This White House disgrace makes no effort to conceal Trump's sheer contempt

Donald Trump will debase the White House today like never before.

Far worse than bulldozing its East Wing, Trump will use the People’s House as the grotesque backdrop for reducing to rubble any pretense of American moral leadership in the world. He will prostrate himself — and our nation — at the feet of one of its most malign actors.

All for the money.

The killer’s name is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. The world came to know him as MBS when he first gained widespread notoriety for ordering the brutal murder in 2018 of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and legal permanent resident in the U.S.

Little more than seven years after Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul — his dismembered body never to be found — MBS will be fêted today at the White House.

Trump will be there to greet him as a dignitary — ready with smiles, handshakes, photo ops, and promises of billions in deals (presumably not limited to his family in this case).

Trump has spent seven years evading the truth, but the intelligence record is unambiguous. On Oct. 2, 2018, Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents for his marriage. He never walked out. Turkish authorities and U.S. intelligence confirmed the gruesome details: he was bound, injected with a fatal sedative, then dismembered, his body chemically dissolved.

This was not some “rogue operation.” The CIA examined audio recordings from inside the consulate, intercepted calls, and text messages. MBS sent at least 11 texts to his top adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, who oversaw the 15-man hit squad sent to Istanbul. A member of the hit team called a senior aide to MBS from inside the consulate immediately after the murder to report the job was done.

The CIA’s assessment wasn’t vague. Officials called it “blindingly obvious” that MBS gave the order. A killing this organized, this brazen, couldn’t have happened without his approval.

And what did Trump do with this intelligence? He didn’t just ignore it — he rejected it outright. He issued a disgraceful, exclamation-point-laden statement dismissing his own CIA’s findings, claiming they only had “feelings” with “no smoking gun” — a deliberate, contemptible lie designed to protect a killer.

Trump framed his surrender as “America First” by prioritizing arms sales and oil over the murder of a journalist who lived here. In a moment that never truly engendered the scorn it deserved, he wondered aloud whether people really wanted him to give up “hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

That’s what it always comes down to: Money. Arms. Oil. Trump declared that abandoning Saudi Arabia would be a “terrible mistake,” ensuring “we’re with Saudi Arabia and staying with Saudi Arabia” — to hell with justice, truth, and American values.

The rest of the world hasn’t forgotten. When the Biden administration released the declassified intelligence report in 2021, it confirmed what everyone already knew: MBS viewed Khashoggi as a threat and supported using violent means to silence him.

MBS hasn’t changed. Saudi Arabia is executing prisoners at a record rate and maintaining an unprecedented human rights crackdown. Dozens of activists and writers languish in Saudi prisons for speaking freely.

This is not just a crackdown on adults. Human rights groups have documented that Saudi authorities are reneging on their promise to halt the death penalty for juveniles, executing individuals for crimes allegedly committed when they were children, in addition to the hundreds executed for non-lethal, drug-related offenses.

But today, Trump rolls out the red carpet — literally. There will be a South Lawn arrival ceremony, an Oval Office meeting, a Cabinet Room signing ceremony, and an East Room dinner hosted by Melania Trump. They’ll sign deals on AI, defense, and semiconductors potentially worth $142 billion. There will be smiling photo ops and glowing praise.

What there won’t be is accountability. What there won’t be is justice for Jamal Khashoggi. What there won’t be is any acknowledgment that the man being honored in the White House ordered a journalist lured to his death and dismembered with a bone saw.

Seven years later, Trump is doubling down on that betrayal. It would be interesting to see if any of Khashoggi’s erstwhile colleagues in the press dare mention his name today.

It appears that the media has moved on. Congress has moved on. But Jamal Khashoggi is still dead, his body never found and his murderer is being celebrated as an honored guest.

For Donald Trump, everything has a price.

And as long as he’s our president, so does America’s soul.

Trump spent years building this Epstein denial — a Karoline Leavitt slip just destroyed it

Donald Trump just showed up — allegedly — somewhere no one would ever want to be found.

”Spending time” at Jeffrey Epstein’s house with one of the convicted child-sex predator’s victims.

The allegation is one of several politically radioactive revelations in emails released by the Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday. They are part of a trove of materials provided to the committee by Epstein’s estate.

Trump will have a hard time lying his way out of this one. Give White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt an “A” for effort, though.

“In a statement on Wednesday, Leavitt said, ‘The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.’” CNN reported.

“‘The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions,’ Leavitt said.”

That might be a bit more plausible were it not for the fact that Leavitt’s statement blows up every syllable of every word of denial that Trump has uttered for years about having little to do with Epstein. Now, she’s not even denying he was at Epstein’s house — just that if he was, it was to spend time with the one (deceased) Epstein victim who says Trump was nice to her.

Funny, they never mentioned that exculpatory detail before in all the coverage of Giuffre’s death and subsequent book release.

Well, if it’s not a news story, why was Leavitt putting out an instant statement about it?

The emails cut through years of calculated denial. The core evidence is a 2011 exchange between Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, long after Trump and Epstein were supposedly estranged.

Epstein wrote to Maxwell: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.”

Then came the definitive line: “[A victim] spent hours at my house with him … he has never once been mentioned.”

That single email destroys the entire narrative. This wasn’t Trump hearing rumors about Epstein’s operation. It was Trump spending hours at Epstein’s house with one of the victims — and saying nothing.

The 2011 date is what makes this impossible to escape. Epstein had no reason to lie in private correspondence to his closest co-conspirator. Trump was a reality TV host with no political power. He couldn’t grant pardons or commute sentences. The email wasn’t a threat or blackmail play. It was a statement of calculated, relied-upon truth between two people who understood the power of silence.

That reality explains Trump’s desperate obsession with burying the full Epstein files. He promised transparency during the campaign. Then he actively obstructed Congress. His administration stonewalled investigators. Republicans split over it. Right-wing supporters broke with him. Now we know why: these emails don’t just contradict his story — they place him in the room.

Every denial collapses under that timeline. Trump didn’t “barely know” Epstein. Their falling-out wasn’t a simple Palm Beach real estate squabble. Trump wasn’t some peripheral figure at a few parties.

The record gets worse. In 2019, months before Epstein’s arrest, Epstein emailed author Michael Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls, as he asked Ghislaine to stop.” You don’t ask someone to stop unless you have concrete knowledge of what they’re doing. And you don’t spend hours in a predator’s house with a victim unless you understand exactly where you are and what is being ignored.

It’s hard to fathom why Maxwell would be asked “to stop” unless she was seen as holding the ultimate currency — firsthand knowledge of what Trump knew and when he knew it. Maxwell, of course, is another person Trump publicly claimed he hardly knew but somehow — after an unprecedented softball interview in prison from Todd Blanche, Trump’s personal lawyer (now Deputy Attorney General), by pure coincidence — Maxwell found herself transferred from the worst women’s prison possible to the system’s Ritz-Carlton equivalent.

Sudden white-glove treatment of a felon sentenced to 20 years hard time for sex-child trafficking.

It happens.

This is why Trump has fought relentlessly to keep these files sealed. From all appearances, he simply cannot withstand the truth coming out.

The House is now expected to vote on release of the Epstein files, an event I’ll believe when I see it. It does appear that House Speaker Mike Johnson has finally run out of tricks to delay the swearing in of Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-AZ, a cool 50 days after she won her seat in a special election.

