
But the youth movement will push whoever that person might be to the left, or where they've needed to be all along. Just, you know, drop the socialist part — you are the "real" Democrats anyway. You will caucus with the Democrats when you win, lest you be left in the irrelevant dust. Take away the one advantage you've given the Fox News denizens, stand proud, push the party left, and grow it from youth. Blow that bloviating boomer right off the right corner of the White House and Congress, go in the front door, carrying all those priorities on your left side.
That's why Trump and Fox News are so scared, by the way. If people ever heard your message, it's lights out for them in this struggling land.
Do it as a favor to us Gen Xers and Boomers, who will support you with zeal every step of the way, knowing that it's time we step to the side, making room for a generation to craft government needed for the next two to three generations, their generations, our kids' generations.
Oh, and they'll probably do some good for us, too. Real Democrats have plenty of social concerns to get us to where we need to be. It doesn't take a label, only an inner head and heart guided by the right priorities.
Jason Miciak is a Rawstory columnist, former editor at Occupy Democrats, author, political consultant, attorney, and single girldad. Please follow him on Bluesky, and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com. He reads and appreciates feedback in the comments.
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This pathetic failure on national TV was a jarring wake-up call
Todd Blanche walked into the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning carrying the worst résumé any attorney general nominee has had in modern memory. Bar none — and bar is not a pun because Blanche could be disbarred.
How far down we have sunk.
Blanche has a documented role in burying Epstein files, his own emails show he ran Trump's retribution campaign, and a federal judge's ink is still wet on a ruling accusing him of helping the president manipulate the courts.
He should have walked out a broken man. Instead, he walked out on track to be confirmed, and Democrats on that committee need to look hard at why. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Blanche is the man Pam Bondi told lawmakers under oath was "in charge of the process and the entire release" of the Epstein files. He's the man whose own emails, unearthed by Glenn Thrush at the New York Times, show him personally convening the DOJ's "weaponization working group" against Trump's enemies.
He's the man a federal judge referred to state bar associations two days ago, calling his role in shielding Trump from IRS scrutiny part of a lawsuit "brought for an improper purpose." More than 1,200 former Justice Department employees signed a letter urging the Senate to reject him.
That is the mile-long target Democrats had sitting in front of them today. And with only two exceptions, they missed him completely.
Sen. Cory Booker seemed to grasp what was at stake, and Sen. Adam Schiff pressed Blanche on what happened to the prosecutor he used to be, the one who worked in the Southern District of New York, versus the man now running interference for Trump — though even that line of attack didn't land the way it needed to.
But watching the hearing in full, what you mostly saw were senators just taking their turns separately, instead of building a solid case against Blanche. His nomination is a five-alarm fire, and Democrats just ho-hummed along.
Sen. Dick Durbin got his moment, reminding Blanche of his own line from a press conference, "I love you, sir,” toward Donald Trump, whom he's supposed to be independent of. Sen. Chris Coons got Blanche to admit, almost offhandedly, that he doesn't believe Trump is eligible for a third term.
Sen. Peter Welch announced he'll vote no. Gee, really? And then bizarrely, he spent real time on Mel Gibson's pardon and gun rights. Rome is burning Sen. Welch, and no one gives a rat’s a-- about Mel Gibson. But everyone cares about the Epstein survivors.
Shockingly, they were mostly forgotten about today.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse got in a jab about Kash Patel, but what did he expect Blanche to do? Agree with him that Patel is billing taxpayers for personal travel and drinks too much? Yes, Blanche would be his boss if confirmed, but the enemy today was Blanche, not Patel. Or Mel Gibson, for that matter.
The Democrats on the committee were not coordinated — at all. They never divided up the fertile ground of Blanche’s crimes and allegiance to Trump, and they let Blanche control the clock instead of the other way around.
Today was a Democratic strategy fail of epic proportions.
Blanche was there to answer for three disqualifying things, and Democrats never forced him into a corner, into a confrontation. They never drew blood. He had to concede that "mistakes were made" on the Epstein redactions, a pithy explanation for exposing survivors' identifying information.
He got to say the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund is "dead" without ever being pinned down on why he spent months defending it and refused to put its cancellation in writing when a judge asked him to.
He got to lean on "the Constitution gives the president the power to pardon anybody" as a dodge on the horrific pardons of the criminals, insurrectionists, and the white nationalists of January 6th.
Meanwhile, Republicans played their part flawlessly. Chairman Grassley opened by praising Blanche as "well qualified" and pivoted almost immediately into attacking Democrats for calling the department "a disgrace.”
Democrats are right, and the disgrace was in the witness chair, and they never made that connection.
