Ray Richmond

To co-opt a famed riddle about drug addicts and alcoholics: How do you know a member of the Trump Administration is lying?

Answer: Their lips are moving.

As we’ve come to learn, there are only three qualifications for someone getting hired by Trump:

• They must have a criminal disposition.

• They must be capable of lying with impunity and without shame.

• They must be loyal to dear leader at all costs.

No one embodies these qualities with greater fervor than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is so adept at dishonesty that he has taken even the concept of lying about lying to a level rarely achieved in political annals.

The only area where Hegseth exceeds his capacity for deceit is when it comes to his overall stupidity. And if you combine his duplicity with that utter incompetence, it produces something even more dangerous. In isolation, either would be bad enough. But in combination, the scariest part is the way one protects the other. Bad judgment produces failure, dishonesty prevents accountability for the failure, and the absence of culpability guarantees that the dreadful reasoning survives, even thrives.

It's the perfect storm of horrible.

We can easily see Hegseth’s documented pattern of error followed by denial, exaggeration or self-exoneration in the current crisis enveloping the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln Naval aircraft carrier. This is the very same vessel that’s been carrying some 5,000 sailors and Marines for nearly nine months amid plummeting morale due to reported deteriorating conditions. These include moldy showers, long stretches without hot water, food shortages, out-of-service laundry facilities, disrupted mail and crew members losing their minds.

Hegseth naturally dismissed these concerns as “completely misrepresented” in terms of what’s really been happening. He assured reporters during a press gaggle in Panama that every ship has every amenity the Pentagon can provide.

Meanwhile, despite this supposed soft-peddling of any issues onboard what has been a record-setting deployment of the Lincoln that exceeded its planned mission by some three months, the U.S. Navy is rushing the aircraft carrier U.S.S. George Washington to the Asia-Pacific region to relieve the Lincoln despite its supposedly being just fine.

Yes, of course it’s all a great big lie. That goes without saying. In this case and every case, actions speak louder than untruthful words. Insincerity lay at the heart of everything these people do or utter, designed to cover for their fabrication and idiocy.

Yet somehow, this story has impacted me to a far greater degree than the usual administration horse manure. Word has leaked that these military forces on the Lincoln had grown so miserable while being trapped on what was essentially a floating prison that some were suicidal and attempted to jump overboard.

The only reason word leaked out about the abysmal conditions on the ship was that family members were revealing it in defiance of threats not to embarrass the military or else. And then when it finally did hit the media, it was naturally dismissed as – all together now – FAKE NEWS.

As is the case every time, this corrupt administration has a remarkable explanation/solution for every inconvenient reality it confronts: deny it. It’s always worked for Donald Trump, as taught by his mentor Roy Cohn once upon a time. If the facts don’t work well for the current situation, attack them as false. If that doesn’t work, condemn the reporters. Always question the credibility of anyone who doesn’t adhere to the company line.

Try to imagine this: we are supposed to believe that sailors and cadets and their families with nothing to gain all independently fabricated a story to demean and embarrass the Pentagon and upset Hegseth.

I also read a story Friday about how “Democratic senators have begun raising concerns about the extended deployment” of the carrier. That’s reassuring. But what about the Republican senators? Are horrid living conditions for active members of the military somehow a partisan issue? Where is the outrage from Republican members of Congress demanding access to the ship.

This is the same party that has spent decades telling us they’re the ones who support the troops. The center of the GOP is its love for those doing their patriotic duty — or so it claims.

Apparently, in the face of such lies, those senators and representatives have dropped the ball on doing their job. No demands for answers. No righteous indignation. Just deafness and blindness when it’s their party driving the fiasco. Coming to the rescue of these troops can’t hold a candle to the promises they can’t disavow quickly enough when faced with an opportunity.

Why should it matter who is in charge when servicemen and women are victimized by a government that evidently prefers platitudes to adequate resources?

These are people serving their country, not disposable pawns who can easily be ignored when their needs become too public and distressing. They did not sign up for incompetent leadership, inadequate nourishment and medical care, unclean water, dysfunctional sanitation and a lack of mental health assistance when things go south. When they’re victimized, for whatever reason, you don’t sweep their issues under the rug because they’ve made you look bad.

What is it going to take to prove that things have gone completely off the rails if not sailors feeling so despairing that they’re trying to abandon ship? I mean, for God’s sake, the one thing everyone ought to be able to agree on – Democrat or Republican, Black or white, young or old, rich or poor, blue or red – is that we need to take care of the people defending our nation.

If you’re the secretary of defense and you can’t be bothered to make sure the people you are charged with overseeing receive the bare basics to sustain them physically and emotionally, maybe it’s time to dump him and find a guy who can.

I know that actual competence is a radical concept today. But maybe it’s worth a shot. Take a good look at where ineptitude has landed us.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

Sometimes, I sit back in breathtaking wonder struggling to consider what more could possibly be written about Donald John Trump that hasn’t already been said a million times and in a million different ways.

And then, he does something else that leaves me – and any thinking human being – gasping for adjectives to explain the actions of the worst person America has ever produced by a margin so vast it defies calculation.

This was the case last Friday when word filtered out that Joe Biden’s cancer had spread, metastasizing into his bones and causing him horrendous pain. His son Hunter publicly described the debilitating progression and how devastating it is to witness someone he so loves fighting such an unbearable final battle.

News of the former president’s advancing malignancy left anyone with the slightest modicum of empathy feeling immense compassion for a gentleman who has sacrificed so much to serve his country and suffered such significant personal loss along the way.

Anyone, that is, except for Trump.

This smallest and most pitiful of men saw the news of Biden’s pain as an opportunity to pile on. He decided that was the day to humiliate Biden by posting to Truth Social a photo of his longtime rival golfing, hunched over mid-swing with a massive chunk of turf ripping out of the ground. It featured above the picture the message, “Biden isn’t even a 100 Handicap.”

What kind of a heartless SOB posts something like that simultaneous to news filtering out that the guy is in the fight of his life against a metastatic cancer that is slowly taking him? A slimeball without equal, that’s who.

Yes, the people who support him will naturally defend it with gusto. They’ll say, “That’s just Trump being Trump,” as if it’s somehow a defense rather than the definition of a person imbued with not a sliver of humanity. Being predictably cruel doesn’t somehow diminish the viciousness, the callousness, the utter remorselessness and inhumanity of a person who lacks the most basic human decency or decorum.

The best thing Trump could have said on a day when this news about Biden filtered out was nothing. The second-best thing would have been a few empty but respectable words that acknowledged another man’s distress and misery.

But no. That sort of even modest integrity isn’t in Trump’s wheelhouse. A man whose emotional development and maturity halted at age 12 is capable only of dispensing degradation that intensifies the torment of those he perceives as his enemies. He has but a single gear, and it’s marinated in sadism.

It’s not just despicable; it’s flat-out monstrous.

You can’t legislate kindness. But too many people have come to normalize cruelty as just part of the deal now in human relations. Trump has made grotesque behavior acceptable and transformed the sadistic into the everyday.

In psychology, sadism refers to the derivation of pleasure, gratification, excitement or a sense of power from another’s suffering, humiliation, fear or helplessness. It need not be physical or sexual. Researchers also study ordinary sadism involving interpersonal cruelty and the enjoyment of others’ distress.

This is, quite simply, Trump in a nutshell. He is a commonplace sadist. All of his actions and words drive home this point. To him, winning isn’t winning unless his opponent is simultaneously degraded, diminished, shamed, ridiculed.

The supporters of this man believe it is perfectly acceptable conduct for a president of the United States – and by supporters, I also mean the Republican members of Congress who continue not merely to tolerate his merciless impulses but enable and applaud it publicly.

There once was a time back before Trump’s still implausible ascension when presidents took seriously their responsibility to be role models, to rise above petty politics and enlighten when the situation called for it. To unite. In the face of tragedy, political opponents became human beings.

At the very least, illness and death were off-limits for small-minded attacks. The unmistakable message was that underneath it all, we’re delicate mammals on earth for but a short time.

But that’s all gone now. Understanding and compassion are exploited as weakness by a party that follows its leader in victimizing and mocking the concept of morality, one who seizes on defenselessness as a focus of attack and dominance. This is also called kick-’em-when-their-down, which precisely defines the decision to taunt Biden for the crime of permitting his disease to progress.

The flip side of this is equally telling when it comes to Trump. He carries an obsession with turning humiliation into entertainment while at the same time having positively no tolerance when it comes to his own humiliation. He’s basically a snowflake when being targeted for any criticism.

