Top Stories Daily Listen Now
RawStory
RawStory

529 million reasons Trump and his bloodthirsty Camelot of buffoons dragged us into war

Do you ever get the feeling we’re being played like an out-of-tune violin, every minute of each day?

Take this war in Iran and its first week of airstrikes. Our clueless president and his even more bloodthirsty and incompetent Secretary of “War” are offended that people keep asking what the conflict is about and why we launched it when they don’t seem to have the first clue themselves.

First, it was about stopping Iran from developing nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S.

Then it surrounded a need for “regime change,” that ridiculously benign euphemism used instead of “violent government overthrow,” which sounds so much messier.

Then it was just basically, “They’re an evil, repressive country that’s the greatest state sponsor of terrorism.”

Finally, it became, “We’re looking to bring liberation to Iranian citizens.”

As if.

The ever-changing series of justifications leaves me wondering what’s next. Maybe, “Israel was upset that Iran is positioned just in front of it alphabetically and sought help in bombing Iran until it agreed to change its name back to Persia.”

It’s clear these morons had no plan, other than, “Blow up a lot of stuff because explosions are cool!” It’s as if Beavis and Butthead are running U.S. intelligence. There is no plan for the Iranian people. Basically, the marching orders are to bombard and eventually depart, leaving mass destruction and abandonment behind.

Atta’ way to build global goodwill, America!

Of course, attempting to distract from the Epstein files has to be near the top of any list of actual unstated rationalizations for this disaster, which is why I’ve dubbed the campaign, supposedly Operation Epic Fury, “Operation Epstein Suppression.”

What’s really going on remains anyone’s guess. Whatever pops into Trump’s head becomes the defining rationale until the following minute/hour/day, when it becomes something else.

This is what happens when you elect a sociopathic toddler with ADHD.

Iran has supposedly been two weeks away from having enough enriched uranium to construct a nuke for the better part of four decades. It’s always what we hear.

But back to Trump, our delusional and witless leader, now permitted to make unilateral decisions like which country to invade without much blowback from the increasingly compliant media, much less any explanation to the American people.

So we’re clear: the Iran bombing occurred under the cover of darkness, on a weekend early morning, in flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution.

But wait! As I write, yet another justification slips through: the claim that Iran planned to preemptively strike American forces and therefore forced our hand.

Gimme another 15 minutes — that will likely be refuted.

Let’s put it on the record that if Trump really wanted to destroy Iran, he’d declare himself its president and take over for a couple of months. Much more effective than bombs.

We must also remember that Trump was, per his 2024 campaign, the “Start No Wars President.” Then when that evaporated, he was the “No Extended Wars President.” Then early this week came the inevitable New York Times headline: “Trump Foresees Extended War on Iran as U.S. Adds to Forces.”

So much for that.

Uncertainty. Lies. Chaos. Corruption. The hallmarks of this administration in peacetime, now one in a war that will likely drag on long enough to both divert attention from Epstein (at least for a while) and toss the midterms into turmoil. Like everyone has predicted all along.

(And wait, oh yes, it’s now been another 10 minutes, and it seems there was no confirmation of the Pentagon having feared a preemptive strike. Never mind.)

On Sunday, the Save America Movement pointed out the following: “There has never been a military action in which the men leading it (overseen by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) have had less moral stature and integrity than this lot.

“Together, they are the unfittest of the unfit. A Camelot of buffoons, warmongers, and liars. They are a team of losers and felons, pedophile protecters, fascists, weirdos, religious nutters, and weapons-grade hypocrites who are playing a deadly game with young Americans’ lives.”

Add to this the fear that Iran is now highly motivated to lash out on our turf, leaving us concerned about terror attacks on land, sea, or air. On that score, the worst news is that a massive swath of our domestic security personnel is now more concerned with busting day laborers in Home Depot parking lots than defending the homeland.

Priorities, people.

I’d like to close with yet another possible incentive for when and why this war with Iran was launched: money.

It surfaced on Monday that the gambling website Polymarket found $529 million traded on bets predicting the day when the U.S. and Israel would attack Iran. It turned out Feb. 28 was correct. Six newly created accounts made more than $1 million on that prediction. Note: Donald Trump Jr. sits on the Polymarket advisory board.

Additionally, it’s instructive to note that the countries clamoring for government overthrow in Iran are the same ones that have enriched members of the extended Trump family, via direct gifts and shady deals.

When the man running the country openly operates a criminal enterprise out of the White House, it’s hardly out of the realm of possibility that he might launch a war to enrich himself and those around him. In fact, it would be completely on brand.