Grijalva has been seen as the pivotal vote, allowing Democrats and four Republican defectors to call for the full release of the files. But even if that happens — and there’s no guarantee it will — count on Trump to pull out every stop to keep those files from seeing the light of day.

This fight is a long way from over.

You see, Trump knows what’s in those files because he was there.

And now, thanks to Epstein’s own words, we’re beginning to find out as well.

These Jan 6 lawyers should not be allowed near a courtroom — never mind a school district

Here’s a lesson for the public schools to teach parents: “Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be lawyers at the Thomas More Society.”

You may have heard that Kirkwood School District, in Missouri, was recently threatened with a lawsuit over a three-minute LGBTQ+ History Month video shown to middle schoolers last month. Some parents complained.

The Chicago-based Thomas More Society swooped in with an eight-page demand letter threatening years of federal litigation and “substantial attorney fees” unless Kirkwood caved to their demands — all in the name of “protecting” the school district’s children from exposure to non-heterosexual subject matter.

This uncivil society has fancied itself for two decades as a guardian of morality. Not merely to advance homophobia, but to defund public libraries, shutter abortion clinics and otherwise seek to redefine America in the most unChristian manner imaginable.

But it was the group’s spectacularly failed attempt to overthrow American democracy as leading election deniers that best defines its notion of right and wrong. And that best illustrates the threat it poses to the rest of us.

Kids need to be protected from adults like this.

In 2020, the Thomas More Society created something called the Amistad Project — after updating its bylaws to include “election integrity” as part of its mission statement.

It launched lawsuits in multiple key swing states Donald Trump lost — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona — all of which were dismissed or tossed out after courts found serious procedural or constitutional flaws.

In December 2020, it sued in federal court seeking to block Congress from counting electoral votes on Jan. 6. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg rejected the motion, writing that the suit “rests on a fundamental and obvious misreading of the Constitution. It would be risible were its target not so grave.”

Risible is judge-speak for “Stupid on stilts.”

The Amistad Project was run at the time by Phill Kline, a former Kansas state attorney general whose resume included having had his law license suspended in 2013 for what the Kansas Supreme Court termed “clear and convincing evidence” that Kline committed 11 separate ethics violations.

The Court’s findings included that he misled a grand jury, provided false testimony, and illegally obtained confidential medical records during his investigations of abortion providers. The Court cited his “dishonest and selfish motives” and noted his “inability or refusal to acknowledge” his misconduct. He would ultimately lose his appeals at the U.S. Supreme Court, at a reported cost of $600,000 to Kansas taxpayers.

Great guy. I have no idea what he’s doing now. But during the scandalous post-2020 election effort to thwart democracy, he personified the Thomas More Society’s idea of an upstanding and morally impeccable attorney.

There are quite a few other examples of attorneys who have been associated with the society and whose service — like Kline — speaks volumes as to the group’s high standards of virtue.

There was Jenna Ellis, whose meteoric rise from a traffic-law attorney in Colorado to the height of Trump World culminated in a criminal guilty plea for aiding Trump’s fake‑elector scheme and a public censure for repeatedly misrepresenting the 2020 election. (To be fair, Ellis deserves our compassion as a survivor of close exposure to Rudy Guiliani’s flatulence and runaway hair dye.)

There were lesser known stalwarts like Erick G. Kaardal — identified as “Special Counsel” for the Amistad Project in the December 2020 election‐lawsuit filings. A federal judge referred him for possible disciplinary action after describing his complaint as “a sweeping Complaint filled with baseless fraud allegations and tenuous legal claims.”

The list goes on. But you don’t need deep research to understand the grotesque nature of the Thomas More Society. The demand letter it sent to the Kirkwood School District on behalf of a handful of aggrieved parents speaks for itself:

“Based on our track record of First Amendment victories and fee recoveries across the country, those amounts are likely to be substantial.”

Nice school district you have here. It would be a shame if something bad happened to it.

At this point, it’s fair to wonder what sort of moral outrage might be so heinous as to offend the sensibilities of the openly heinous themselves? Must be pretty gruesome, right?

Fortunately, there’s no need to speculate. The demand letter specifies some of the atrocities perpetrated at Kirkwood. Here it is (but I must warn you these bulleted items might not be appropriate for children to see):

  • “Years ago” being “openly LGBTQ+ was difficult and dangerous” and “everything changed” for the good during the “Stonewall Uprising,” thanks in part to “brave activists like Marsha P. Johnson [a self-identified ‘drag queen’] and Sylvia Rivera [a self-identified ‘transvestite’],” which led to “speak[ing] up” for “LGBTQ+ rights” across the world.
  • The “Christopher Street liberation day march” was the first “Pride parade” that served as a way for self-identified LGBTQ+ individuals to “step out of the shadows” and “show the world who they were,” because “being yourself is something to celebrate, not hide.”
  • “Pride” is about “being proud of your identity.”
  • “Pride month” is “celebrated” with “parades, festivals, and flags full of bright colors.” The rainbow flag was created as a “symbol of love, acceptance, diversity, and hope.”
  • Newer versions of the “Pride flag” include the “progress pride flag” adding “black and brown to highlight the inclusion of people of color,” along with “pink, blue, and white to include the ‘trans’ community.’ This evolution shows that the movement is growing and working hard to include everyone.”
  • “The Pride community today is a huge and amazing group”; “it’s a supportive family.”
  • “Pride reminds us to[:] Be proud of who you are[,] Stand up for fairness and equality[,] Support Others” [as also displayed in illustrated text on the video], “no matter who they love or how they identify.”
  • “It started as a protest, and today it’s also a celebration of courage, history, and community.” “Supporting ‘Pride’ means supporting equality, kindness, and the right to be yourself.”
  • “HAPPY LGBTQ+ HISTORY MONTH” [shouted by student-narrators in unison, and as further displayed in illustration on video].

Dear reader, I apologize if it has offended your sensibilities to see — in raw and uncensored form — the subversiveness that was inflicted upon innocent children in Kirkwood. Certainly, it’s understandable that it might offend your religious beliefs.

Especially if you’re possessed by whatever demons haunt the nice people at the Thomas More Society.

This Republican heartland hypocrite can't hide behind his copy of the New York Times

If you didn’t know better, you might believe Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) was ushering in a new era of bipartisan compassion with his op-ed this week in the New York Times.

Headlined “No American Should Go to Bed Hungry,” Hawley’s piece struck all the right notes about why the nation must act immediately to preserve SNAP food assistance for 42 million people — now endangered by the government shutdown.

Trouble is, that’s if you didn’t know better.

And the public record knows better.

Less than four months ago, on July 1, Hawley voted to slash SNAP by at least $120 billion over the next decade — the Congressional Budget Office had it at $187 billion. And he can’t even claim party loyalty as a defense: Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, and Rand Paul all voted no.

But the SNAP cuts were just the appetizer. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” —Trump’s sweeping budget package that passed 51-50 with Vice President J.D. Vance breaking the tie — was a banquet of cruelty. Every Democrat voted no. Hawley voted yes.

The bill included:

  • More than $1 trillion cut from Medicaid — the largest rollback in U.S. history.
  • Work requirements that mostly punish people already working.
  • Removal of coverage for lawfully present immigrants.
  • Restrictions on provider taxes that help keep rural hospitals alive.

On that last point, Hawley warned colleagues about devastating rural hospitals. He negotiated a $25 billion band-aid spread over five years — then voted to gut the programs anyway. The senator always manages to rationalize his hypocrisy by introducing fig leaf bills he knows are going nowhere.