Quite the paradox.

Crowd size, wealth, intelligence, physical vigor, losing an election, being laughed at, being called a loser – these are all unusually sensitive subjects that get way under Trump’s skin. Is his compulsion to humiliate others connected to his own intense aversion to being degraded? Perhaps that’s for greater mental health minds than mine to assess.

To be sure, however, few public figures in modern times have employed humiliation against others so relentlessly while simultaneously appearing so unwilling to accept/brush off ridicule, disrespect or diminishment directed at themselves. Methinks gross insecurity could be at its root.

What’s clear is that he seems especially attracted to status reversal, as in:

Someone important is revealed to be pathetic.

Someone respected to revealed to be stupid.

Someone powerful comes begging to him.

Someone who criticizes Trump is fired/defeated/disgraced.

Someone who humiliates Trump must be humiliated themselves.

And when it comes to Joe Biden, vulnerability is leapt upon to further reduce someone in the throes of what appears to be terminal illness. Not only is such comportment not presidential; it’s not human.

But it shouldn’t surprise us that this man is incapable of even faking benevolence. It’s just one more compelling reason to loathe him. That isn’t Trump Derangement Syndrome talking, as there is absolutely nothing deranged about seeing him for the worthless dirtbag he will always be.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

As I write these words, Todd Blanche is cruising toward being confirmed as Attorney General for the United States. What looked improbable just a few days before quickly became, essentially, a done deal after Blanche did the bare minimum to assuage the concerns of lame-duck Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC).

We pretend that Blanche’s approval was ever really in doubt. It wasn’t. Sufficient smoke and mirrors were always going to be employed to satisfy the senators.

They initially said they wouldn’t vote to confirm unless Donald Trump’s former (current?) personal lawyer met with several Epstein survivors. So, he did. He went into a room with them, let them know he had no use for them, cared not at all about them, wouldn’t so much as look at them. He told them to “hurry up” and “get to the point” and to take their complaints to the FBI.

This is what passes for a productive meeting in the Republican Party circa 2026.

That requirement apparently satisfied, the senators stipulated that, after long refusing to do so, Blanche must put in writing the fact that the nearly $1.8 billion slush fund – you know, the one designed to financially reward felons for destroying the Capitol and subverting democracy – was officially dead.

Blanche did that too, though the one-page document he wrote up stipulating to drop the fund was signed only by Blanche. In other words, literally every other person in the country could potentially resurrect it in some form, in particular the man who calls himself president. It wouldn’t stand up in court. It’s the equivalent of swearing something with your fingers crossed behind your back.

Yet that was good enough for Cornyn and Tillis, since Blanche also wrote up something about Trump’s immunity from the IRS for himself and his family and all of their businesses was now merely retroactive rather than in perpetuity. So, it’ll only save Trump $100 million or so for his and his family’s sins of the past.

And the Republican Senate was once again one big happy family. The end.

Not to harsh on anyone’s mellow here, but this is all just more of the same rubber-stamping of transparent corruption. Not only does it further dismiss and diminish the Epstein victims; it drives home the point that the Department of Justice is essentially Trump’s personal law firm operating entirely in his interests.

I’ll also be counting the minutes after Blanche’s ultimate confirmation until his sole client is helped to successfully resurrect the slush fund. We’re now down under three months until those midterms, so there isn’t a moment to lose to get those payoffs out to the pardoned January 6 felons.

Yes, these would be the same cop-beating, window-smashing, feces-smearing hoods who did their damnedest to overturn the 2020 election by force when the judicial system failed Trump. Blanche’s job is to sufficiently assist Trump in distributing the payoffs before November and motivate the troops to do their dirty work of intimidation in tandem with ICE.

The hope is, of course, that the vote will be such a blue tidal wave at least in the House, if not the Senate, that no amount of voter suppression or rigging will overturn the will of the voters. But that naturally remains to be seen.

Having Blanche in place as his guard dog in the AG seat is designed to be a fallback, along with the hopelessly crooked Supreme Court, in case direct violence and bullying aren’t quite enough. I’m convinced that the courts aren’t the front-burner strategy anymore, but instead a just-in-case. That, and whatever Elon Musk might be planning to do with his satellites and potential electronic chicanery.

The one strategy Trump isn’t seriously considering is winning the midterms outright. He’s acting less like a man who's desperate than one who doesn’t care, who thinks it’s already in the bag one way or another. How else to explain the administration doing away with a Medicare prescription drug coverage subsidy program so close to the election, as they did last week.

Between that and the ongoing Iran War and runaway gas and grocery prices and bringing back tariffs at full throttle, Trump seems to be doing everything in his power to assist the Democratic cause.

The reality of the moment is that an entire political party is play-acting that Blanche isn’t shady to his core and that this “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is really dead.

I can just hear Blanche now at the coming hearings.

“Oh, you thought I meant it was dead dead?” he would reason with faux sincerity. “No, it was always only sorta-dead, like a patient in a coma waiting to be revived.”

“Do you mean like Mitch McConnell, Mr. Blanche?”

“Oh no, never quite that dead.”

To this Republican Party, the immoral ends justify the unethical means. And when it comes to Blanche, though he’s skilled at flashing a hangdog poker face that makes him look innocuous, he carries not a shred of remorse in doing all of Trump’s bidding. He sold his soul for a title, and I’m not talking about something so lofty as AG. He peddled it for the handle of “Mr. Trump’s Errand Boy.”

How else to explain his providing for the deplorable Ghislaine Maxwell a transfer to a country club lockup despite her being one of the most monstrous convicted enablers of sex trafficking in world history.

Make no mistake, Todd Blanche is a master of deception and manipulation without an ounce of integrity. That naturally makes him both a perfect fit for Trump and poisonous for the United States. He is, remarkably, the worst imaginable person to be put in charge as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, like assigning a fox to preside over an egg farm.

The sad part is that he imagines loyalty from a man who knows none. That, sooner or later, will prove to be his punishment.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

Let me start this off with the understanding that I’m a very big fan of vaccines and have no patience for, or understanding of, anyone who isn’t — in particular our clueless Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr.

Just as a quick refresher, diseases like polio and smallpox used to kill and badly cripple people by the millions. The vaccines effectively eliminated them from the list of maladies plaguing humankind. This is not opinion, it is fact. Hundreds of millions of lives — maybe billions — have collectively been saved by vaccines. Period. Full stop.

Considering the above, the “antivax” movement is insane. It posits that illness is preferable to health — that death is better than life. It’s like favoring cancer over the surgery to remove it.

I know this sounds completely absurd to even have to point out. Those who rail against immunization strike me as among the least-informed and (let’s just say it) idiotic people in our midst. The worst part is that they don’t harm only themselves and their families, but the larger population with their crackpot notions of health.

This was why in 2020, when word came down that a COVID vaccine was in development that would potentially greatly curtail a viral scourge that was at that moment killing people by the thousands every week, I never hesitated to sign up for the Pfizer vaccine clinical trial.

I became one of the first group of 30,000 volunteers to get jabbed with that early COVID vaccine. Friends and family members praised me for my “courage,” which sort of confused me. I didn’t see it that way at all. Instead, I felt incredibly lucky to have jumped the line. To me, it was like winning the lottery.

I emerged none the worse for wear from my clinical trial experience. I didn’t get sick. In fact, I felt protected from a pandemic that was still raging globally — because I was protected. I gambled at that early stage that getting the vaccine would be safer than getting the disease. And it was. Imagine: a vaccine that worked as it should.

This is not to say there aren’t risks in getting shot up with any vaccine. Medical science isn’t perfect. But to pretend that the idea of immunization is somehow, in the main, potentially more hazardous to public health than getting nothing at all gets it precisely backwards.

The truth is we live in an age of medical miracle, when receiving a shot can prevent disease and extend lives. Any other conclusion is madness. Why are so many compelled to question it?

With this as background, let’s take a look at what happened to the great Dr. Anthony Fauci this past week when he was unfathomably grilled by a disrespectful and downright hostile Republican establishment led by the execrable Senator Rand Paul.

I will admit to you right here that I don’t even get it. At all. I still don’t understand what Dr. Fauci was being accused of. Was he being blamed for the purported COVID lab leak in Wuhan, China in 2019? Was he somehow held responsible for the estimated 22 million deaths from COVID worldwide? It wasn’t entirely clear.