It fell to two Republicans, not the Democratic minority, to land the hearing's sharpest blows: John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, both on the committee, both irritated enough about the anti-weaponization fund's stench of self-dealing to actually press Blanche on it. But most of what they said seemed to support Trump and seemed to hint that they’ll vote to move Blanche’s nomination to a vote on the Senate floor.
So, barring a surprise, Blanche advances. He becomes Attorney General. He goes back to being Donald Trump's lawyer instead of being an independent Attorney General leading an independent Justice Department.
The retribution campaign goes on. The Epstein files stay exactly as unresolved as Blanche wants them to stay. And, somehow, someway, Trump’s $1.8 billion weaponization fund will live to see another day. Just watch.
Today was supposed to be the moment Democrats made Todd Blanche's nomination too toxic for wavering Republicans to support.
They should have approached today the way the January 6th committee once turned scattered facts into an undeniable narrative by dividing the work and issues among themselves, and building the case methodically.
Instead, today looked like a committee where everyone had a good line, and nobody had a gotcha, gobsmacking moment.
If this is how Democrats show up in November, the party has much bigger problems than one bad confirmation hearing. They need to buck up or else we will be paying for their meh and malaise.
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Years of embarrassment led a raging Trump to this abomination
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill — which gave the top 1% fully $118 billion this year in tax cuts — turns a year old this week and Republicans in Congress actually celebrated the largest cuts to food assistance and Medicaid in American history.
They told us it was about fraud, about lazy people gaming the system, about restoring the dignity of work. Exactly a year later, we can now see what it was really about in a line of cars outside a food bank in Phoenix.
That’s where ProPublica found Ana Alvarez on a recent morning, a single mother of five who works at a restaurant and lost her family’s SNAP benefits last September. She reapplied in December and the government still hasn’t processed her application.
She calls the agency every week and gets told to keep waiting, so she clips coupons, her kids don’t go to the zoo anymore, and as the summer heat bears down, she’s doing grim arithmetic on rent, the car payment, and the electric bill that keeps the air conditioning running. She’s one reason Arizona has lost more than half of its SNAP recipients in a single year.
In Michigan, a widow named Sarah works two food service jobs to raise her 9-year-old daughter on $219 a month in food assistance, help she’s needed since her husband died suddenly six years ago. Last Christmas one of her employers wrote a single number wrong on her renewal paperwork, one missing zero, and the state cut her off.
And in Atlanta, Human Rights Watch documented a 36-year-old supermarket cashier who was working and meeting every requirement until she gave birth in late 2025, at which point Georgia shut off both her Medicaid and her food stamps, claiming she’d failed to report the job she was standing at every day. She’s spent the months since trying to get her coverage back while the medical bills pile up. In the party of family values, apparently, having a baby is now a firing offense.
None of these women are cheats or freeloaders. They’re workers, mothers, widows: exactly the people these cynical Republicans swear they’re protecting. But the numbers tell the story: more than 4 million Americans have been pushed off SNAP since the bill passed, the steepest drop since Clinton’s 1996 welfare cuts, and in just the 13 states that publish the data, roughly 808,000 children have lost food assistance.
The Congressional Budget Office projects millions more will lose Medicaid as the work requirement paperwork machine grinds through the states, even though more than nine in 10 of the people targeted are already working, in school, caring for family, or disabled.
The cruelty built into the bill isn’t a side effect: it’s the whole reason for the “enhanced” paperwork requirements. Every mother who gives up in frustration, every widow tripped up by a typo, every application left to rot in a backlog is a line item of savings that can translate into a larger tax cut for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg while the poorest households actually see their taxes go up.
That’s the morality of today’s GOP laid bare. They looked at Ana Alvarez’s five kids and Sarah’s daughter and that new mother in Atlanta, and they decided the billionaires needed the money more.
Every day, it seems, we see or hear about another way in which Trump and his lickspittles in Congress and the various federal agencies are tearing down our country, weakening our defenses, pitting Americans against each other, looting our government, and making life harder for everybody except the morbidly rich.
The question nobody seems to have an answer to is, “Why?”
— Is it that, as Craig Unger seems to suggest, that Trump’s been a Russian agent for decades and is setting us up to lose to the newly-forming Axis of Russia and China?
— Is it that he spent so many years burning with rage and embarrassment at not being accepted by New York high society that he’s just come to hate America?
— Could it be that American-values-hating foreign powers that have poured literally billions of dollars into the Trump family are paying him to tear us apart so they’ll never again have to endure the humiliation of having their human, civil, and women’s rights records called out by a future administration?
— Is it possible it’s all just to pay for tax cuts for billionaires?
— Or are his, Vance’s, and Musk’s white supremacist, Christian nationalist, libertarian, and/or neo-Nazi ideologies so intense that they’re willing to essentially burn the country down just to expel immigrants, deny benefits to people of color, elevate the rich, crush unions, and re-subordinate women?