The bill’s SNAP provisions imposed crushing work requirements and bureaucratic hurdles designed to kick people off the rolls. It penalized states with high “error rates,” meaning Missouri — at 10.2 percent— would lose 25 percent more in funding, despite already struggling to administer the program.

The same bill eliminated Affordable Care Act subsidies for 22 million Americans. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 10 million will lose coverage overall — a devastating blow to working families, low-income seniors and lawfully present immigrants who’ve paid into Medicare for years.

The timeline doesn’t quite line up with Hawley’s soaring rhetoric today.

In May 2025 —just two months before the vote — Hawley wrote another Times op-ed titled “Don’t Cut Medicaid.” In it, he warned that slashing health insurance for working people would be “morally wrong and politically suicidal.”

He even asked: Would Republicans be “a majority party of working people, or a permanent minority speaking only for the C-suite?”

Then in July, he voted for the C-suite.

Now, in October, as his party’s shutdown threatens the food security of 42 million Americans, he’s back with another heartfelt op-ed and a narrow bill to preserve only SNAP. The rest of the government — furloughed workers, shuttered services, disrupted lives — can wait. They’re not in this week’s parable.

You wouldn’t know any of this from today’s Times essay. In it, Hawley casts himself as a cross between FDR and the Apostle Paul.

“Love of neighbor is part of who we are,” he writes. “The Scripture’s injunction to ‘remember the poor’ is a principle Americans have lived by.”

Now, I don’t claim to be a Christian. But from what I understand about the words of Jesus, I’m not aware of any indifference to the poor — or even equivocation — that would inspire slashing SNAP payments or blowing up health-care coverage.

For that matter — and again, I’m no expert — is there language in the New Testament telling us to welcome strangers as long as their immigration papers are in order?

Jesus just fed the hungry and reached out to everyone. There wasn’t any ambiguity involved. And definitely not a residency requirement.

As my readers know, I don’t buy the un-American notion that ours is a Christian nation. It is definitively not — and it belongs to all of us of different faiths, or no faith, as much as it does to Hawley and others who worship as he does.

But even on his best behavior, Hawley today offered Christian benevolence with an asterisk. He warned of “fraud” and “illegal aliens” abusing SNAP, as if that were a national crisis. It’s not. Unauthorized immigrants are mostly ineligible, and fraud rates remain minimal.

But this is more about optics than facts. Hawley portrays the worthy poor as native-born and properly documented — not strangers at the gate.

Hawley does stand out from fellow Republicans who dare not go off script about the poor for fear of crossing Donald Trump and his MAGA minions. The text of his op-ed was just splendid.

But talk is cheap. And it’s heinously cheapened when you just voted against your own piety.

Trump mused about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. This is much worse

This is far worse than shooting someone on Fifth Avenue.

President Donald Trump is demanding nearly a quarter of a billion U.S. tax dollars to satisfy a claim of his — a frivolous, absurd and specious claim — that he had been maliciously prosecuted by the Department of Justice. He wasn’t. But that won’t keep him from trying to have a cool $230 million transferred from Americans’ bank accounts to his.

If Trump shot someone on Fifth Avenue, as he once famously mused he could do, it would be a terrible thing with blood, guts and gore. But at least there’d be only one victim.

What he’s doing now at the DOJ doesn’t involve the hypothetical of someone getting shot. But it is real life and would defraud an entire nation.

And we’re not talking chump change: Trump’s haul would more than double what thieves heisted last Sunday in jewels from the Louvre in Paris, in one of the most famous robberies in history.

And back here at home, the American taxpayer would be paying the thief.

Pulling off this con in plain sight requires only the approval of — wait for it — his very own lawyers, who Trump has conveniently placed in control of that very DOJ. Perhaps they’ll deliberate agonizingly over the ethics of this. I’m going to guess not.

The New York Times led with the story Tuesday. But early on, it’s not catching fire — not breaking through the partisan wall — as much as it deserves.

In it, Trump came off like the Joker.

“I have a lawsuit that was doing very well, and when I became president, I said, I’m sort of suing myself,” Mr. Trump said, adding: “It sort of looks bad, I’m suing myself, right? So I don’t know. But that was a lawsuit that was very strong, very powerful.”

Credit Trump for some uncommon candor. It sort of looks bad.

Actually, as the Times noted, it’s a civil claim — not a lawsuit — that’s involved here. Or more precisely, a “demand” now that Trump has returned to the presidency.

The Times summed up the outrageousness of the heist pretty well:

The situation has no parallel in American history, as Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president’s former lawyers atop the Justice Department.

Let’s not call this a “potential ethical conflict.” The word “potential” doesn’t belong in that sentence any more than the word “ethical” should find itself in the same paragraph with “Trump.”

And let’s not forget that this is the same Trump who told ABC News in 2019, “Article II allows me to do whatever I want.”

In this case, it means not just using the DOJ as his personal law firm. It’s more like an investment firm.

Before he was president, Trump had filed two administrative claims against the Justice Department. The first demands roughly $100 million for the Russia investigation. The second seeks $130 million for the Mar-a-Lago search and classified documents prosecution.

His legal theory? “Malicious prosecution” — that investigating him violated his rights.

But “malicious prosecution” requires proof that prosecution was initiated without probable cause. Trump can’t meet that standard because probable cause clearly existed.

  • On Russia: Intelligence agencies documented election interference. Trump campaign officials had documented contacts with Russian operatives. Multiple associates were convicted. Grand juries — ordinary citizens, not political appointees — reviewed evidence and voted to indict. That’s textbook probable cause.
  • On Mar-a-Lago: The National Archives requested documents. Trump’s lawyers falsely certified all were returned. A subpoena was issued. Trump still didn’t comply. The FBI executed a lawfully authorized search warrant — approved by a federal judge who reviewed probable cause — and found classified documents exactly where they said they would be.

The facts are obvious here: Trump has no serious claim against the DOJ, not anymore than he has some non-existent lawsuit he has been referencing publicly. But since former AG Merrick Garland and staff never got around to tossing the claim in the garbage — there’s a shocker — Trump has landed upon what he truly does best.

He has himself one brilliant con job.

Consider this: Justice Department regulations require approval by the Deputy Attorney General or the head of the Civil Division for settlements of $4 million or more.

And who might the deputy attorney general be? Why, it’s Todd Blanche — Trump’s former lead criminal defense lawyer — recently famous for his white-glove treatment of convicted child-sex predator Ghislaine Maxwell in an utterly inappropriate visit in prison.

Everyone knows Blanche is Trump’s legal muscle. And there’s Stanley Woodward Jr., chief of the Civil Division, who represented Trump’s co-defendant Walt Nauta in the classified documents case. And numerous Trump associates in January 6 investigations.

Oh, and in July, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired the Justice Department’s top ethics adviser — the person whose job was to flag exactly this kind of conflict. What could possibly go wrong now?

America can rest easy noting that these independent tigers will bring total objectivity to evaluating whether their master should receive the $230 million he so obviously deserves to cover a tiny piece of the pain and suffering he endured at the hands of horrible people trying to enforce so-called “laws.”

And the DOJ Trump team will not be alone. They’ll be joined by his Congressional servants and the MAGA state-media stars who undoubtedly will either bury the story or reinvent it as good deed by the president.

There was a hint in the Times story about how that might be spun:

“Asked about the issue at the White House after this article published, the president said, ‘I was damaged very greatly and any money I would get, I would give to charity.’