Here was a now 85-year-old man who, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), had been the only person in the Trump administration to, early on, fight COVID with science. His knowledge was backed by decades of experience battling infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, Ebola and SARS. He used that lifetime of expertise to save countless lives, rallying for the vaccine that was believed to have spared several million from COVID deaths in its first year alone.

How is it that this guy became a villain? It’s inconceivable. By any measure, he is an American hero who deserves a medal, not a witch hunt.

Instead, Dr. Fauci’s personal, unredacted diary got leaked, and Sen. Paul — who has, for whatever reason, had it out for Dr. Fauci for years now — came after him to make him answer for his imaginary sins against pandemic infection. He had to take the Fifth over a hundred times to prevent prosecution that could have sent the doctor to prison.

Again, all of this is simply unimaginable. In no rational world should Dr. Fauci be held accountable for anything except helping get the vaccine out to the world in record time. But it seems he committed the unpardonable sin of describing the president in his diary variously as “rambling,” “crazy,” “desperate,” “bumbling,” “incompetent,” “an idiot,” “a true embarrassment,” “totally nuts” and “truly an obnoxious adolescent.”

In my world, this would mark Dr. Fauci’s primary sin as being entirely too mild in his diary assessments. But, in order to demonstrate absolute devotion to their audience of one, Sen. Paul and his cohorts put on a show that denigrated only themselves. The doctor emerged without a mark on him.

I return to the question, however, of what this salacious sideshow was even all about. In what way did Dr. Fauci purportedly harm civilization? Are they still pissed off that we had to wear masks? Are they upset that schools got closed, businesses shut down, gatherings restricted for a couple of years due to the COVID threat? Do they continue to resent having vaccines be mandated to reduce severe illness, prevent hospitalizations and save lives?

Dr. Fauci used his best understanding from what was known at the time to keep people as healthy as possible during a frightening outbreak and spread of a virus whose origins and transmission remained largely mysterious for many months.

Yes, a lot of us went overboard with disinfecting groceries and mail and steering clear of anyone with a sniffle. But the guidance evolved as more became known about it. Dr. Fauci’s gravest sin, if you want to call it that, was to err on the side of caution. Yeah, let’s lock him up for that.

You know we’re living in mighty insane times when the associates of Jeffrey Epstein roam free while the man who did everything in his power to minimize and halt an international pandemic is held out as a pariah.

The level of shame and injustice here are nearly impossible to calculate.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

I am so done with this whole Mitch McConnell thing.

We’re now past six weeks of this ridiculous crap, and the silence surrounding the Kentucky senator’s condition long ago eclipsed the point of disturbing to become completely absurd and intolerable. But that just seems to be the Republican way. All we get are vague justifications and likely manipulated “proof of life” photos rather than actual explanations.

Has McConnell been struck mute? Is he in a fugue state? Is he deceased? If the answers to all three are “No,” then there is zero reason why he shouldn’t be able to appear in a video to explain what the hell is actually going on with him.

Yet not even the disempowered Democratic Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, has been able to communicate with or receive a genuine update on McConnell’s condition.

This thing all began on June 14, when paramedics reportedly responded to a brief loss of consciousness from a fall at McConnell’s home. His office issued a fuzzy statement that day about a subsequent hospitalization, without explaining more.

And there hasn’t been a whole lot that’s made sense since. A couple of people independently reported phantom 20-minute conversations with the senator during which he was supposedly sentient and alert, but evidently not so much that he could actually communicate with the outside world.

Then on July 12 came The Photo That Launched a Million Memes. The one with a smiling McConnell sitting up in a hospital bed dressed in a red-checkered shirt, a copy of that morning’s Washington Post in his lap, his sometimes-devoted wife Elaine Chao by his side. The photo’s authenticity was purportedly confirmed, but who among us really believes that?

Somehow, a clarifying statement from McConnell’s office on Monday, designed to update us on the senator’s condition, managed to clarify nothing at all. It noted that he wouldn’t be returning to work this week, while quoting him as saying, “I’m still working hard to get back to my full schedule of work in the Senate and in Kentucky, keeping up with my intense physical therapy per my doctors’ orders. Unfortunately, that means I won’t be able to make it to Fancy Farm, Kentucky this Saturday.”

An accompanying statement noted that McConnell was “not yet medically cleared” to leave the mysterious rehab facility where he was being treated. It also featured the obligatory smiling photo of him being comforted by his wife.

If we don’t trust the legitimacy of anything going on here, of course, it’s their own damn fault. The Republicans have shown themselves to be lying sacks of garbage, and this McConnell mystery fiasco pours more fuel atop that.

We’ve since heard that McConnell is now mostly afflicted only with a mild case of pneumonia. But if that’s all it is, I’ve never heard of a case of pneumonia that prevents you from going on camera.

You know who would never allow this insanity to move forward were the situation reversed and it was a Democrat pulling this disappearing act? Mitch McConnell, that’s who. Say what you will about the man being (having been?) a duplicitous, cheating scoundrel who plays (played?) by no one’s rules but his own; he doesn’t (didn’t?) take any of this kind of crap from anyone.

Meanwhile, Governor Beshear has been neutered by his Republican-controlled state legislature into oblivion. We’ve all heard about how the party is stalling any announcement or info about McConnell until August 3, the date after which an immediate special election can’t be called to fill the seat. But who knows what the real motive here is?

Some people obviously know what’s going on, and they aren’t saying a word. It’s just unbelievable. How can this be legal? It’s obviously not moral or ethical – further evidence that this rogue cult does whatever it wants and always seems to get away with it.

Like so much that’s happened during the Trump years, this is completely unacceptable. And yet the Democrats, even as they scream and shout to try to change up the narrative, accept it.

We’re all being institutionally gaslit with outrageous political theater. Every carefully worded statement about the health of a man who has vanished from view seems engineered to answer every question except the one everyone is asking. It’s as if the Republicans have invented a new medical specialty: strategic ambiguity.

Imagine applying a similar standard of non-information in other areas of life

Your airline pilot pauses on the runway for 15 minutes without saying a word. A flight attendant gets on the PA and calmly says, “Our pilot has consulted with experts and remains fully committed to today’s flight.”

The surgeon who is about to perform your colonoscopy freezes during pre-op for half an hour before you’re put under anesthesia. No one bothers to tell you what’s going on.

“Everything OK?” you finally ask.

A hospital publicist enters the room to assure you, “The doctor appreciates your concern and looks forward to continuing a distinguished career.”

Your Uber driver steers your car into a lake. It begins filling with water.

“What happened?” you ask.

“The vehicle remains operational,” comes the reply from the nonplussed driver.

At some point, language itself becomes parody. And that’s where we’re at now with the McConnell debacle.

When someone occupies one of the most consequential positions in American government, as McConnell does – helping shape policy, judicial appointments, budgets, and the lives of 342.7 million Americans – the public has a legitimate interest in knowing whether that person can perform the job. We deserve to know whether or not that person is comatose or still drawing breath. That’s democracy.

Instead, we’re handed the political equivalent of a shrug.

We’re all just expected to ignore what we can plainly see while accepting the official explanation that somehow manages to explain nothing.

It’s the same exhausting script over and over: trust us, don’t ask questions, your eyes are mistaken, Senator McConnell is on the road to recovery. If he isn’t, we’ll let you know when we feel like it.

It’s really a masterpiece of misinformation, manipulation and deception on a grand scale, designed to keep us all in the dark. The McConnell situation is much like the one surrounding the war in Iran. Covertness and subterfuge carry the day, and so a senator’s condition is turned into a spectator sport. Information is withheld just enough to keep speculation alive, then the press and public are scolded for speculating.

The whole thing clearly is designed to drive us all stark-raving bonkers. Chaos, after all, is the point. And so in the case of McConnell, we’re left groping for answers that are as elusive as the gatekeepers themselves.

If the senator is healthy enough to continue serving, which seems highly unlikely, explain why he’s not around. If he isn’t, say why. If the situation is evolving, tell us. Adults can handle complexity. It honestly shouldn’t be this difficult.

What we can’t reconcile is an endless procession of half-truths and non-truths in which reality itself is treated as classified information.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as a scoreboard in the background displays "Trump 45" and "Trump 47", referring to Trump as the nation's 45th president and his bid to become the 47th president, during a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. October 22, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as a scoreboard in the background displays "Trump 45" and "Trump 47", referring to Trump as the nation's 45th president and his bid to become the 47th president, during a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. October 22, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos BarriaRepublican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as a scoreboard in the background displays "Trump 45" and "Trump 47", referring to Trump as the nation's 45th president and his bid to become the 47th president, during a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. October 22, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

It’s hard to believe that we’re less than two months away from the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, that horrible day when war arrived at our doorstep.