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

How the GOP stopped Hillary exposing Epstein links — and more notes from a Trump resister

Notes from a resister:
  • The idea that lawmakers should have been deposing Bill and Hillary Clinton over the past few days is particularly ludicrous given how loudly, and absurdly, Donald Trump is claiming complete exoneration with regard to the Epstein Files despite having his fingerprints all over them. Hillary testified to the House Oversight Committee that she had no information for them and couldn’t recall meeting Jeffrey Epstein. Bill obviously met him. But what is it Republicans are fishing for? It feels like the Clintons are a step ahead of them, maybe two or three.
  • I think Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) leaked photos of Hillary in her closed-door deposition in order to shut down the charade and prevent her from speculating about things the Republicans didn’t want discussed — like, everything being hidden from view. Hillary argued that reporters should be let in to make the proceedings open and transparent: the two words those running the deposition feared most.
  • Meanwhile, the massive coverup of Trump’s involvement with Epstein — or more specifically, his alleged sexual assault of a young girl, per her accusation — continues apace. The files are suddenly missing several key records about the claim in question. This is puzzling only in that the disappearance of these documents has turned such a vivid spotlight upon them. It’s something you might do if you were purposely trying to, I don’t know, make the Department of Injustice look like it was hiding something.
  • Elsewhere, the unqualified bozo the administration is pushing to be the next U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Casey Means, doesn’t hold an active license to practice medicine and identifies as a “wellness influencer.” By that definition, anyone who recommends Ibuprofen for a headache is a wellness influencer — including me. Once again, Trump and Co insist on choosing the worst imaginable candidate for a once-respected position.
  • Why does Trump choose such imbeciles to be in charge of everything from medicine to law to the military? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was hellbent on destroying the country. Or to put it another way, I’d say he was doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding by purposefully demolishing our institutions.
  • One of the most annoying things regularly spouted by the MAGAsphere is, “Well, Obama deported a zillion people, and you didn’t care.” Actually, we didn’t know about it because Obama didn’t turn it into a national embarrassment. It was a necessary action, not a sadistic spectacle.
  • Oh, and another difference between Obama and Trump in the current Homeland Security/ICE horror show: the former president opened no detention camps. What is the point of these? One strong suspicion is that they’re designed to line the pockets of Trump’s billionaire cronies and provide kickbacks to the Trump Crime Family too.
  • I believe Trump is determined to launch strikes on Iran, no matter what talks designed to tamp down nuclear fears may produce. If the president claims to prefer diplomacy to war, I take that to mean the precise opposite is true.
  • The fallout from Trump’s State of the Union monstrosity continued throughout this week. The general consensus in my admittedly completely biased circle was that he appeared to be doing everything in his power to reduce Republican chances of winning the midterms.
  • In fact, I think Trump has long since given up on winning the House and Senate in November through playing by the rules and is putting all of his energy into the most effective ways to cheat.
  • I’m questioning if the resignation of Larry Summers — a Harvard University economist and a former school president — due to his past relationship with Epstein could also have been tied to the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the school and attempted extortion. Specifically, I wonder if Summers’ situation could help explain Harvard’s initial capitulation.
  • Every time I look at House Speaker Mike Johnson’s face, I’m reminded of the kid in middle school who regularly reminded our English teacher about the homework assignment — and who paid for this unforgivable transgression during recess.
  • Headline: “New A.C.A. Plans Could Increase Family Deductibles to $31,000.” Reaction: This is Dr. Mehmet Oz’s genius solution to the health care affordability crisis. Thanks, Doc.
  • The Democrats better figure out a way to pare down the number of Dems running for governor of California. The fact there are nine creates a perfect vote-splitting storm that could well end up with a pair of Republicans facing off in November. Having a Trump disciple running the nation’s most populous state would be disastrous.
  • I’ve never seen anyone with crazier eyes than FBI Director Kash Patel. If this were a sci-fi flick, they would fire beams that made heads explode.
  • Speaking of Patel and heads exploding, why is it OK that the man leading the nation’s foremost criminal investigatory agency openly drank and partied while in Italy on “official business”? Oh yeah, because he can do whatever he wants because the rule of law doesn’t apply to some.
  • Never has the phrase “Everything Trump touches dies” been truer than with the gold medal-winning USA Olympic men’s hockey team, who tumbled from conquering heroes to partisan morons within days after permitting themselves to become Trump’s eager pawns.
  • I loved James Carville’s expletive-laden and utterly disrespectful takedown of Trump in a Tuesday video, starting with telling the president he’s a “sorry sack of s—t.” It’s precisely the kind of crude and obnoxious attack Trump deserves.
  • All of the places and things currently being renamed to honor Trump will revert after he leaves office and certainly after his death. It will be just like in Germany after the fall of Hitler.
  • Don’t judge me, but I’m briefly feeling more optimistic. I’m sure it’ll pass.

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

There was a ghost at Trump's feast — it will be back to haunt him soon enough

Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech was pretty much exactly what we expected: one that depicted a nation utterly unlike the one we live in: where the economy is glowing with health, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants are going swimmingly, democracy is flourishing, everyone is ecstatic over our leadership, and respect from the international community stands at an all-time high.

This delusional picture was painted by the president over 107 torturous minutes, a wildly rambling explosion of syllables that claimed to describe “The Golden Age of America” but in fact flailed through lies, half-truths, exaggerations, and condemnations that bore little resemblance to reality.

It was a charade as shameless as the man himself, using war heroes, gold medal-winning Olympic athletes, and victims of immigrant crime as political props. It employed the most violent, gory imagery to describe incidents intended to emphasize the ongoing need for mass deportations but that made him sound like a bloodthirsty sadist.