These are serious questions for which I can’t find credible answers that explain the entire spectrum of their behavior. Why would Trump and the GOP:
— Condemn 12 million Americans to sickness and early death by gutting Medicaid (and the biggest cuts don’t even kick in until right after this fall’s election)?
— Destroy American soft power by killing USAID, thus condemning millions to death?
— Fire so many workers at the Social Security Administration that just getting through to sign up or get help has turned into a multi-day slog?
— Gut the State Department at a time diplomacy is most needed for world peace?
— End food assistance (SNAP) for millions when one-in-five American children experience hunger?
— Refuse to enforce laws and rules that allow workers to form unions in their workplaces?
— Propose forcing all new Medicare recipients onto Medicare “Advantage” corporate scam plans?
— Refuse military aid to Ukraine for over a year to give Russia time to finish off their genocidal job?
— Stop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from going after fraudsters and banks when they rip people off?
— Eliminate a major NOAA program designed to warn communities about the dangers of flooding and other extreme weather crises?
— Politicize the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Election Commission?
— End net neutrality so none of us are safe online?
— Shut down anti-cyber-warfare operations in the federal government?
— Defund university research that leads to innovation and saves lives?
— Cut unemployment insurance benefits across Red states?
— Terminate support for people with student loans and gut scholarship programs?
— Slash Affordable Care Act outreach budgets and allow junk insurance plans?
— Reverse over 100 environmental rules, including those on clean air, clean water, and chemical safety?
— Weaken Dodd-Frank, including gutting oversight of “too big to fail” banks and stress tests for mid-size financial institutions?
— Dial back OSHA workplace safety standards and inspections?
— Cut taxes to rich people while raising them via tariffs on working class folks?
— Change the Federal Trade Commission to allow more monopolistic, rip-off corporate behavior?
— Make it harder to vote and harass Blue states by demanding their voter information?
— Work to prosecute women who have miscarriages or abortions?
— Make it harder to qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI)?
— End auto emission standards and increase our reliance on fossil fuels?
— Pack the courts with judges the American Bar Association says are “unqualified”?
— Destroy our faith in our elections and set up election workers for harassment?
— Fire the Inspectors General (who find waste, fraud, and abuse) across multiple federal agencies?
— Weaken whistleblower protections?
— Put the military on the streets of our cities in violation of Posse Comitatus?
— Use state power to punish political opponents and those who’ve investigated Trump’s crimes, alleged Russian collusion, and corruption?
— Create a network of concentration camps across America?
— Allow a shadow cabinet of billionaires and theocrats via Project 2025?
— Attack judges and prosecutors, leading to violence and threats of violence?
— Foment violence (like on January 6th) as a political strategy?
— Destroy our asylum and refugee systems?
— Pardon insurrectionists, rapists, cybercriminals, and other wealthy criminals?
— Defund the IRS so they can no longer audit the morbidly rich, leading to the loss of hundreds of billions in federal revenues?
— Ban books and censor libraries?
— Criminalize trans and queer people?
— Roll back gun safety measures?
— Defund the arts, humanities, and public media?
— Gut vaccine and other programs that keep Americans healthy?
— Nakedly politicize the military?
— Expand federal surveillance powers while kneecapping oversight?
— Criminalize free speech, particularly on college campuses?
— Attempt to revoke birthright citizenship?
— Attack press freedom and bar the Associated Press from the White House?
— Sabotage the US Postal Service?
— Undermine the census?
— Scale back civil and women’s rights enforcement?
— Normalize autocratic language like “vermin,” “scum,” and calling immigrants “animals”?
— Expel millions of brown-skinned immigrants who’ve already gone through the legal process to get work permits and are on a path toward citizenship?
— Create international fiscal chaos with an on-again, off-again TACO tariff policy?
— Cancel the suicide hotline for queer kids?
— Gut our national parks and sell off our federal lands to wealthy friends of the administration?
— Create a vast, secret, unaccountable police force with masked officers whose identity is concealed?
— Allow the president to accept hundreds of millions in obvious bribes from foreign powers in violation of the Constitution?
— Work so hard to conceal the crimes of a notorious sexual predator?
And this, of course, is just a partial list of the ways Trump and the GOP have weakened our nation, reduced our standing and prestige in the world, corrupted our government, and immiserated working-class families.
Many of the theories about why Trump and the GOP would enthusiastically do so much damage to our people, our military, and our democracy contradict others.
For example, why would billionaires want tax cuts at the expense of damaging the economy that made them rich? Why would we promote a muscular military policy like bombing Iran while simultaneously destroying morale within the ranks of our military and kneecapping our intelligence agencies?
“Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is,” sang Bob Dylan back in the 19
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Karoline Leavitt's loose lips just handed the left a bomb to blow up the GOP
You cannot be a prominent spokesperson for Donald Trump and not live in a liminal space of existential hypocrisy, and so perhaps one shouldn't be all that hard on White House Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who had a less-than-fantastic holiday and summer-opening; it is, after all, her job to defend this administration and all it does.
But, of course, have no doubt that despite all appearances, Leavitt is an adult and will be held accountable for her words, especially when, through her own breathtaking hypocrisy, she so deftly hands the Left the exact messaging it needs to build momentum toward November.
For those who had too good a time over the July 4 holiday to follow political news, let's review. As reported by this very site, Leavitt was left scrambling from her own self-inflicted word-wound when she stated that the modern socialist Left simply wants "free stuff" and is unwilling to work, as she addressed the rise in popularity of candidates from the far left:
Speaking with Fox News’ Jesse Watters ... , Leavitt claimed that young Americans were suffering from "laziness" and characterized them as entitled.
That didn't go down well and earned quite the backlash, and not just because of Leavitt's abject personal hypocrisy in doing what any self-respecting comely and curvy MAGA blonde would do in marrying a rich guy 30 years older than her — though that surely played a role. Leavitt also found herself attempting to divert the real underlying national, as opposed to personal, hypocrisy, and only made things infinitely worse with an X post that read in part:
This interview was about the rise of communism on the Left, and I was asked by Jesse Watters why so many young people are buying the false promise of “free stuff” being sold by communist politicians.
My answer: a combination of laziness, yes, and the liberal indoctrination that has been taking place in our education system for far too long. There are far-left educators pumping students’ heads with garbage, convincing them that hard work and sacrifice won’t pay off down the road because they want them totally reliant on the government instead.
Right.
Leavitt wouldn't know a real communist from her next DoorDash delivery.
Set aside momentarily the fact that the cry that each successive generation is lazy, dull-brained, and wanting everything given to them is as tired as it is predictable, and one can be sure that some conservative Gen Z commentator will be saying the same thing 40 years from now about Gen "B" or whatever they choose to name the next successive generations (Ideally, not "Post-Apocalypse Gen One, or "Gen-1 P.A., for those worried about the years ahead). The very fact that Leavitt couldn't even come up with something "new" or at least an iced twist is, well — lazy. But it sure is marketable as a message for Democrats headed into November.
Assuming that one isn't a curvy, comely, blonde conservative who marries a Gen X rich guy, there is a whole generation of Zoomers out there that would love nothing more than to pull themselves up from their bootstraps with hard work, provided there was any decent work anywhere. Leavitt likely has no idea how hard it is to just get a "real job" for most people her age or younger, rich sugar daddy or not, with or without classic higher education.
Speaking of which, yet again visiting tired and untrue conservative doctrine, let's just briefly note that the claim that young minds increasingly drift left according to the level of education received has nothing to do with "indoctrination." Quite the opposite. It is one of the most self-proving arguments for higher education and modern liberalism. Learning about history and society generally does not instil a defense for conservativism that does little more each generation than cry "Mine, mine, mine," attempting to keep every financial and social advantage afforded those like Leavitt who actually are born with silver spoons in their mouths — whether from natural advantages like being white, Christian, attractive Americans who trace their fortunes back many, many generations in this country, or just those, like Leavitt, born with a nose for economic predation.
More importantly, no decently read Gen-Z voter out there needs a Ph.D. in political science to understand that whatever the MAGA movement is selling, it's not putting money in their wallets or allowing for affordable housing, and thus — yes, Karoline, those astute minds are looking for a new message like those coming from a new generation of progressive politicians in the likes of Mamdani, AOC, Talarico, and others. And for all her banality on any number of other topics, Leavitt is right to be worried about this one — Gen Z knows that, unlike the Boomer generation currently still in charge, under which she serves, Gen Z does have to fight the system rather than inheriting a system fighting for them.
Leavitt knows the problem, and that is that they are the problem. Unlike the self-appointed rulers in the MAGA movement, a generation of Democrats, left as they are, at least talk to Gen Z voters, not "at them," and do work to provide solutions, not pile up barriers. Indeed, it is a tragedy that the Biden and the potential Harris administrations weren't allowed to really stamp their mark on this country because Biden knew the value of making higher education and trade schools far more affordable, while Harris knew exactly how badly this country needed a national program to address affordable housing. But lost opportunity or not, Gen Z most certainly is hearing something different from the Left, and "different" sounds a lot more appealing than the same tropes trotted out again and again by the Right.
Rightly so, and a progressive message was never more needed and literally cannot come soon enough.