One thing that’s always stuck in my head was the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers onboard the four jets that wreaked such deadly havoc were citizens of Saudi Arabia. This doesn’t necessarily mean that kingdom had an active hand in the terror, and the 9/11 Commission found no evidence that the Saudi government knowingly funded or directed the attacks.

But it still makes you wonder.

I bring this up now because you may have heard that Trump this week approved a landmark 30-year deal to provide the Saudis with the civilian nuclear program they had long sought. It gives U.S. companies a monopoly on developing a nuclear infrastructure for the Arab country without the necessity of requiring monitoring and inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency to make sure the “peaceful” use of nuclear fuel isn’t enriched for a weapon.

If it sounds like a horrible idea, that may be because it is. No oversight to keep a rogue nation in line? What could possibly go wrong besides everything?

But of course, money talks, and that’s something the oil-rich Saudi Arabia has in outrageous abundance. It’s the only language that Trump understands, and the deal would be worth billions in contracts to U.S. firms that work in nuclear technology.

And of course, this is a giant victory for the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, better known as MBS, who has long vowed to build a nuclear weapon if Iran is permitted to. It’s frankly difficult to argue with this logic, even if Trump’s much-repeated reason for his war is to stop Iran from making nukes.

What’s the difference between Iran and Saudi Arabia having a nuclear weapon? Several billion dollars, that’s what. The deal with the Saudis pretty much guarantees that nuclear nonproliferation is out the window in the Middle East for the foreseeable future.

But let’s get back to MBS for a moment. He is the key to this whole deal, and his relationship with Trump is at the center of it. The president basically sees the guy as a living, breathing ATM who has access to so much wealth that Trump is willing to look past the fact he’s a murderous swine.

It was a little under eight years ago that a Saudi journalist, dissident, author, columnist and editor named Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage. He never left. He was assassinated and carved into pieces by a bone saw, and all suspicion fell on MBS for having approved the operation to murder Khashoggi for his critical assessment of the Saudi government.

MBS denied any involvement. But we might imagine that this incident would stain the relationship between America and Saudi Arabia. And that assessment would be wrong. Trump for one never thinks less of someone who dismembers a journalist and in fact has disparaged other journalists for making MBS feel uncomfortable in press briefings.

When Trump traveled to Riyadh in 2025 and stood beside MBS, he smiled broadly while declaring of him, “I like him a lot. I like him too much.” Indeed, we all know how Trump feels about vicious leaders. These are his people. His cup of admiration runneth over.

There is also too much money at stake for Trump to ever seriously question his buddy about something so minor as a nuclear agreement. He is literally selling out the world’s safety. Just look at how handsomely his relationship with the kingdom has paid off for his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

It was in 2021 that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) committed $2 billion to Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners. It’s been emphasized by Kushner that this is an investment in the fund, not a personal payment to him, except for the fact that the fund is him. He owns Affinity and his firm collects management fees. Senate investigators estimated in 2024 that Affinity had accrued roughly $87 million in fees from the Saudi government to date.

Then this past March, Kushner – while working purportedly as a Mideast envoy – in his spare time spoke with potential investors from PIF about raising an additional $5 billion for Affinity. Do I even need to mention that PIF is led by MBS?

It thus goes without saying that this nuclear pact stinks of nepotism and payoffs. The interest conflicts are glaring and multitudinous. You think that when there are billions of dollars of family money at stake, the extended Trump family is going to worry about inspections and keeping Saudi Arabia from developing nukes when that’s already their stated goal?

This is how graft and corruption puts the world at risk. It extends far beyond personal accountability. The only thing keeping the kingdom from enriching its own nuclear fuel to create weapons is its own assurances.

Are we really supposed to trust the Saudi energy ministry’s promises of “cooperation on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy”? It carries roughly as much credibility as anything Trump himself says, which is basically zero.

Again, as with everything this crooked administration does, it all comes down to cold hard cash. We hear that Trump and his family already have enriched themselves to the tune of several billion bucks, and I think that’s a ridiculously conservative estimate. In fact, I believe that by the time his presidency has mercifully run its course, his profit will be in the tens of billions.

Considering how clearly we understand that Trump cares solely about himself, he’s got to be thinking, “I’m 80. Why should I concern myself with future nuclear bombs? I’ll be dead already, so it doesn’t matter to me if the world blows itself up a million times over.”

That’s what should really terrify us all.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

Just when we think Donald Trump has exhausted the ways a person can transform the presidency into an ongoing fundraising scheme, we’re given fresh new evidence that he’s barely scratched the surface.

I swear I thought I was hallucinating when I read last weekend that Trump’s social media company had put out word that it was pitching a premium “Trump API” service to Wall Street traders and investment firms that would charge them a subscription fee of as much as $100,000 per month to provide faster access to the president’s Truth Social posts. There was also the mention of a bargain-basement discounted plan of $60,000 a month for firms that signed up for a three-year plan.

What exactly does “faster access” mean? In this case, potentially delivering posts mere seconds before standard push notifications, allowing hedge funds and trading firms to react instantly to statements that cause massive global market fluctuations.

In layman’s terms, this is essentially a service that legitimizes insider trading. A speed advantage of just a few milliseconds for high-frequency trading firms can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in gains on a single big trade. It effectively acknowledges that Trump’s posts are strictly designed to be stock market boosters.

Do we need any more evidence that this guy is running the Wall Street equivalent of a numbers racket out of the White House? There isn’t even an attempt to disguise it or cover it up.

At least organized criminals have the decency to hide their duplicity. Not so Trump and company. They’re operating like a gang with complete immunity, possibly because they are.

For now. That immunity gifted by the Supreme Court only covers official acts. And if the Democrats deliver a midterm sweep — well, Trump is no doubt already swearing about what will happen.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts – the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee – didn’t mince words when she called this “an egregious scheme to profit off the presidency and enrich Wall Street while doing nothing to help Americans.”

Echoed Donald Sherman, president of the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens and Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: “It’s wildly unethical.”

Ethics. Ha! They’re so 2012. This is a president who hasn’t the thinnest understanding of them and isn’t interested. Holding the highest office in the land is about personal enrichment for himself, for his children, for the billionaire class. Anything else he does that benefits actual Americans happens entirely by accident.

You are already no doubt aware that Trump’s 2025 financial disclosures reported more than 21,000 financial transactions and stock trades before he added another 3,600-3,700 trades during the first quarter of 2026.

CNN found that within this data, Trump and his financial associates made at least 44 stock purchases across 21 different companies, which posting, days prior, positive and complimentary Truth Social messages about those firms.

In one example, Trump invested between $200,000 and $500,000 in Nvidia on April 15. Days later, he promoted the chipmaker’s plans to build AI supercomputers in the United States. In that same post, he vowed to expedite all necessary permits for Nvidia and similar firms.

This is what is called literally signing your name to your corruption and daring anyone to raise a stink. Emoluments Clause? What Emoluments Clause? This president is so busy lining his pockets that you wonder how he has any time left to even pretend to run the country. Oh yeah, he doesn’t.

And yet part of the deceit practiced by this crooked bunch is that they occasionally act as if any genuine lawbreaking in their midst has offended their fragile sensibilities. Such was the case last week when it was discovered and reported by ABC News that Gabriel Perez, Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator, was alleged to have used his insider knowledge of speech content to take in more than $100,000 via bets on the prediction market Kalshi.

Evidently Kalshi became alarmed by suspicious activity on the “Mentions” market, where users can bet on whether specific words, phrases or topics will be uttered during a public speech.

In one of the rare instances when Trump didn’t immediately side with a person linked to him who is suspected of a criminal act, the president boldly tossed his teleprompter operator under the bus. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she spoke with her boss about it and that he called the betting “a disgrace” – making the immediate decision to put Perez on administrative leave.

Leavitt stressed that she was unaware of any other staffer who had made such trades. White House spokesman Davis Ingle added to ABC, “The White House has strict ethics guidelines that we expect all staffers and officials to follow.”

Hmmm. Interesting. Please do tell us more about these “strict ethics guidelines” and how they seem to apply so unevenly when you have a moment. Your head guy seems not to have received that particular memo.

The level of shamelessness and hypocrisy here is just off the charts. And the brazenness of scapegoating the working stiff who runs the prompter is beyond disgusting. Not to defend his behavior, but puh-leeze.

