M.L. Nestel joined Raw Story in 2023. An award-winning writer and editor, his work has been published in New York Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine and The Guardian, among other titles. He also produces and writes for true-crime genre TV shows. Prior to that, he served on the Newsweek masthead as a senior writer, wrote as a correspondent at ABC News and held the titles of West Coast bureau chief and senior writer at The Daily Beast. Priors also include working as senior national correspondent at The Daily Mail and investigative reporter at all three NYC tabloids: The New York Post,The New York Daily News and Newsday. He traveled around the country as a national correspondent at The Daily. M.L. published hundreds of stories about underground music and cinema — most notably as a critic for Box Office Magazine and the New York editor at Soma Magazine. He also headed development at Fountainhead Films. M.L. splits his time between Los Angeles and New York.
CNN host Abby Phillip contends that the former president is channeling a fictional assassin's traits.
"Donald Trump channels Tarantino," she said in her opening monologue on CNN. "It's almost like he sees himself as Ezekiel, beset on all sides by the tyranny of evil men but here's the thing about those enemies — they're about as real as the Samuel L. Jackson character Jules Winnfield; meaning not at all."
The reference is to writer/director Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film "Pulp Fiction" and the character she's describing was a soldier in a criminal enterprise who rattled off the same biblical verse, Ezekiel 25:17, before killing his targets.
But she then suggests all the fictional parallels can do real harm.
She stated, "These biblical sounding promises of great revenge against their invisible enemies well, there's a lot to suggest that they could be taken seriously.
"Trump just hours ago, ranted about his trial where 12 jurors made him a convicted felon," said Phillip. "He called it rigged, and then he made what you can only interpret as a threat to the court that will decide the validity of his conviction."
Trump is expected to appeal the decision after he is sentenced on July 11.
"We have to straighten out what's going on with these courts," he told the crowd assembled in the mega church. "We got a rigged deal this whole country and we've got to do it.
"And those appellate courts have to step up and straighten things out, or we're not going to have a country any longer."
Phillip pointed out that when "Trump and his disciples" all subscribe that they can't win and "basically that the system is somehow stacked against them" they all seek the same cure: "tearing down the system altogether."
Outside court, Bannon thundered: "There's nothing that can shut me up and nothing that will shut me up. There's not a prison built that will ever shut me up. All victory to MAGA."
Phillip noted that Bannon was the one who "refused to talk by order of a legally authorized congressional subpoena."
Perhaps it's money, Phillip wondered.
Trump again reappeared, taking credit for raising $400 million in donations to his reelection to the become the 47th president after he was minted a convicted felon.
"Right after the announcement of this more campaign funds were given to this campaign than any campaign they think in history 400 million," Trump said today at the Phoenix town hall. "400!"