He added, ‘I’m the one that makes the decision and that decision would have to go across my desk and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.’”

Yes, awfully strange. If by strange you mean “openly corrupt.” But the real tell was Trump’s assertion about the heist benefitting charity.

What a comforting thought from the greatest grifter of all time.

A 2016 audit by the Washington Post found that Trump claimed to have given more than $100 million to charity over about five years, but in fact many of the contributions could not be verified and much of the actual giving appeared minimal.

Or as Vanity Fair noted that year, “We found less than $10,000 over seven years” given to charities that Trump claimed to have donated to.

But if Trump can pull off his con, the charity detail will get lost as a footnote. In fact, what’s as troubling as anything is how this scandalous conduct may get washed away by the “flooding the zone” strategy diabolically authored by Trump whisperer Steve Bannon.

Sure, what Trump’s doing with the DOJ “has no parallel in American history,” as the Times noted. That probably won’t matter because as wrongdoing goes, it’s not going to be nearly as famous as Trump’s Fifth Avenue shooting hypothetical.

Even though it’s worse.

Behold, a Trumper so vile the only surprise is she didn't shoot this dog herself

Chop was a Rottweiler. He lived with his family in a quiet neighborhood in El Paso, Texas.

On September 9, Border Patrol agents showed up at their home to see if migrants were there. When the family’s son answered the door, he permitted the agents to search his home, saying he had nothing to hide.

But he asked if they could wait first while he put the family dog, Chop, a Rottweiler, away in the bathroom before they walked in, as the dog could be aggressive. He did so. But when he went out to his pickup to retrieve the ID agents had requested, the same agents opened the bathroom door and shot Chop.

What’s more, none of the Border Patrol agents helped the family, who desperately tried to render aid to Chop as he bled to death on the kitchen floor. And never mind the detail that, it turns out, Border Patrol terrorized legal citizens and murdered a family member while following a false lead.

Border patrol issued the following statement:

“On Sept. 9 at 7:15 a.m., a U.S. Border Patrol agent was involved in a use of force incident in El Paso, Texas during an investigation into alien smuggling at a residence. The incident involved a canine. The use of force is currently under review by CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility in accordance with CBP policies. CBP takes such incidents seriously.”

Well, of course, they take it seriously. When you work for a soulless dog murderer like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, killing a canine is a badge of honor — and likely grounds for a juicy promotion.

It is a sign of our times that this particular murder didn’t become widely known until this week, when it went viral thanks to the account “We Rate Dogs” — and then others — posting it on Instagram. The initial news story reported by KFOX14 in El Paso had gone unnoticed in the media until then.

I learned about this at the Drudge Report under the blaring headline “ICE SLAUGHTERS FAMILY DOG.” Technically, that’s not precise — ICE and the Border Patrol are separate agencies working under Homeland Security for the same purpose under Donald Trump, which is to terrorize Brown people for sport and political gain.

So I offer no apology for using the headline shorthand of “ICE” — they’re all the same to me. If America can survive the Trump presidency, ICE in its current form should be dismantled and its legitimate functions restructured. After some of its perpetrators face justice.

We are living, in real time, through one of the darkest periods in the nation’s history. Look at what has happened this week alone:

  • In Everett, Massachusetts, ICE took a 13-year-old from police custody after a school arrest, moved him to Virginia, and never told his waiting mother. A “disappearance” — proudly modeled in the image of President Vladimir Putin.
  • In Washington, D.C., where the National Guard already patrols under Trump’s “crime emergency” declaration, ICE sweeps have forced businesses to close. City officials say they got no warning.
  • In Chicago, a community-run Facebook page used to track ICE activity was taken down by Meta at the request of the Justice Department. Nothing says North Korea better than a little state censorship of people trying to avoid being swept up by government forces.
  • In Los Angeles, ICE raids became so chaotic that the county declared an emergency. Shelters were overrun. Families vanished. And no one in the federal government gave a damn.

ICE and Border Patrol are no longer legitimate law enforcement agencies. They represent a paramilitary force with zero transparency and all the swagger of a dictatorship’s interior ministry.

And the moral fiber of Kristi Noem.

As for Chop? He wasn’t even an undocumented dog.

How Trump's racism-fueled revenge tour came for workers in St. Louis

Donald Trump’s revenge tour has come to St. Louis.

But this time, it’s not about prosecutors or political enemies. It’s about dismantling civil rights programs — and it’s personal.

Nearly 2,000 minority and women-owned businesses at Lambert International Airport just learned they must prove they were discriminated against — with evidence locked in their competitors’ files — or lose their ability to bid on federal contracts.

Under new Trump administration guidelines issued last week, contractors must submit “personal narratives” detailing specific economic harm compared to “non-disadvantaged” businesses. They must prove, with a “preponderance of evidence,” that they were denied financing on terms their white competitors received.

How are they supposed to find the evidence? Bank loan terms are confidential. Competitors’ financing deals are private. The contractors are being asked to document discrimination they cannot possibly access.

They can’t. And that’s precisely the point.

The targets of Trump’s dismantling campaign? Civil rights programs created to remedy the exact kind of discrimination he was accused of — and denied — more than a half-century ago.

In 1973, the Nixon administration’s Department of Justice sued Donald Trump and his father for refusing to rent apartments to Black families across 39 buildings in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. The government charged that Trump Management refused to rent to people “because of race and color,” required different rental terms based on race, and misrepresented to Black families that apartments weren’t available.

Trump’s response to the federal civil rights lawsuit?

“They are absolutely ridiculous. We never have discriminated, and we never would.”

He settled without admitting wrongdoing, paid no fine, and faced no requirement to prove his innocence. The discrimination lawsuit — backed by DOJ lawyers, civil rights investigators, and documented evidence — simply went away.

Fifty-two years later, President Trump demands that minority contractors prove they’ve been discriminated against, using evidence they cannot access, or lose their ability to compete for federal contracts.

The double standard is the point: Discrimination you can deny, even with the Justice Department’s lawyers and evidence arrayed against you. Oppression you must document in triplicate, with impossible proof, or lose everything.

The timing couldn’t be worse for St. Louis. Lambert is planning a $2.8 billion terminal renovation — the largest construction project in the region in decades. From 2015 to 2019, the airport reported 28. percent participation by disadvantaged businesses under the old program. Those billions in contracts represented real wealth-building in communities systematically excluded from economic opportunity.

Now the rules change just as the money arrives. Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis City NAACP, had this to say to the Post-Dispatch:

“By shifting the burden of proof onto minority and disadvantaged business owners with these deeply subjective requirements, the federal government risks reviving old discriminatory barriers under the guise of ‘neutrality.’”

That word — neutrality — is a lie. In an unequal system built on centuries of exclusion, “neutrality” isn’t neutral. It freezes existing disparities in place. It has nothing to do with merit; it’s about returning to the days when white, male contractors got pretty much all the business.

The Lambert changes are part of a coordinated national assault on diversity programs. On his first day in office, Trump displayed his contempt for the civil rights movement of the 1960s by revoking the 1965 executive order requiring federal contractors to maintain affirmative action plans.

In May, the DoJ moved to dismantle the entire $37 billion Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program serving 49,000 contractors nationwide. All federal DEI staff have been placed on leave for eventual termination.

It cannot be overstated that the DBE program itself was created in 1983 during the Reagan administration. Republicans who go along with Trump’s treachery might want to keep Reagan’s name out of their mouths.