This administration apparently follows the lead provided by Richard Nixon when he told interviewer David Frost during their 1977 series of interviews, "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." This is what the staff of the current liars lineup at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW has been trained to believe, and they have all grown to become good little fascist automatons.

The truth is that these people thrive on the fraud they perpetrate and the angst they create in the minds of all who vehemently oppose their monstrous regime. Taking their marching orders from Trump, they wear the betrayal of their oath and their country like a badge of honor.

By feeding so voraciously at the trough of fiscal gluttony, they have lost sight of any sense of decency, morality, principal. Once again, this is pretty much a given when you follow the example of the worst human being America has ever produced – and it’s not even close.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

I watched the horror show that was Donald Trump’s address to his base Thursday night, the one not covered by ABC and NBC on their traditional over-the-air networks (the ones fewer and fewer people watch, anyway).

It was a predictably appalling display because it showed the depths to which the president will sink to rig the midterms and save his base of absolute power. Six years after the 2020 General Election, he still pretends he got screwed out of his rightful victory despite every court in the land finding his claim lacked even the thinnest degree of merit.

The math is pretty clear.

Trump lost to Joe Biden by seven million votes. Even if every one of the 280,000 noncitizens Trump says exist voted against him, that still leaves him roughly 6.72 million short. The picture he painted on Thursday of a grand conspiracy by China and The Deep State to steal the 2020 Election was pretty much the same mumbo-jumbo, just with a perplexingly bizarre foreign twist.

None of the supposed evidence of his getting screwed that was released after his speech changes a thing. Everyone knows it, Trump included. It’s just a game he’s playing to build a leverage case going forward. That, at the end of the day, is what all of this gratuitous grievance is about.

There were two especially frightful undercurrents to the speech that need be pointed out, one right there on the surface and the other strategically hidden.

The first was the utter conviction with which Trump spoke in his barrage of bogus babble. This is perhaps the secret of his support from the MAGA base. His shamelessness comes across to the sane as the speechifying equivalent of a Cyclospora infection. But to his people, he is the pied piper.

There is never any actual evidence. Trump relies on bold assertions and unwavering confidence to mask the absence of facts. Leave it to a raging sociopath who is expert at sounding like he believes his own bull to connect with the stupid, the brainwashed, the vulnerable. He spews it loudly and repeatedly, and somehow that’s taken by them as indisputable.

But beyond that is the second and more disturbing aspect to the speech: Trump’s motivation for doing it in the first place. It had nothing to do with actual safety and security concerns in our voting; it’s about what he will do to stay in power. The answer is anything and everything, including eroding confidence in the legitimacy of our elections and destroying the system itself.

In short, Thursday’s speech was a declaration of war on the midterms. Trump knows the polls are showing a Republican bloodbath in the House at the very least and possibly even a loss in the Senate. So, his address was solely about establishing a pretext to dispute and potentially overturn otherwise free and fair elections.

He knows at this point that he probably isn’t going to get his voter-suppressing SAVE America Act passed. If his party tanks the midterms, there’s a chance he gets impeached a third time. And there’s a fresh look at his involvement in the Epstein Files. And all of his stock and crypto deals are suddenly closely examined under a microscope.

Plus, we see how the man reacts to losing. He can’t handle it. He will deny., deny, deny, then deny some more – shifting blame to those who would wish him ill. He has no understanding of, nor appetite for, accepting a loss with grace and humility and moving on.

So we have determined that there is nothing Trump is above to keep his presidential gravy train running. The speculation is all pretty much out there but bears repeating, since democracy itself is about to face its sternest test in many a generation.

His trying to cancel the midterms outright is one option, of course. But I doubt Trump could get away with it even from those in his own party. I don’t see how he could manufacture a national emergency serious enough to easily justify it. Plus, what would canceling them mean? Would America be OK with never having the elections at all? It seems like an implausibility.

Of greater concern is sending in the ICE brigade to generate enough chaos to throw the elections into the courts. Also, claiming nonexistent Chinese interference, Trump could order the Department of Homeland Security to seize ballot boxes to account for the supposed massive fraud that his Thursday speech already outlined.

Along those same lines, Trump might also challenge the voting procedures enough to litigate the thing into oblivion, so it holds up the certification of the midterm races for months and freshly minted senators and representatives are unable to be seated in Congress. Meanwhile, the Republican majority in both houses continues forth.

There is also the looming possibility of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers being dispatched to blue states to protest and wreak havoc, January 6 style. This time, it could be a hundred times worse.

Don’t expect the courts to save us. If we have learned nothing else over the past year and a half, it’s that the president will stop at nothing to get what he wants and no entity has the will and authority to obstruct him. And if the whole thing winds up in the Supreme Court, all bets are off, as we know. There is very little evidence of that corrupt body doing the right thing.

The overwhelming expectation is that something is going to happen. But I’m choosing not to be a hopeless pessimist. My thought is that while it’s hardly a sure thing, the system will hold and Trump won’t succeed. For one thing, we’re more than onto him. There will be no surprises this time.

I have to believe we can ultimately triumph over an 80-year-old mentally ill criminal. But it won’t be easy.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

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.)

It’s taken me more than a decade, but I think I’ve finally figured Donald Trump out.

Basically, whatever Trump says publicly, I’ve taken to assume the precise opposite is true. He says the war in Iran is going well? I’ll know it’s going horribly. He claims to know nothing about the proposed $1.776 billion slush fund? You can bet he plotted the whole thing out from scratch. He boasts that he’s been totally exonerated in the Epstein Files? You can assume he’s up to his eyeballs in guilt.

But in fact, this assumption means everything our president is involved in – and by extension the larger Republican Party – remains an uneasy, anxiety-riddled guessing game. As “The X-Files” once teased, “The truth is out there” – but good luck finding it.

This chronically unsettling point has been driven home to me this week as everyone sat vigil by Sen. Mitch McConnell’s virtual bedside wondering if he was really at death’s door as the rumor mill claimed. It wasn’t that this was at all difficult to believe, of course. The Kentucky senator’s decline had hardly been a well-kept secret, including his freezes during press conferences and concerns over consistent falls.

But it’s wrenching, if not particularly surprising, to learn that not even death can escape politicization in the 21st century. No one trusts the official narrative about McConnell’s condition because there isn’t one. So, media speculation and intense distrust naturally take hold.

And of course, it’s hardly limited to McConnell. Our president shows blotchy skin and bruised hands and a propensity to fall asleep during both public and private events, and we’re condemned for daring to question the party line that he’s in perfect health.

It’s also not restricted to the Republicans. Joe Biden’s declining mental acuity was studiously covered up two years ago, you may recall, until it all spilled out in one presidential debate.

The bottom line is that it’s perfectly understandable to imagine that we don’t really know anything and we’re always being played in one form or another. Is it any wonder we have a professional con artist in charge of things? Trump oversees an administration that’s first and foremost a self-enriching criminal enterprise, and a disturbing percentage of the American people defend it as normal and righteous.

We all believe what we want to believe at the end of the day. But during the nightmarish years when Trump has been at the forefront of our consciousness, we are consistently presented a distorted image of reality that leaves us questioning our own sanity.

In the process, the standards of behavior we consider acceptable have continued to plummet. How else to explain the choice of Graham Platner as the best the Democrats could put up as a senatorial candidate in Maine? Even before the latest sexual assault allegations that finally drove a fatal nail through his campaign, he managed to explain away a past of PTSD, alcoholism, and issues with women that at the very least rose to the level of disturbing.

Oh, and a chest tattoo that Platner claimed not to have known was a Nazi symbol.

I’m not saying people don’t deserve a second chance. But those who supported this guy had to look past enough baggage to fill a cargo hold. We still probably don’t know half of Platner’s issues because, again, we are now a society that thrives on murkiness, exclusion, deception – and keeping facts hidden from the light.

We are a culture that once seemed to value truthfulness but now favors…well, let’s just say a curated version of reality that keeps anyone who’s paying attention from believing they’re ever seeing a genuine picture.

I get that virtually every major institution has incentives to manage its image. Governments work to project competence and stability – at least, they did until this one, which favors chaos and discomfort to achieve its goals. Corporations, universities, nonprofits, sports leagues and media organizations all have reputational interests that generally supersede authenticity. This doesn’t automatically mean they’re fabricating reality, but it does mean they’re rarely neutral parties.

Second, we’ve become much more aware of every group’s self-serving incentives and image management. A generation ago, most people consumed information from a handful of newspapers and TV broadcasts. Today, we also see leaked emails, internal memos, whistleblower accounts, court filings, body-camera footage, FOIA releases, social media posts and the occasional journalistic investigation.