Those with queasy stomachs might want to dodge out now because some reality needs to be aired, and it's terrifying. MAGA's "mine, all mine," has never been more dangerous. We see wealth inequality already skyrocketing, always defended by the "free stuff" argument (As if the GI bill, infrastructure construction, and other social programs didn't provide a hand-up for generations through the '50s to the '80s), and that skyrocketing inequality is happening only against the backdrop of regressive taxation and shredded union rights. So now factor in what's coming with AI and the number of jobs about to be eviscerated as Gen X's teens and young college grads face the future.
No, we really, really, do need to factor in just how badly AI is about to shred the boots that Gen Z never acquired to pull up. Look out the window, count how many jobs depend on someone driving people or goods to various places, because you'll be shocked by the number and shocked when those jobs are all but gone in 10 years. AI-driven UPS trucks don't need to take time off in the evenings, nor do AI-driven semi-trucks need to pull over to rest every eight hours. That's just one class of jobs and a huge one. Now go count how many jobs go to administrative staff in any modern business, from academics to finance — 90% of those jobs will be gone, too, and that's just two sectors. Even a med-school-bound kid with an eye for detail knows better than to plan on pathology or radiology as viable paths into the future, even those jobs are about to be overtaken.
Sit back and consider the impact on society of losing 33% of the available jobs to "hard-working Americans just starting out," from law to labs. AI will render more and more people "expendable," and no one knows it better than Gen Z, the generation that hates AI the most but sure appreciates its power. Of course, the younger generation is going to listen to politicians who talk about preserving some viable pathways to stability, even if it needs to be a Universal Basic Income as starter "free stuff." (And it will need to be eventually, but that's another column).
So the message to Leavitt and her messaging regarding the lazy, really ought to be "Keep it up, keep talking bad about the new generation of voters tired of looking at rent and housing already out of reach for anyone aged 30 or younger who doesn't marry someone 30 years older with significant wealth." Because that's the exact message needed to usher MAGA men and maidens out of office. Not for nothing, but all of this reality stuff also underlies Trump's maniacal power grab for the vote, to keep this generation and these kids out of the voting booth and off his and his buddies' backs.
That's right, Karoline. Keep talking about laziness, free stuff, and that damned power of education, and you'll run yourselves right out of office. These kids can't only not afford to have babies in their 20s, but they can't afford to not notice the message, and if there was ever a generation that could message better than you, oh boy.
No wonder she's backtracking so fast, and not just because one doesn't have to be under 25 to feel left out of this economy, either.
To the extent there is hope for a post-Trump, post-economic apocalypse, that hope resides in the message coming from candidates on the far left, the exact opposite of that from the Trump administration. It is fitting that, unlike Trump, Karoline will live long enough to see the devastation he and she have wrought.
Indeed, Leavitt's own hope may depend on that bottomless and breathless hypocrisy. She seems perfectly capable of backtracking enough to serve a strongly Democratic administration 25 years from now, at the ripe "old age" of 55, but seasoned with requisite experience. Whether she's ever provided a second chance may depend on whether she's open to a first chance to today's youngest voters.
Karoline seems adept at finding what's in her best interests. Whether she ever learns the benefit in allowing others to share in those interests is another question.
Jason Miciak is a Rawstory columnist, past editor for Occupy Democrats, political consultant, author, attorney, and single parent girldad (Yes, Gen Z). Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com, and follows and appreciates comments.
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These lies keep Trump in power — and he's petrified they're about to be exposed
The frustrating thing about telling the truth is knowing that you’re right, but that it ultimately may not make any difference to the people who need to hear it the most.
Welcome to my job amid the last 11 years of Trump's blight on all of our political norms — most significantly in the way he’s abused the members of the media.
Trump hates a lot of things about himself, which is why he overcompensates by bullying and scapegoating others so that his failures — from a plane to his failing health to America’s anti-climactic 250th birthday celebrations — are never the story, even as he remains the center of attention. It’s a deft game he’s been playing for a long time, along with his long MAGA con, and Trump couldn’t tell anyone any truths on purpose if he tried.
However, he still manages to tell on himself even as he’s trying to cover up the truth, bragging instead about how a female reporter couldn’t possibly come close to acing a cognitive test like he did.
But why so many visits, Paw Paw? Why do you need so many cognitive tests? Because boasting that you still know the difference between an elephant and a squirrel isn’t the flex you think it is. But if anyone pushes back too hard with the questions, they’ll end up on his Enemies List, or in court.
This is fully unacceptable, just like everything else he’s been allowed to get away with, up to and including his vandalism of D.C. to make us look as weak as possible on the world stage on our 250th birthday.