Reagan did, after all, sign off on a bipartisan acknowledgment that discrimination in contracting was real and required remedy. Federal officials estimate the new rules will cause a 10 percent nationwide drop in certified firms and cost $92 million to implement. But those numbers vastly understate the impact.

This follows the blueprint laid out in Project 2025, which explicitly called for prosecuting “all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers” with DEI programs.

As John Bowman, president of NAACP St. Louis County and an airport commissioner, aptly told the Post-Dispatch, the “political scapegoating … will have a devastating impact on minority and women-owned businesses.” Which, of course, was Project 2025’s dream outcome.

The contractors at Lambert aren’t asking for handouts. They’re asking for what the DBE program was designed to provide: a fair shot at competing for publicly funded work after decades of documented exclusion. Now they’re being told to prove they deserved that shot all along—to produce evidence of their own oppression as a prerequisite for economic participation.

This answers a fundamental question about who gets to build America’s infrastructure — and who gets built out of the American dream entirely. The man who said “we never have discriminated, and we never would” — while the Justice Department documented otherwise — now demands minority contractors prove their discrimination with evidence he never had to produce.

Say this much for Donald Trump. When it comes to settling old grievances about getting busted for racism, he has a fine memory.

The lies have it: how Trump's most loyal trooper reached a new low

It’s a shame they don’t play entrance music for witnesses at U.S. Senate hearings.

Attorney General Pam Bondi came to the Senate Judiciary Committee to praise Donald Trump — and make sure no one tried to bury him — and she spent four defiant hours doing just that. Bondi, famous for choreographing her endless Fox News cameos, surely wishes she could have rolled out more production values on Tuesday.

Just imagine the potential.

“Pam Bondi strolled to the witness chair wearing a MAGA hat to the beautiful sounds of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” Sean Hannity could have reported. “If that didn’t bring tears to your eyes, you’re some radical leftist or squish. Definitely not human.”

Unfortunately, Bondi had to settle for lip syncing the words. But in a MAGA movement so sexist as to publicly embrace submissiveness as a special virtue for its women — even though the men are just as pathetic — Bondi outdid herself.

Bondi “dodged questions on 14 topics” — which you have to admit is pretty impressive — according to the Washington Post’s scorecard. Here’s just a smattering of Bondi’s groveling devotion to her man:

  • Bondi stated, “My attorneys have done incredible work advancing President Trump’s agenda and protecting the Executive Branch from judicial overreach” — arguably the most blatant rejection of any pretense of DOJ independence from the presidency ever recorded in the Senate.
  • When asked by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) if the Epstein investigation files included incriminating photos of Trump with half-naked young women, Bondi didn’t say no — she chose to attack the senator instead.
  • She told Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL): “I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump. And, currently, the National Guard are on the way to Chicago. If you’re not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will.”
  • When questioned about reports that former FBI Director James Comey’s indictment came shortly after President Trump publicly called for his prosecution, Bondi refused to discuss any conversations she had with the White House, repeatedly stating, “I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House.”
  • Bondi declined to discuss internal conversations with the White House about National Guard deployments or DOJ decisions — then turned and attacked Democrats for politicizing law enforcement.
  • Declined to answer Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) about whether she was firing career prosecutors solely because they worked on January 6 cases Trump doesn’t like.
  • When pressed by Sen. Whitehouse on $50,000 in cash delivered to Trump border czar Tom Homan, she wouldn’t confirm or deny — instead telling him, “Senator, you’re welcome to talk to the FBI.”

Confrontational hearings between officials of any administration and senators are hardly new. But the degree to which Bondi disrespected the process — apparently in keeping with Trump’s new playbook in which witnesses attack the character of adversarial senators rather than respond to their questions — is in a league of its own.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) afterwards called it “possibly a new low for attorneys general testifying before the United States Congress,” saying, “Her apparent strategy is to attack and conceal. I have never seen anything close to it in terms of the combativeness, the evasiveness and sometimes deceptiveness.”

It really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. October marks the 12th anniversary of Bondi’s first act of public fealty to Trump. Back then, she was Florida’s attorney general and he was just a famous guy whose Trump University happened to be getting sued by the state of New York as a fraudulent “sham.”

Here’s how a Palm Beach Post editorial described what took place in October 2013:

Just days after Ms. Bondi’s office announced that it might join a lawsuit against Mr. Trump and his school, Mr. Trump’s foundation cut a $25,000 check to a Bondi re-election committee. Despite the timing, the political committee found nothing amiss. It kept the money and Ms. Bondi decided not to participate in the lawsuit.

Twelve years later, it was hardly Bondi’s first Trump rodeo when she bent the knee at the Senate hearing. It won’t be the last.

But she’ll be hard pressed to surpass the unintended irony she displayed in personally attacking Trump nemesis Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) rather than answering any of his questions.

“If you worked for me, you would have been fired because you were censured by Congress for lying,” Bondi told Schiff, without a hint of self-awareness.

Talk about a government shutdown. If Trump’s inner circle was subjected to that standard, he would be obligated under the Bondi standard to utter his famous “You’re fired!” to every single one of them.

Including, most definitely, Pam Bondi.

This GOP gov's National Guard ploy is an absolute scam — but ICE horrors are all too real

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe made headlines this week by “activating” the National Guard to assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The detail buried in most stories: He deployed just 15 people.

If the news landed in your inboxes, you might have been drawn in like this:

“Missouri Gov. Kehoe activates National Guard to assist ICE agents”

Or this:

“Missouri ‘authorizes’ National Guard to assist ICE’s deportations statewide”

Or this:

“Gov. Kehoe authorizes Missouri National Guard to assist in ICE enforcement.”

Bet you didn’t know from those headlines that this bold initiative involved 15 men and women in a state of 6.24 million people. Bet also you didn’t know that these poor folks will be assisting ICE’s creepy crackdown from the comfort of desks at undisclosed locations.

Far be it from me to minimize the potential impact of such an operation. I mean, dispatching 0.00024 percent of our population to work desk jobs is not nothing in the fight against crime.

At that rate, St. Louis County would qualify for two people. The city of St. Louis might proportionately receive three‑fifths of a person, in keeping with the prevailing thought patterns of many of our state legislators.

But let’s not diminish this bold commitment on the part of our governor. It was such a profound announcement that the media was captivated to the point of forgetting to ask some basic questions — or at least forgot to report the answers in all the excitement.

Such as these:

  • What exactly will these 15 guardsmen be doing? Are they answering phones? Filing documents? Processing detainee records? Is this top‑secret law‑enforcement support, or an upgrade to the ICE employee lunchroom?
  • Do they have security clearance to access ICE systems? These are federal databases containing immigration records, legal casework and sensitive personal information. If no clearance is needed, why not?
  • What training — if any — did these guardsmen receive to do ICE work? Clerical support in a federal law‑enforcement agency isn’t just about typing fast. It involves complex processes, legal standards and chain‑of‑custody rules.
  • How does pushing paper actually “free up” ICE field agents? In almost all law‑enforcement agencies, a clear distinction exists between personnel behind desks and those risking their lives in the field. Are we to believe that the guys wearing masks, kicking down doors and hauling off suspects also change printer cartridges in their spare time?
  • Where, exactly, are these guardsmen being stationed? Which ICE offices? For how long? Who’s supervising them? Who requested them? And who benefits from their presence?

These questions answer themselves. The security clearances alone take months. Desk work doesn’t free up field agents. But here’s what does work for scoring cheap political points: a press release. And nothing more.