The public gets to peer behind the curtain and sample the dirt, but from such bits and pieces a consensus rarely emerges. More often, it just creates greater apprehension and confusion.

That’s part of the irony. What seems like greater transparency is merely an illusion and actually makes the daily turmoil feel less transparent because we keep discovering that the official story was incomplete, if not totally misleading.

Another issue is the way today’s information rewards certainty more than nuance. News organizations like the one I write columns for compete for attention. Politicians compete for votes. Social media rewards compelling narratives. Complex realities are often compressed into stories that are easier to communicate but don’t fully capture what’s going on.

It’s not necessarily a matter of everything being fake or orchestrated. Reality is often less conspiratorial and more mundane, and routine doesn’t generate clicks. Thus, it’s no surprise that sensationalism has taken to eclipsing strict accuracy.

Artificial Intelligence hasn’t helped. Twenty years ago, a photograph or video carried a strong presumption of legitimacy. That’s no longer the case. The questions now come like machine-gun fire:

• Was this generated by AI or Photoshop?
• Was it selectively edited?
• Is it missing context?
• Is the source trustworthy?

This is a significant shift from the past, because it means seeing is no longer automatically believing. In fact, often the opposite is true. AI doesn’t just increase the amount of false content. It also undermines confidence in true content.

But taken as a whole, the crime is that we’ve been conditioned to no longer believe that which once seemed beyond question. And it’s this death of everyday trust that’s most unnerving of all.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

My name is Ray, and I’m still an Amazon user.

Whenever I need anything, I automatically order it on Amazon Prime and it’s magically at my doorstep the next day. Or within a few hours. Sometimes, it arrives so quickly I swear they’re reading my mind and that I only thought about ordering it.

I’m so lazy that if I need a roll of aluminum foil or a couple of AA batteries, I just go on Amazon and order it because – click-click – it’s done in less than 60 seconds. No driving to the store or even walking to the corner. Amazon has turned me into an immobile sloth.

And I don’t feel all that good about it.

This naturally wasn’t the case when Amazon chief Jeff Bezos was still regularly facing down Donald Trump. During Trump’s first administration, he was one of the scant few open billionaire resistors we had fighting for the good guys.

The two frequently butted heads. Trump often called him “Bozo,” one of those school-yard nicknames he reserves for those of which he’s most jealous. He accused Amazon of avoiding taxes — usually a sign of intellect in Trump’s eyes — and exploiting the U.S. Postal Service. Trump also mercilessly attacked The Washington Post, which Bezos purchased in 2013, claiming it was unfairly hostile to his administration.

Of course he did.

Bezos also believed it was political pressure that contributed to his loss of a major Pentagon cloud-computing contract, though the government naturally denied any interference.

Of course it did.

During that first administration, Bezos and Trump rarely appeared together and publicly represented opposing poles of American political and business culture. There was even a moment in 2017 when the president reportedly asked Anthony Scaramucci, a.k.a. The Mooch, then an aide, “Can we break up Amazon?”

But as the 2024 presidential campaign wound down, Bezos suddenly and without warning hedged his bets. He blocked the Post from endorsing a presidential candidate so as not to anger Trump, wreaking havoc among the paper’s staff and driving hundreds of thousands of subscribers to cancel.

Then, following Trump’s 2024 victory, the change in approach really shifted into overdrive. Bezos radically swung from quiet defiance to enthusiastic — even joyous — compliance and support for everything the administration stood for. It began with his giving Trump very public congratulations on the victory, contributing $1 million to his 2025 Inauguration and sitting with all his fellow tech oligarchs in the front row.

From there, the Bezos outreach to regularly kiss Trump’s derriere has continued to ramp up. Bezos contributed substantially to the ballroom/bunker fund. The two men have reportedly had multiple private dinners together, and Bezos and his socialite wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos have broken bread with the Trumps on multiple occasions, even dining together privately in the former Rose Garden.

Fast forward to the present. The Wall Street Journal reports that when Trump spoke to the elite Alfalfa Club earlier this year in a rambling 45-minute outburst of meanness and rage, Bezos sat right up front, laughing uproariously. Trump has told advisors he is going to do everything in his power to make sure Bezos’ Blue Origin space company reaches the moon and is fast-tracking its contracts.

Indeed, those contracts are swiftly in motion, as reported in The Journal. Blue Origin has won major NASA and Defense Department deals worth billions. And the mission of The Post is no longer to hold Trump and his corrupt cronies to account but to take an approach of laying off and allowing the shadiness to move forth unimpeded.

You think when the owner of The Post is seen guffawing in the front row of a Trump speech and raking in billions in contracts, that newspaper is going to push to uncover the abundant dirt that makes this the most crooked administration in American history? Not bloody likely, boys and girls.

Oh yeah, and how could I almost forget about the Melania documentary that was funded by Amazon MGM Studios (owned by Bezos) to the tune of $75 million for the licensing rights, production and marketing-promotion for a 2025 doc on the First Lady’s gilded existence? Bezos claimed he wasn’t personally involved in the acquisition decision. Right. And no doubt the fact that she happens to be the president’s wife was completely coincidental.

Bezos has naturally denied that anything he is doing smacks of quid pro quo when it comes to his newest buddy. But it’s crystal clear the man is courting Trump’s adoration, even though he’s actually worth enough (at more than $250 billion) to buy Trump at least 50 times over. He’s seen where his bread is buttered, and he’s very busily buttering it, the grave hit to his morals and ethics notwithstanding.

In a word, Bezos is a sellout, and a contemptuous one at that. There is not a single question about it. Consequently, he should peddle The Post to someone who would return it to something resembling editorial relevance.

The fact that the preeminent paper in the nation’s capital remains constrained by its boss’ coddling of a tyrant is yet another nasty side effect of the country’s Trumpified fever dream. It’s resulted in significant changes to its opinion section and its greater emphasis on viewpoints centered on free markets and individual liberties — just as Trump demands.

Bezos has gone so far as to praise Trump as presently “more disciplined and mature” than during his first administration — an observation that is flat-out unfathomable.

This brings me back to my own battle with Amazonian guilt. No one is holding a gun to my head to buy my boxer briefs and iced tea from Amazon, and yet I do. It’s all about the convenience. That’s what keeps a company that’s no more than a glorified middleman at the top of consumer commerce.

How do I reconcile this? I struggle to convince myself that using a service isn’t an endorsement of its business practices or political opportunism, but I’m not sure even I believe it.

I also try to square it in my head that perfection is unattainable and that nearly every large corporation has executives, investors, lobbyists and business relationships that I’d find objectionable, though I easily find a way to avoid frequenting places like Chick-fil-A that I know fund the Republican cause.

Would shunning Amazon, as my wife does, make me feel like I’m living more consistently with my values? Or would it just make my life harder without accomplishing much?

These are the billion-dollar questions I am yet to definitively answer.

In the meantime, I feel a bit like a fraud.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

The language of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution could not be plainer when it comes to birthright citizenship. It says that if you were born or naturalized here, you’re a citizen. Period. End of story.

There is no debate.

And yet, there was.

This is settled law. To pretend otherwise is to play into the hands of this tyrannical administration and complicit Supreme Court. The idea that the breakdown of the vote upholding birthright citizenship was just 6-3 – and really 5-4, considering that Justice Brett Kavanaugh voted with the majority to strike down Trump’s executive order but disagreed on Constitutional grounds – should chill us to the bone.

It should have been 9-0.

It's madness that the highest court in the land is making believe this is a real debate, and the fact we skated through this time with this foundational right protected should give us more than pause. It serves as a warning that nothing is sacred, and it could well be different next time. Because trust me, there will be a next time – possibly sooner than we think.

I’ll take the win. But my god, what in living hell is wrong with Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito (who strikes me as the unhappiest man on earth) and Neil Gorsuch? Why are they so determined to carry Trump’s water and do his bidding? Why do they so hate Black and brown people, and why do they see it as their mission to overturn the Constitution to serve their racist agendas and fulfill the president’s white supremacist aspirations?

Thomas’ dissent was 91 pages, nearly four times the length of Chief Justice John Roberts’ 26-page majority opinion. Roberts said, “Under the Constitution, they are citizens at birth.” Exactly. It didn’t require 26 pages. It didn’t even merit 26 words. Eight was enough.

Thomas wrote in his dissent, “The Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks (following the Civil War) but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.”

What a complete load of crap.