Back when his reign of terror first began, Trump’s tactics were exacerbated by the rise of social media as a campaign tool. The one thing Trump’s been truly successful at doing is using Twitter as a literal bully pulpit to slow-boil his cult into believing that only the things he says are true, all while also poisoning them against the traditional media he’s now taking over. Trump’s lies were elevated and shared across multiple platforms by paid agitators bolstered by targeted algorithms; those self-proclaimed “influencers” care more about the extra digits in their bank accounts than anything else and have lost sight of what it means to be an American (if they’re not made in a Russian bot farm, that is).
Without social media, Trump would’ve remained the joke candidate he was back in 2015 and would’ve been trounced in the primary, if he even lasted that long.
Instead, here we are in a culture that now celebrates meanness instead of rising above it, with the MAGA cultists in Congress covering up multiple scandals to keep themselves on Trump’s good side. Self-proclaimed “patriots” have been so entrenched in this decade of deception that what started as leaning into lies and propaganda has become a campaign to fully disrupt our democracy and force us into fascism.
At the same time, Trump’s targeting of specific individuals in the media has crossed the line, from verbal abuse of reporters as non-responses when he doesn’t want to answer them, to threats, doxxing, and now lawsuits over the lingering questions around his health amid multiple scandals.
Trump is now going after several journalists from the New York Times who dared to report accurately on his Qatari Bribe Jet, which was meant to be a stand-in for Air Force One but had to be grounded after it was learned it lacked the proper security and technology to shield the Airborne Oval Office from attacks.
This fact was just too much for the Thin-Skinned Vulgarian, who sent federal agents with subpoenas to some reporters' homes, demanding they appear before a federal grand jury investigating “a potential crime.”
Are you feeling Orwellian enough? The crime of reporting the truth.
Which I do here, and elsewhere, as do plenty of other people who make their living in the truth-telling news space. I guess some of us just fly under the radar more than others, said the woman who’s approaching her 11th anniversary of being blocked by Trump on Twitter.
Trump’s compromised DOJ told the BBC that it's “investigating illegal leaks,” adding, "Reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are."
Sure, they aren’t. Let’s ask Brian Tyler Cohen how he feels about being one of the three journalists currently being doxxed on the official White House website because he reported on Trump’s health. That’s something other members of the media should be asking Trump about while standing as one. While also asking about the plane, his health, and the Epstein Files. Because that’s their job.
If Trump and his staff keep hiding the truth, the media should be pushing harder to get at it without being threatened by the government. The White House Correspondents Association has already issued a statement declaring its solidarity with the reporters named in the Trump subpoena (Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, and Eric Schmitt):
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press also issued a statement regarding the subpoenas. “Donald Trump’s war on the press is looking for another victim, this time the storied federal prosecutors' office in Manhattan,” said group president Bruce D. Brown. "The subpoenas it issued to journalists at The New York Times break from longstanding Justice Department practice to protect the public interest and press independence by requiring prosecutors to only seek information from reporters as a last resort when all other avenues have been exhausted. When Jay Clayton appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, members of both parties must not let him escape accountability.”
We are supposed to have full transparency when it comes to the presidency, and yet whenever anyone reports the truth about Trump, he attacks them. It should never have been tolerated in the first place, but ever since they gave him that first inch in 2015, he’s taken everything — except responsibility for anything.
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This retirement home comes with a whopping salary
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
A Trump scandal finally has the teeth to put him in real danger
Donald Trump's ability to avoid accountability for the many previously inconceivable actions he's taken as president often seemed premised on two essential elements: First, his every scandal was in the open for the world to see; if the coverup is always worse than the crime, don't bother covering anything up, which fed the second premise: Create so many scandals such that the public couldn't keep up with any one egregious abuse of the system. New revelations regarding new issues hit on a weekly basis, quickly rendering last week's outrage history.
But perhaps Trump's failsafe plan to get away with everything, from 747s to Epstein obstruction, may have just stumbled. Badly. He may have crossed a line in his lawsuit settlement with DOJ and the IRS, because this one is biting back and it now has some teeth — but not for reasons you might expect.
On Tuesday, Reuters reported that U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams threw out Trump's settlement with the IRS (as overseen by DOJ), the one that granted Trump and family full immunity from IRS investigations and crimes arising in the past and could be read as applying into the future, though that detail is irrelevant because the entire deal has just been rendered irrelevant. Judge Williams threw the settlement out on the basis that the lawsuit didn't involve two adverse parties:
"This action was never about a party seeking judicial resolution of a legal issue or a factual dispute," Williams wrote. The judge said it was instead an attempt to "provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the president and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law."
Yeah. And as obvious as that might seem to the average reader, the legal system itself often plays out in ways that are not obvious, nor sensible. Still, it's not all that unusual for Trump to lose in court, and he'll likely just appeal this decision like all others — never accepting "No" as an answer, always hoping the SCOTUS bails him out. Fine. Situation normal. Or at least that situation is normal.