From the standpoint of millions of immigrants — legal or otherwise — the United States is functioning as a dictatorship. Racial and ethnic profiling of citizens and non‑citizens alike (many of the latter being here legally) has been sanctioned by the Supreme Court.

Most of us don’t experience that terror personally. But that doesn’t make it any less dangerously un-American.

Donald Trump and soulless minions like Deputy Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller gleefully terrorize America’s immigrant community by the hour. Like Kehoe’s frivolous announcement, this filthy enterprise rages on a foundation of lies.

According to recent data, about 65 percent of people booked into ICE detention have no criminal convictions whatsoever. More than 93 percent have no violent convictions. The agents supposedly “freed up” by these 15 guardsmen in Missouri are being dispatched to raid workplaces and homes to arrest individuals whose only violation is a civil immigration matter.

But the evidence shows this campaign isn’t just cruel — it’s catastrophically counterproductive. The Peterson Institute for International Economics projects that if 8.3 million undocumented immigrants are deported, GDP will fall 7.4 percent by 2028. When 500,000 undocumented workers were deported through the Secure Communities program, the result wasn’t more jobs for Americans — it was 44,000 fewer jobs held by U.S.-born workers.

Back in Missouri, 15 guardsmen will shuffle papers they’re not trained to process, potentially accessing systems they’re not cleared for, supposedly freeing field agents who do entirely different work.

None of this matters to Kehoe. The fraud isn’t a bug — it’s the feature. He’s not protecting Missourians’ safety. He’s protecting his own political standing, giving his base red meat while economists warn this policy will devastate the economy and cost American workers their jobs.

Fifteen Guardsmen. That’s what protecting politicians looks like.

You thought Trump couldn't go any lower. Guess what?

President Donald Trump disgraced America again on Tuesday.

That’s business as usual, in most contexts. But this time Trump projected his psychosis beyond the customary bounds of American politics.

Trump stood before the United Nations General Assembly and delivered a rant filled with insults and lies that might go down in history as the vilest of its kind.

Presumably speaking for all of us Americans, Trump told the entire world to f––– off.

Among the most vile lowlights of Trump’s tantrum:

  • He dismissed climate change as a “con job,” mocking decades of scientific consensus in front of world leaders who have committed themselves to fighting rising seas and burning forests.
  • He framed immigration as a global poison, attacking nations that take in refugees while offering no solutions — just fear, contempt and seething xenophobia.
  • He claimed Christianity is the most persecuted religion on Earth, an inflammatory lie intended to stoke division and grievance while pandering to his White Nationalist base.
  • He vomited falsehoods that he had presumably “resolved” seven major conflicts — including Israel-Iran and India-Pakistan, rewriting reality while of course offering no proof since none exists and drawing eye-rolls, not applause.
  • He told U.N. diplomats their countries are “going to hell” for permitting too much immigration, then basked in the moment like he was inflaming a rally crowd, not representing all Americans at a global forum.

Here’s how the Wall Street Journal news report characterized the speech:

In an hour-long speech filled with grievances about ongoing wars, windmills and malfunctioning escalators, it was Trump’s attacks against what he called a “double-tailed monster” that rang loudest in the ornate General Assembly room.

“Immigration and the high cost of so-called green, renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world and a large part of our planet,” he said.

“Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast because of their policies on these two subjects. Both immigration and their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe.”

Immigration in particular was ruining other nations, Trump insisted: “Your countries are going to hell.”

(Now, if you’re wondering about the escalator references, Trump was whining like a toddler about how an escalator in the UN building had stopped for a moment, briefly stranding him and First Lady Melania Trump. All our hearts go out to Melania.)

Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with a U.S. president calling out the UN for perceived ineffectiveness. Many Americans share that concern — and while some of us would rather see constructive, adult engagement to improve the UN’s efforts, that would remain perfectly within the bounds of propriety.

But that’s not what Trump did yesterday. He put on world display a level of hatred and boorishness — and a cringeworthy lack of gravitas — that certainly had diplomats the world over shaking their heads. Even beyond what they have come to expect.

Two days before the UN speech, Trump delivered one just as toxic at the memorial service for slain conservative icon Charlie Kirk. There, he proclaimed, “I hate my opponent, I don’t wish him well.”

That, of course, was a message to the sizable majority of Americans — at least 60 percent and counting — who disapprove of Trump today. Without apology, he let hundreds of millions of Americans know of his hatred for them.

But Trump didn’t just stop with us today. He also let it be known that he hates the world.

“Your countries are going to hell!” Trump raged.

That’s the only way he’d ever get to know them better.

Trump's TikTok dealings should've set this GOP toady roaring. His silence speaks volumes

You're not going to believe this, but it appears the cat’s got Josh Hawley’s tongue.

The junior senator from Missouri — known for his unwavering ability to detect Communist infiltration in American tech companies from eight area codes away — has suddenly gone quiet.

Interesting timing, too.

Because on Friday, President Donald Trump announced progress on a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to block any U.S. sale or ban of TikTok in exchange for vague “national security commitments” that sound suspiciously like business as usual.

That would be the same TikTok that Hawley has passionately demanded be banned, or at least completely removed from Chinese involvement.

“TikTok — and its parent company ByteDance — are threats to American national security,” Hawley wrote in 2023, to then Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. He’s repeated that theme dozens if not hundreds of times as a senator.

So, you can imagine Hawley’s indignation when the Washington Post reported this:

“A ByteDance spokesperson in a statement Friday thanked Trump and Xi and said the company would work 'to ensure TikTok remains available to American users through TikTok U.S.'”

Shockingly, you could hear a pin drop. Hawley — arguably second to none among U.S. politicians in garnering attention and air time on every subject imaginable — has gone dark. No tweets, no press releases, no rushing to Fox News, no nothing.

So in the spirit of filling the void, let’s revisit what Josh Hawley has been screaming from the mountaintops for several years about TikTok — before it became a Trump-friendly enterprise. Here are just a few of his greatest hits:

“TikTok is digital fentanyl that’s addicting our kids and stealing their data!”
— Hawley, 2023
“TikTok is a surveillance tool for the Chinese Communist Party.”
— Hawley, 2022
“Every time you use TikTok, you're giving your information to Beijing.”
— Hawley, 2021
“We are literally subsidizing the destruction of our children’s mental health.”
— Hawley, 2023
“This is mind control by a foreign adversary — and Democrats won’t act.”
— Hawley, 2024

But now that Trump has personally intervened to compromise on TikTok’s Chinese ownership, Hawley apparently no longer thinks it’s all that big a deal, after all.

Just because he authored the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, which was successfully signed into law, and a broader No TikTok on United States Devices Act, doesn’t mean Hawley cannot mind “some TikTok.”

This is the same senator who once told Fox News that Democrats were “kneeling before Chairman Xi” for not banning the app. So what is that Trump’s doing?

Let’s put it this way. If President Joe Biden had done this, Hawley would have demanded a vote by this afternoon on Articles of Impeachment. He would have hosted a special tonight on Fox News.

Now, maybe not so much.

It turns out, according to the Post, sources are saying the deal Trump is working on with Xi would be hugely beneficial to Trump BFF Larry Ellison, “the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, a tech giant that will own a stake in the U.S. spin-off and provide it cloud-computing and technical services.”

Just can’t get wait to see Hawley teeing off in the Senate about this one.