Of course, Trump wasn’t going to just blithely accept it, either. The man utterly lacks the ability to take a loss graciously, as we are only too aware. Shortly after the decision was announced, he took to Truth Social to basically promise to push for Congressional legislation and render moot this whole “long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment.”

That’s right, the Constitution is so 1898. It’s now 2026. What are we doing following a document that’s generations out of date? Certainly, Trump has no use for it. Heck, he doesn’t have any use for the judiciary, either.

It isn’t as if Trump is following any principles in his willy-nilly smash-and-grab on immigration. Imprisoning people by the thousands in barbaric detention centers hardly shows any respect for the rule of law, much less morality and decency.

I doubt Trump views Tuesday’s ruling on birthright citizenship as anything more than a minor inconvenience to be skirted, much as he sees Monday’s ruling on states being able to count late-arriving election ballots as much more than a suggestion.

In fact, let’s take a deeper dive into how the idea of stopping the counting of late-arriving mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day wound up at the Supreme Court in the first place. The Republican National Committee challenged it, as if the very idea of continuing to count ballots inferred fraud.

Everyone knows the elections in the United States are fair, with almost zero non-citizens voting. No election to date has been compromised by unfair practices. The only one attempting to cheat/rig/scam/game the system is Trump. That’s what the SAVE Act is all about.

You already understand all of this, of course – and that’s really the point. There is no doubt that, for instance, the 2020 Election was anything but a straight-up vote. But Republicans play a game of Let’s Pretend because their master demands it. And the Supreme Court lends credence to it by the simple act of taking up a ridiculous non-issue like late-arriving ballots.

Trump has never bothered to explain how cheating occurs with mail-in ballots, much less late-arriving ones, mostly because there is no explanation. There are no extra ballots floating around. They are only sent to registered voters. If ballots are not properly executed or they appear to have been tampered with, they’re summarily tossed out. Evidence would require a legitimate question where none exists.

But of course, there is never anything to back up Trump’s blather. Why does the high court bother granting it validity? My guess is it knows this lawless administration could at any moment ignore its power and rulings and go fully rogue – which, if we’re being honest, looks as if it may happen anyway.

I’m guessing Trump will figure out a way to pack the Postal Regulatory Commission to do his bidding on mail-in ballots, SAVE Act or no SAVE Act. In the face of resistance, he just does whatever he wants, and what he wants in this case is to force everyone who votes to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship and ban mail-in voting, particularly in blue states.

How can Trump skirt the law to do it? Watch him. He figures out a way. My hope is, of course, that no matter what kind of bull he tries to pull off, it won’t work. Republicans vote by mail, too – as does he – and hanging their midterm hopes on suppressing the vote is just as likely to backfire this time.

A larger question may be what Trump will do once he loses in November. It could be another January 6-style insurrection, but bigger. This time, he’s got his Proud Boys/Oath Keepers/Three Percenters militia to call upon to counter the results of a free and fair election in an even more organized way.

I can see it now: Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch donning their robes, defiantly raising their gavels and leading the charge of the ICE brigade. They fear not, as they know the anarchic king they created will pardon them.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

Either I have firsthand evidence that the Republicans are barking up the wrong trees in their desperation to raise midterm funds, or I’m being trolled by them – or both.

This started about a week ago when I received the strangest and most hilarious email from none other than JD Vance, who has been identified in some circles as the Vice President of the United States – crazy as that seems. It was addressed to “Ray Liberalitus,” which I’m imagining has to be a purposeful misspelled slur on my proud liberalism (“Liberalitis”?).

If it was a laughable attempt to p--- me off, it didn’t work.

How I landed on this bogus list of potential financial contributors is quite the mystery. All I know is the Veep invited me personally – or at least “Ray Liberalitus” – to take a Vice Presidential Survey that included the following observation: “From day one of my career, it’s been an honor to have you on my team. You’ve stood by me from day one – when I count my blessings, you are high on my list.”

Let me just say, if I’m as good as it gets for this dude in terms of “blessings,” he probably doesn’t have many. Also, inserting “day one” twice in the same sentence shows pathetically lazy writing skills.

And man has this dude been getting some dreadful intel. His fundraising research seems to be roughly as solid as his peace negotiation skills. I mean, if they’re so hard up for cash that they’re turning to Ray Liberalitus, things must be looking mighty grim over there in Republicanland.

Of course, again, they could simply be trolling me – in which case I’d have been honored.

In any event, I’d dismissed this as a one-off and figured Ray Liberalitus would never hear from them again. But I was mistaken.

Come early Friday morning, evidently because they hadn’t heard back from me, they began moving in the heavy artillery.

The person credited with sending this second email was one Donald J. Trump. The subject line: “I want you on my team!” Since it included an exclamation point, I knew this guy claiming to be the “president” meant business.

I carefully opened the email to find the all-caps message, “PRESIDENT TRUMP: I NEED YOU!” Again with the exclamation point. And consistent with the previous email from his VP, it somehow understood my name to be Ray Liberalitus.

“Ray Liberalitus,” the bizarre plea began. “We’re in the middle of the most important midterm election of our lifetime.” So far, so good. I was onboard. But then came the next sentence, which I simply couldn’t abide: “And if we’re going to make it TOO BIG TO RIG (all caps and bold and in red), then I’m going to need thousands of TRUMP-LOVING Patriots like you to make a small sacrifice of your time.”

Damn. How would I tell him that: A. I’m TRUMP-HATING; and B. My time is far too precious to help him fuel this particular authoritarian adventure? I knew Trump was going to be heartbroken and instinctively understood I’d need the proper venue to let him down gently. I decided this column would have to do.

But wait, there was more – and it was all in bold:

“I’m calling on you, a TRUE MAGA WARRIOR, to join MY MAGA MAJORITY FORCE and STAND with our Party in the fight to SECURE THE VOTE.”

I instantly saw that this push came directly from Fearless Leader. Who else would rubber-stamp such a fractured textual mix of caps and lower case? The utter lack of consistency is signature. I suddenly felt like he was speaking directly to me – or should I say, DIRECTLY TO Me.

It continued, “Radical Leftists know they can’t win in November if you’re on my team, Ray Liberalitus.” I have absolutely no doubt this is accurate. Unfortunately, the theory is destined to be put to the test, since I am in fact one of those very same Radical Leftists to which he refers and I won’t be within 10,000 miles of his team. Or at least, Ray Liberalitus won’t be. He does whatever I tell him.

But I digress.

Continuing: “They’ll do anything to keep our America FIRST movement from keeping our Congressional majorities. But I know you’d NEVER let that happen.”

Oh, but it seems the president has greatly misjudged me. Not only would I let it happen, I’ll be part of the team heading up the resistance to assure it. I’m rather shocked that a man of Trump’s superior intuition and wisdom could so misinterpret Ray Liberalitus’ motives, but there you are.

“With you by my side on the MAGA Majority Force, we will finish the job of saving our country once and for all,” the pitch went on. It mercifully concluded, “I’ll be checking back for YOUR NAME on the roster, Ray Liberalitus. Join my team TODAY.”

I’m afraid the president will be waiting an awfully long time to see that “Liberalitus” handle on his side.

The page also featured a “JOIN TRUMP’S MAGA MAJORITY FORCE” link that takes you to a spot to volunteer for the campaign or poll watch, or extend the privilege of tossing money in the trash, er, I mean, into his slimy coffers.

As I was writing this, yet another email showed up with a return address of rnchq.com (for Republican National Committee headquarters) from VP Vance again, as if Ray Liberalitus was bought and sold on Team MAGA. It’s an enigma, all right. To my knowledge, I have never contributed a penny to these people or registered for anything involving them, so it must be a matter of screwing with me, possibly because I contribute to Raw Story.

Whatever the reason, I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure Ray Liberalitus infiltrates the ranks of these amoral bastards. The idiots who created him seem to think he’s already one of them. Maybe there’s value in his pretending to be a TRUE MAGA WARRIOR after all.

Yes, two can play this trolling game. Let’s get it on, suckers.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

I am hearing terrible things about Raw Story. Just terrible. People are telling me — very smart people, the smartest people — that some of you are not giving this column your complete and undivided attention. That’s bad. Very, very bad. Frankly, it’s a disgrace.

You think I don’t notice? You think I can’t tell when you’re skimming? When you’re reading every third paragraph? I notice everything, believe me. When you keep checking your phone while I’m in the middle of making an absolutely tremendous point, not good. Wrong. It makes me very upset.