Where this case diverts from run-of-the-mill scandals and encroaches on representing a real danger to Trump is what might seem as a tangential detail:
Williams referred a Trump lawyer in the case and senior Justice Department officials who signed off on the settlement to state bar authorities to determine if their actions violated legal ethics rules.
Bang.
Because the referral to bar officials is not something that an appellate court can immediately cure. For our purposes, let's pretend the appeals court overrules Judge Williams and says that the deal was brought by adverse parties and is just fine. Such a ruling may save Trump's immunity from IRS investigations and actions, but it will not necessarily save Trump's lawyers from the bar association. The bar investigation may be broader and deeper than the simple legal question determined by an appellate court.
What if the bar association finds that, despite an appellate court finding that the parties were adverse, the attorneys for each side colluded with each other in a manner that did not reflect "adverse parties," but more a "team with the same ultimate goal"? And how could such a finding come about? Just spitballing here, but perhaps obliterating the attorney-client privilege in the negotiations might evidence such collusion. How else? Maybe both parties agreed to the outline of a settlement before Trump's lawyers even filed suit. Perhaps something far more technical, but just as punitive to the attorneys.
The ruling may get overturned, but that doesn't save attorneys from all possible unethical behavior within the suit.
Okay. But how does that affect Trump? It sounds like only the attorneys get punished.
True, and that's exactly how it will affect Trump. Never in history has a man lived and breathed with more reliance on attorneys than Trump. He has his own private lawyers doing his dirty business, he has lawyers working for his White House, he has attorneys seemingly doing his business at DOJ, and he even has his former private lawyers doing his business at DOJ in acting-Attorney General Todd Blanche. It is not hyperbole to say that Trump's existence as a free man, never mind president, depends heavily on attorneys always pushing his interests.
And so what if his attorneys suddenly stopped? What if this becomes a rather urgent bar association investigation and it finds collusion or other unethical behavior? What if it were found that neither side protected any sort of privilege in that collusion and, in effect, lied in the paperwork filed with the court because they weren't really in disagreement in the first place — only working toward the same goal — sign a settlement that Trump could then enforce.
What if the attorneys are disbarred for a year? Five years? (Usually, the limit, at least allowing an attorney to show enough redemption so that he or she can at least apply again.) True, simply working for Trump represents a danger in and of itself, but most of his direct employees likely rely on the presumption of a pardon on the way out the door, so as to avoid any consequences.
Disbarment is not a consequence wiped away by a pardon, and it damn sure is a consequence. Some of Trump's slimiest deals, like this one — but not at all limited to this one: look at the attorneys appearing to sell Trump pardons, look at attorneys going after Trump's political enemies. If defending bar referrals suddenly became part of the job, fewer would want the job. Indeed, far fewer would push the limits of the job, limits like possibly stretching the truth beyond imagination, limits like working as part of the White House Counsel's office, and stuff "heard" but doesn't align with what's presented to the court. Some might find themselves actually telling a few uncomfortable truths rather than hiding them out of nothing less than fear of losing their career, having entered Trump's service with dreams of enhancing it.
Wanna take it one more level? Lawyers are admitted to practice law first by a state or the District of Columbia. Yes, there is a "bar" to which one must join to practice in the federal district courts or the circuit courts, but those are relative informalities once one is admitted to a state bar, which is the predicate to practicing any law anywhere. What if, in the state bar's investigation, it actually finds a crime, perhaps fraud? (Happens all the time). To whom do you think that crime might be referred? Maybe in some cases, in a less political time, it might be referred to the FBI, but then again — it might not. It might be referred to a state bureau of investigation. And that's a problem for our Trump administration lawyers because then, not only are law licenses at issue, but so is their freedom because Trump can't pardon away that problem.
Yes, Trump lawyers have been referred to the bar before, but most of them arose out of the 2020 insanity in trying to overturn the election. Even the attempted clear political prosecutions brought about by Trump lackeys in US Attorneys' offices haven't garnered bar referrals, but even that situation would represent "abnormal insanity" in representing Trump. This particular referral falls squarely into "normal insanity" in representing Trump and his interests in the courts. Referring "normal Trump insanity" to a bar changes everything.
The very fact that this matter was a) thrown out is of now consquence, but b) Garnered a bar referral is and will likely spin the spine in any attorney, public or private, finding themselves doing Trump's dirtiest normal work.
And Trump's trek of terror through the Constitution is so contingent upon a battalion of willing lawyers that a sudden unwillingness of said lawyers, for fear of their careers, would render that trek less of terror, more just terribly inept.