In 2020, an Esquire writer aptly said, “The most dangerous place to stand in Washington D.C. is any place between Senator Josh Hawley and a live microphone.”

That was before we had a dictator.

Jimmy Kimmel wasn't suspended for what he said about Charlie Kirk

It is important to get this right.

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel was suspended indefinitely Wednesday by ABC and his late-night show appears to have come to an end. It has been widely misreported that the action was related to the Charlie Kirk murder and its aftermath.

It was not.

Virtually every story about the sacking carried a headline referencing Kirk. The implication was clear that Kimmel was dismissed for something he said about Kirk. That’s the first thing I thought when the news broke.

That did not happen.

Donald Trump had Kimmel taken off the air — as he has suggested would happen after a similar fate befell Stephen Colbert as CBS — because he wanted to.

And because he could.

No need to call in Sherlock Holmes. Trump has long despised Kimmel, along with the entire mainstream media, which he routinely describes — in the grand tradition of history’s worst authoritarians — as “the enemy of the people.”

It’s obvious that Trump dispatched Brendan Carr, his sycophantic chairman of the FCC to put out the hit on Kimmel. Carr, a co-author of Project 2025, apparently did just that, and Disney — pushed by Nexstar, owner of roughly 30 of its ABC affiliates — rolled over.

This is the same Disney that folded a poker hand with four aces in December 2024, to “settle” for $15 million in a sham defamation lawsuit filed by Trump. It seems that Disney had far more to lose than $15 million — exponentially more — by crossing the incoming president.

So, it’s just another footnote to the story that Nexstar also has much larger fish to fry with the Trump administration — needing approval from Carr’s FCC for a pending, controversial, $6.2 billion merger with Tegna. It’s an instant replay of CBS putting profits above principle when it paid off Trump to save a proposed Paramount mega-merger with Skydance from sleeping with the fishes.

Carr offers no pretense of serving as anything but a corrupt political hack. Hours before the Kimmel announcement, he visited the friendly confines of Benny Johnson’s prominent conservative podcast and said this:

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

Sneering at the theoretical independence of the FCC, Carr made himself exclusively available to Sean Hannity and Fox News after the Kimmel sacking. It did appear, however, that lawyers had advised him by then to lose “easy way or hard way” gangsta rap.

As for Kimmel, he should have been the last one targeted for disrespecting Charlie Kirk. This is what Kimmel had posted on Instagram in the wake of Kirk’s tragic passing:

“Instead of the angry finger‑pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.”

Kimmel has said nothing on air since to disparage Kirk or even revisit Kirk’s previous statements that were inflammatory and now seem ironic. I happen to agree with that, having taken the old-school view that Kirk’s murder be “deplored without qualification.”

If you want to view the Monday monologue from Kimmel that has been absurdly linked to his suspension, knock yourself out. You can view it here.

If you do, you’ll be shocked as I was to find that nothing Kimmel said even remotely approached mean-spiritedness about Kirk. Kimmel ridiculed Trump, and deservedly so, for the president’s pathetic response to a sympathetic reporter’s question about how he was “holding up” in the wake of Kirk’s death.

Trump said he was fine and immediately changed the subject to how exciting it was that he was building a big, fancy White House ballroom. It was a singular validation of the daily, brilliant reminders from Trump’s niece — psychologist Mary Trump — that this a man suffering severely from untreated narcissistic personality disorder.

Humiliating Trump can come at a grave price to any company needing anything from Trump’s corrupt FCC. But, as I’ve suggested, Kimmel’s monologue Monday was just a fig leaf for going after him.

It was only a matter of time.

Just remember this: When Trump exerts his will and power over media that depend upon the federal government for their licensing — and in the case of giant corporations, far more — he is not acting like a dictator.

He’s acting as a dictator.

One senator's ignorant Charlie Kirk whine shows how far the GOP has fallen

Eric Schmitt tried to present himself as an intellectual at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

He came off like a little boy trying on his father’s clothes in the mirror.

It was all swagger and no fit.

Schmitt thoughtfully entitled his remarks, “There Can Be No Unity Between Good and Evil.” Even the subject of the hearing — smarmy FBI Director Kash Patel — must have been wondering to himself about how that could possibly be helpful.

The problem wasn’t merely with the content of Schmitt’s falsehood-laden messaging. His role, after all, was to parrot Donald Trump’s reprehensible words dividing the nation at a time of national strife, as no American president ever has before.

But Schmitt’s speech — which you can watch here or read here — was nothing more than a faux-intellectual diatribe delivered with the gravitas of Daffy Duck doing a TED talk.

Early on in his remarks, Schmitt sounded like a U.S. Senator:

Over the past week, leaders from across the political spectrum have come out and condemned Charlie [Kirk]'s murder and political violence more broadly. For that, we’re all very grateful. We should be grateful. There have been calls together to come together in the wake of Charlie’s murder and I want to do that. Someday, I pray we can be united as a country again and go forward again as one people under one flag.

That sounded fine to me. My reaction in this space had been that “we should all as Americans deplore — without qualification — Kirk’s murder. It’s a moment that could bring us all together in revulsion, across the great political divide.”

Unfortunately, Schmitt’s gratitude lasted just a few paragraphs. He cited some random polling which he claimed showed that liberals are fine with political violence and conservatives aren’t. That junk doesn’t deserve further mention here, much less — with no vetting or validation — at a U.S. Senate proceeding.

As for “coming together,” it was probably not all that helpful for the senator to spew lies like this one:

The George Soros empire has financed a vast ecosystem of radicals all working together — dropping off bricks at riots — to unleash a tidal wave of violent anarchists on our streets and prop it up with an army of researchers and experts and journalists and propagandists who downplay political violence.

Nothing like serving up propaganda to call out propaganda. It might soothe the sensibilities of MAGA faithful, but Schmitt’s just another politician making stuff up.

But what sets Schmitt apart is his veneer of solemnity while delivering such truly unserious drivel. With no self-awareness, Schmitt persists in trying to dress up the basest political tripe in a wardrobe of make-believe intellectualism.

Behold the philosopher Eric Schmitt holding forth with large words:

Upstream from the dehumanization and demonizing political violence and rhetoric tearing apart our country, is a divide on how we view America and Americans. Are we good? Are we evil? Is there something inherently special about Western civilization or is this 2,000-year project rotten to the core? And if it is something worth fighting for, which I believe it is, how do we do it?”

What?

Now, I’ve written quite a few clunky paragraphs in my day — and mixed more than my share of metaphors — but I’m not certain how to decode Schmitt’s gibberish.

We’ve all heard our nation described as a grand “experiment,” but arguably not one spanning 2,000 years. With apologies to those who maintain Jesus was an American.

And who describes “Western civilization” as a “2,000-year project?” Mind you, this wasn’t a slip of the tongue: it’s in his speech text and was faithfully repeated in his live remarks.

Are we good? Are we evil? Does dehumanization flow upstream? Were the Dark Ages part of Western civilization? Is this the sort of work product you’d get if Plato impregnated Laura Loomer?

I’m not so sure about those questions, but I am about this one:

Does Eric Schmitt truly not comprehend the outrageous hypocrisy of viciously attacking people’s character and motives who disagree with him — and calling them “evil” — and then whining like this?

And I would point out we’ve heard years of the left — their loudest voices — calling anyone on the right an extremist MAGA Republican, a fascist, a Nazi, an existential threat to democracy.

Check yourself. And don’t give me this both sides bullshit!