You think I don’t see it? You think I don’t know when you’re not absorbing the words completely? I know it, and for anyone caught doing it, I’m considering sanctions. Nothing major at first. Maybe your television remote only works when you’re standing up. Maybe every shopping cart you touch develops an annoying, mysterious wobble. Maybe all your socks slowly rotate inside your shoes throughout the day.

You laugh. That’s why you’re a loser. You’re all losers.

There’s talk that you should be investigated. Everyone is saying it. It has nothing to do with me. You should face consequences because it’s treasonous. When you criticize what I write, it’s always fake news.

Don’t you dare stop reading this now. Close it and there will be consequences. You’re low IQ. You’re weak. If I sued you, you wouldn’t have the stomach for it and you’d run like a coward.

Now I remember what this is all about. My memory is better than anyone my age. All the doctors are telling me, and they can’t believe it. They say, “Sir, how is it that you have the memory of a 20-year-old? It’s simply not possible.” And I tell them my brain is much bigger than average. That’s probably why.

I know that if I write “Pizza. Suitcase. Popsicle. Hyena” here right now, I’ll remember what it is by the end of this column and in that exact order. I’m brilliant that way.

Where was I? Oh yeah. If this column does not receive the attention it deserves, I’m prepared to take drastic action. I will authorize a 300 percent tariff on browsers. Every time your eyes jump ahead to the next paragraph before finishing the current one, you’ll owe an additional paragraph of mandatory reading.

People are saying it’s fair.

And don’t even think about skipping to the end. We know who you are. The analytics know. The internet knows. Don’t make me recruit better readers from other columns. Don’t test me. I’ll do it.

OK. Now let’s talk about Iran. Stupid country. We should have obliterated them when we had the chance. Actually, wait, we did obliterate them and wiped their civilization off the face of the earth, but they survived somehow. And what kind of gratitude do they show? They close the Strait of Hormuz to all traffic. So terrible.

If they don’t agree to rip up the Memorandum of Understanding (I call it the MOU) and agree to better terms, we may just have to obliterate them again. It would be very sad, but that’s how regime change works. You go from one idiot regime to another.

It’s kind of how it is with the Dumocrats. The Radical Left Lunatics are determined to destroy this country by paying their taxes, helping the people who need help most, and being decent to one another. Quite frankly, it makes me sick to my stomach. This is why the Enemy From Within poses the greatest THREAT to America and Americans. They are SCUM, and by SCUM I mean a Strategic Coalition for Unlimited Mhorribleness.

These thugs are all Communists, Marxists and Fascists, sick people who want to see the country succeed on their own terms. It’s disgusting. They are traitors practicing seditious behavior who must be stopped. Only unconditional surrender will be acceptable.

For the next several hundred words, I would like to explain why what you are reading now is the greatest column ever written in the history of columns. Bigger than Hemingway. Bigger than Twain. Bigger than the Magna Carta, which many people now agree was basically an early draft of one of my social media posts.

I’d also like to talk about the upcoming 250th anniversary of our country. I call it the Semiquincentennial. That’s a word that I made up and no one has ever spelled correctly until now. It marks 250 years since the signing of the Gettysburg Address. You can look it up.

It is my Great Honor to discuss it, about the rockets’ red glare and the bombs bursting in hair. And about the Failing New York Times. They never acknowledge my brilliance. They would rather talk about my poll numbers, which are, of course, rigged, like the 2020 Election. Don’t worry, we’ll be fixing that soon, and this column is the start of that movement.

Stay with me here. Daydreaming is not allowed! Beginning immediately, anyone who daydreams while reading this column risks being placed on a watch list. Not a government watch list. Worse. A disappointment watch list.

Every morning, you’ll receive an email that simply says, “We expected more.”

If readers would just give these paragraphs their full attention, none of this would be necessary. But some people insist on testing me. Let this be a warning: disrespect will not be tolerated. I will personally make your computer stop working. And trust me that I can do it. I can do anything I want. There are no limits to my literary power.

Now, let’s see if I can remember the five elements of my memory test sequence from earlier in the column. Here they are: “Cheeseburger. Diet Coke. Hypertension. Stroke. Funeral.”

There you go. Perfect. Like always.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

The headlines out of the Supreme Court came at us in waves Thursday morning, like a barrage of punches to the gut:

• Supreme Court Allows Trump to Block Asylum Seekers at Border
• Supreme Court Allows Trump to End Deportation Protections for Haitians and Syrians
• Supreme Court Strikes Down Hawaii Gun Restriction Limiting When, Where People Can Carry Firearms
• Supreme Court Overturns Jury Award to Missouri Man Who Contracted Cancer Through Use of Weedkiller Roundup

I wondered when the next headline might be, “Supreme Court Approves Name Change of United States to Trump States of America, because the country is entirely his now. The court majority has kowtowed entirely to a madman, transforming us into a nation not of immigrants but white Christian fascists determined to obliterate everything this country once stood for.

In one fell swoop, this corrupt Supreme Court made it extraordinarily difficult for immigrants to seek refuge on our shores; for foreign nationals who have fled to America due to war and natural disasters to remain here; for sane people to feel safe from crazy people with guns in public spaces; and for those who have been granted a death sentence through use of an herbicide to receive any financial relief for themselves and their families.

It's really kind of amazing how one purportedly intelligent group of lawmakers can get everything so wrong. But of course, it’s hardly an accident. It’s the Supreme Court majority’s agenda to deliver everything our lawless president seeks on a silver platter, in the process destroying decades, even centuries, of precedent and/or established law.

In blocking asylum seekers huddled at the border in particular, the court ruled to effectively abandon the desperate pursuing better lives, or even continued existence, period. It inspired Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, to invoke the memory of the voyage of the MS St. Louis that in 1939 was carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution during the Holocaust – and yet was denied docking in Cuba and the United States. It fated most of them to death and remains one of the darkest chapters in our history.

Sotomayor reasoned that Thursday’s ruling turning away migrants seeking asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border strands them and dooms many, if not most, to a similar fate. And of course, she’s right.

Essentially, the court majority hung its argument on an infuriating technicality – essentially, that their physical presence on Mexican soil meant that the asylum seekers had not yet “arrived” in the United States. But of course, that’s really the whole point. They weren’t here yet. They urgently sought to change that status by being on the doorstep of comparative freedom in their application for refuge.

But now, that door is being cruelly slammed shut in the faces of noncitizens looking to do the right thing via the application process rather than trying to sneak in. The conservative majority, unmoved in their heartlessness, said migrants stranded at the border do not “arrive” by “attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country.”

The fact that these people face such severe violence and extortion in their attempt to enter America was immaterial to the argument.

You know what this means, don’t you? Essentially, the inscription on the Statue of Liberty no longer applies. Here’s what it was:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Now it’s more like:

“Give me your skilled, your vetted, your Christian.

Those who qualify under our restrictive laws

Seeking opportunity through lawful paths we determine.

The door will remain locked until further notice.”

Concurrent to this brutal and unconscionable decision was the second one that gave Trump the green light to end temporary deportation protections for as many as 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians in the U.S. legally on work authorization visas. They and other Temporary Protected Status foreign nationals will now have to seek some other form of safeguard from being bounced out.

The big question in all of this is, of course, why. Why have we become a nation that no longer welcomes the immigrant and, in fact, does everything in its power to torment and prosecute those who are simply seeking better lives for themselves and their families? What is the point of having transformed ourselves from the Land of Opportunity to a police state inside of a decade?

The one thing it has nothing to do with is stamping out crime. The stats show that both documented and undocumented immigrants are significantly less likely to commit violent, property, or drug offenses. To assert otherwise carries roughly the same credibility as claiming there’s significant voter fraud.

That means it’s all political. It serves the Republican cause to scare their voters into believing that the bad people from other countries are determined to hurt them and take their jobs and are mooching off a system they have no business sharing in.

Obviously, the Supreme Court has bought into this. But why? Why does it serve the MAGA morons and the upper reaches of the judiciary to want to keep the country flavorless and colorless and boring – determinedly English-speaking, Christian, uneducated.

And let’s say these people do want to come here seeking economic opportunity rather than protection from persecution. So what? Are they really going to drain and strain the system of a government that Republicans claim not to want any part of in the first place?

It’s just pure racism and hatred of “the other,” of course. And now it’s being validated by a Supreme Court majority twisting itself into a pretzel to attach their blatant discrimination to some kind of Constitutional standard.

Will the court go the extra mile and finally just do away with birthright citizenship altogether? It would shock many. But given the direction where this all seems to be heading, not me. How about you?

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)