This means that this loss comes with some bite. This scandal may be quickly forgotten by the public in favor of the next scandal. It will not be quickly forgotten by the lawyers charged with doing Trump's bidding. DOJ's lawyers overseeing the handling of the Epstein investigation will take notice. Trump's White House Counsel, perhaps defending Trump's day trading on inside information, will take notice. Private Trump attorneys doing deals in direct conflict of interest with the government will take notice. And so will attorneys Trump personally ordered to prosecute his political enemies.
To save their careers, they may have to decline to do the job in the first place, or at least explain the situation in its entirety to someone, someday, maybe not even that far away.
This scandal is just a bit different. And needed. This one comes with some bite, even in broad daylight.
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 and enjoys reading the comments below.
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Latest ICE killings expose a horrifying — and unexpected — truth
I almost didn't write about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
He was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer on the morning of July 7, 2026, during a traffic stop in Houston, Texas.
And, as I was putting the finishing touches on this column about Lorenzo, It happened again.
On Monday, an ICE agent fatally shot a man in his 20s in Biddeford, Maine. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the individual was given an order to leave the country and "weaponized" his vehicle by driving it toward an officer before he was shot.
Does that sound familiar? Two more migrants killed by ICE, two more agency statements claiming self-defense. We can only imagine the lies and cover-ups that will try to shield the real story about what happened in Maine, the same way the lies and cover-ups are trying to hide the truth about what happened to Lorenzo.
When I first read about Lorenzo, I felt something I'm not proud of: nothing much. A disgusted shrug. And “F-ICE” under my breath. Less of a reaction than I had when Alex Pretti and Renée Good were killed by federal agents in Minneapolis in January.
Then, I moved on to the next story.
Last Friday, speaking on Morning Joe, The Bulwark Managing Editor Sam Stein elaborated on one of his social media posts where he wrote about how numb we’ve all become by treating events that in any other time — a normal time — would be front-page news. He included the death of Lorenzo.
That's when I realized what I had done to Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
Stein's point was about how repetition doesn't make something like another senseless ICE murder smaller; it just makes us smaller for absorbing it without flinching. And I had to admit: he was talking about me.
How had I become so casual that I clicked forward before taking the time to recognize what happened to Lorenzo?
So I stopped and took a close look at what happened in Houston, because I owe that man more than a disgusted shrug. We all do.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was 52 years old. He'd lived in the United States for 35 years. He built a construction company in Houston from nothing, and on the morning of July 7, he was doing exactly what he did most mornings — driving to pick up the last of his crew before heading out to finish work on a row of houses he was building
Ominous, unmarked vehicles began following him. He wasn't even the target of the operation ICE was running that day. His family believes he panicked, not because he was fleeing federal agents, but because he thought someone was trying to steal his van and the tools that were his livelihood.
Let's stop here for a second. If you were being followed by unmarked vehicles, presumably with masked men in the front seats, what would you do? How would you react? I’ll tell you what I’d do: I’d run like hell.
Lorenzo tried, but within minutes, an ICE agent shot him in the torso. He died at the hospital. Three other men in the van, including his brother, were detained.
ICE says he tried to run over an agent with his vehicle and that the shooting was self-defense. ICE's reputation for lying is only exceeded by Donald Trump's.
And a video was released that disputes ICE’s inexcusable explanation.
This is exactly what they did with Pretti, Good and Ruben Ray Martinez, a U.S. citizen shot on South Padre Island last year, whose family's lawyers say that video contradicts the government's account.
How, for all that is good and decent, do we accept these murderous thugs' words as truth? They leap to a lie to defend themselves before any of the facts have even been investigated. That's why we know, right off the bat, that ICE and the Trump administration are lying through their teeth about what happened to Lorenzo.
On Friday, I went back and watched Lorenzo's son standing at a podium telling the public that his father did not want to be remembered as a headline. He wanted people to know his dad was a husband, a father of three, a man who built something out of nothing in this country and who worried, in his final moments, not about federal agents but about thieves coming for his work tools.
That is such a small, deeply human fear from a man who got up before dawn every day to make sure his crew got paid. But instead of stealing his tools, ICE ended Lorenzo's life, robbing his family of their husband and father forever.
When we let ourselves go numb, we forget that Lorenzo is more than a statistic in an ongoing tally of eight deaths during this wave of ICE enforcement. We can't forget that he is flesh and blood.
I think a lot of us did what I did last week and overlooked that fact. That's what makes this moment dangerous. Lorenzo's life matters, just as the lives of those who came before him — and those who will almost certainly follow, like Monday’s death in Maine, matter. They deserve the same grief and the same outrage.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was a father, a business owner, a man who spent 35 years building a life in this country. He deserved better than to become someone I scrolled past.
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