It’s hard to counter such eloquence from such a towering intellect.

Still, here’s a thought: If you truly hold the worldview that in American politics, everything comes down to good versus evil — and that you’re good and those of us who disagree with you are evil — say it all you want. It’s a free country.

But don’t bother pretending to be smart about it.

(Note: this is the first of a two-part post. Tomorrow’s installment will examine Schmitt’s premise that political violence in America is not a “both sides” matter.)

The suspect is not the stuff of rabid MAGA dreams. Thank God for that

This cannot be what President Donald Trump had in mind.

Authorities made an arrest in connection with the heinous assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The suspect is Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old white, male Utah State University student, the son of registered Republican voters from the southwest of the state.

Robinson’s appearance — just a regular-looking white kid in college — could not be further from what the MAGA’s mind’s eye would have loved to see. At least superficially, he doesn’t fit the mold of their preferred villains.

In a decent time, this of course would not matter. We should all as Americans deplore Kirk's murder, without qualification. It’s a moment that could bring us all together in revulsion, across the great political divide.

But that’s not happening because Trump would never stand for that. As you probably know, Trump didn’t even wait for the existence of a suspect to blame it on fictional “lunatics on the Left.”

On Wednesday night, Trump delivered the most vile and unpresidential statement ever uttered at a moment of national grief.

Here’s the transcript of Trump’s most significant comments:

“It is long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.

For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today and it must stop right now.

My administration will find each and every one who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and every one who brings order to our country.

From the attack on my life in Butler, PA last year which killed a husband and father to the attacks on ICE agents to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”

I think we can let it speak for itself that Trump indignantly called out “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”

The same can be said for Trump’s choices for examples of political violence in America. And, more importantly, his omissions.

But the key point — and it’s undeniable — is that all Trump cares about going forward is to exploit the Kirk tragedy to fit his own ends.

Just imagine what Trump and his MAGA acolytes would have done to exploit the Kirk tragedy had Tyler Robinson turned out to be a trans person. Or an undocumented migrant. Or a Black person. Or a Muslim.

So anxious was MAGA world to distort the murder for its narrative that someone leaked to the Wall Street Journal — well before Robinson’s arrest — that inscriptions found on shell casings related to the shooting contained messages of “trans ideology.”

It was confirmed on Friday that was empirically false.

So yes, Trump must have been apoplectic to learn that Kirk’s suspected assassin was just some white guy who grew up in a Republican household in deep-red Utah.

In dramatic contrast, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, did himself proud in the news conference announcing Robinson’s arrest.

“We can return violence with violence, we can return hate with hate, and that’s the problem with political violence — is it metastasizes. Because we can always point the finger at the other side. And at some point, we have to find an off-ramp, or it’s going to get much, much worse.

History will dictate if this is a turning point for our country. But every single one of us gets to choose right now if this is a turning point for us. There is one person responsible for what happened here, and that person is now in custody and will be charged soon and will be held accountable. And yet, all of us have an opportunity right now to do something different.”

Those off-the-cuff words from Cox came straight from the heart. The Republican Party needs more leaders like Cox, and so does the nation.

There’s a better path forward if we choose it, Donald Trump and his hatred notwithstanding.

This Trump move is illegal and immoral and should chill you all to the bone

There is arguably no better canary in the coal mine for the death of democracy than a president who seizes for himself the power to wage war.

We seem to be headed there.

President Donald Trump’s recent — and ongoing — unauthorized military aggression against Venezuela fails to meet even the minimal legal standard for presidential war powers.

Trump and his henchmen have largely dispensed with pretexts.

Citing no particular provocation, Trump blithely declared Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro America’s latest mortal enemy. That sort of gratuitousness is brought to you with a shrug by corporate media increasingly committed to a mission of stenography.

The administration has designated Tren de Aragua a “foreign terrorist organization” — which may well be accurate but does not seem to have come with any provable link to Maduro other than rhetorical. Even if true, nothing in U.S. law permits unilateral military action on that ground alone by a U.S. president.

But following the law has always ranked below the bottom of Trump’s “things to do” list in life.

Here’s how the United States has apparently begun to launch an illegal war almost overnight, without a millisecond of congressional debate. And with scant attention at best in the news media.

The Escalation — One Week, One Direction

  • August 8, 2025 — Trump designates Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization under the 2001 AUMF framework.
    (AP)
  • Late August — U.S. naval and marine units mobilize in the southern Caribbean under an “anti-cartel” initiative.
    (The Guardian)
  • September 2 — A U.S. drone strike sinks a speedboat allegedly linked to Tren de Aragua, killing 11. The administration justifies it as a drug interdiction.
  • September 3, 2025 — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro denounces the U.S. strike as a violation of sovereignty, orders militias to mobilize, and warns that Washington is laying the groundwork for regime change.
  • September 3–4 — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calls the strike “just the beginning.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio signals more strikes are being considered.
  • September 5 — Trump orders the Pentagon rebranded as the Department of War in communications and signage. Hegseth becomes “Secretary of War.”
  • September 5–6 — Ten F‑35 stealth fighters are deployed to Puerto Rico. Trump publicly states he’s weighing strikes inside Venezuela.

Trump’s posture toward Maduro wasn’t always so hostile. During his first term, he told Axios on June 21, 2020, he was “open to meeting” with Maduro and even called him “very smart.”

The timing was just astonishing, especially in today’s context. Trump publicly praised Maduro fewer than three months after his own Department of Justice had issued a press release headlined: “Nicolás Maduro Moros and 14 Current and Former Venezuelan Officials Charged with Narco-Terrorism, Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Criminal Charges.”

Apparently narco-terrorism didn’t concern Donald the First as much as it seems to concern Donald the Second.

Back in 2020, Trump did reverse himself on Twitter, but only after heads exploded among Florida Republicans. Taking issue with fellow strongmen has never ranked as one of Trump’s strengths.

Trump has always positioned himself as an isolationist — and his repeated campaign pledges of “no more endless wars” — arguably garnered more votes than most analysts credited. Trump mocked “globalist” entanglements, vowed to bring troops home and end foreign adventurism.

That’s all a thing of the past now that Trump openly aspires to become the world’s most dominant dictator.

He drools about invading and seizing Greenland. He muses obscenely about annexing Canada, or at the very least, waging a mindless economic war with it and many other close allies. He obsesses about seizing the Panama Canal.

His MAGA base has always been animated by extreme nationalism — ethnically and economically grounded — and it’s widely presumed that instinct mutates into isolationism. Even among those whose political philosophies can only be captured in five words or less.

It remains to be seen how Trump’s abandonment of isolationism might play out with the base. But never underestimate the power of a cult leader.

What’s more, we should not discount similarities to the dicey motives of previous U.S. adventurism — “war for oil” in Iraq springs to mind — especially given that Trump is exponentially more transactional than all previous U.S. presidents combined.

On Saturday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller defended Trump’s Venezuela policy by calling the country “so rich in resources, so rich in reserves,” while describing Maduro as “the head of the cartel.”

In poker, that’s known as a “tell.”

Let’s hope I’m wrong in thinking this Venezuelan adventure is far graver than a few news cycles of an unstable Trump cosplaying as a warlord. But, to me, this one has real potential for disaster.

I don’t like the looks of that canary.

Copyright © 2025 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 | Masthead | Privacy Policy | Manage Preferences | Debug Logs
For corrections contact corrections@rawstory.com , for support contact support@rawstory.com .