Oh, and the Epstein Files? Never came up. Trump failed to acknowledge the survivors who were in the chamber. Shocker!

Trump claimed to have “inherited a nation in crisis” with a “stagnant economy” and a “wide open border” as well as “rampant crime,” but in a single year to have “achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before and a turnaround for the ages” and an “economy that is roaring like never before.”

In fact, the economy is in free fall and he has divided the country like never before while threatening to transform our democracy into a fascist state — largely succeeding in turning allies into our enemies and peaceful communities into strife-torn zones of fear and paranoia.

A few of the most cringeworthy moments:

  • “I will always protect Social Security and Medicare!” Trump declared. Oh yeah, except for that more than $1 trillion in catastrophic cuts to Medicaid and a ravaging of Social Security’s infrastructure.
  • “Stand up if you believe the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” Trump proclaimed. Most Democrats didn’t, giving Trump his midterm campaign photo op as he shook his head and scowled. “Liar! You killed Americans!” shouted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).
  • He claimed once again to have “ended eight wars” but stopped short of demanding the Nobel Peace Prize. A grateful nation sighed in silent relief.
  • Trump bragged about booting 2.4 million people off food stamps, as if helping people starve was a virtue.
  • As Trump dove into immigration, crime, alleged election insecurity, and gender-related issues, he motioned toward the stone-faced Democrats and went off-script. “These people are crazy!” he shouted. “Boy oh boy, we’re lucky we still have a country with people like this. Democrats are destroying our country, but we’ve stopped it just in the nick of time.” A clear case of projection.
  • He claimed his invisible policies would soon drive down high health-care costs somehow caused by Democrats, despite the elimination of Affordable Care Act subsidies in Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill and millions facing accelerating charges or being booted off their insurance entirely.
  • “Tariffs will replace income tax!” he declared, purportedly as a way to fund the federal government. This spoke to Trump’s habit of just saying whatever sounds good in the moment, even if it’s utterly insane.
  • There was his quick aside rejecting his loss in 2020 (you may have heard this before) by noting almost under his breath, “This should be my third term. Strange things happen.” Did this mean he could have gone against the Constitution and run for a third term had he won in 2020? Is his predicted refusal to ever leave office what he meant by “Strange things happen”? It's unclear, like much of what he babbles.
  • Trump is appointing Vice President J.D. Vance to head up a “war on fraud” task force. Speaking of putting the wolf in charge of the hen house.
  • “The cheating in our elections is rampant!” Trump screamed. “It’s rampant … They want to cheat. They have cheated. And their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat and we’re going to stop it.”

This was the same old BS. But it was also incredibly dangerous, continuing to push the idea that the only way the Democrats win is through fraud when in fact that’s the Republican plan, for the midterms and beyond. It serves to justify whatever Trump will do, from the SAVE Act to stationing ICE agents at the polls to working the courts to God knows what else.

The constant standing ovations from Republicans seemed especially prolonged, the “spontaneous” chants of “USA! USA!” particularly boorish and annoying.

As many voices on social media were quick to point out, this sounded more like a MAGA campaign rally than an address on how well, or not, the union was doing. Trump has only one gear. He doesn’t do unity or compassion or humility. It’s all about, “I’m amazing,” “I’ve done more and better than anyone,” and “These other guys are all scumbags and lunatics.”

But Trump’s bluster is destined to have the opposite effect of what he intends. The nearly two-thirds of the country that disapprove of his performance aren’t interested in a deceiver and a braggart. It will only infuriate the multitudes who know he’s feeding them a steady diet of horse manure.

A carefully choreographed sideshow like the one Trump centered on Tuesday may give him a small popularity bounce this week, but it won’t last. In fact, the blizzard of false claims is fated to backfire and send his numbers plummeting further.

Whether or not this even matters to him is unclear. But it should rightly scare the hell out of those Republicans facing elections in November.

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

This shock Epstein move means huge trouble for Trump. How he'll lash out is chilling

Everyone except me seems terrified that their name is going to turn up in the Epstein Files. And to be honest, even I’m a little nervous, given that Epstein was my mother’s maiden name.

But I’m honestly not all that preoccupied by the notion that all sorts of men and even women from all walks of life were on the periphery of Jeffrey Epstein’s life, either as part of his business ventures or as attendees at one of his parties or visitors to his island.

The truth is that knowing Epstein didn’t mean taking part in his crimes. But did it indicate that you knew he was trafficking and assaulting underage girls? Almost without question. Anyone who claims otherwise is probably lying to save their ass.

The arrest on Thursday of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – on his 66th birthday, no less – reminds us that justice delayed isn’t always justice denied. Potential crimes committed by those close to Epstein are being taken seriously on the other side of the pond, which is something that should serve notice to Republicans engaged in the current systemic coverup here, that their time dodging accountability is running out.

So many are now caught up in the Epstein web and facing fallout. Clearly, anyone even marginally associated with the man is suffering career or personal crises, or both. Such is the toxicity of having ever interacted with the Typhoid Mary of the 21st century.

Andrew denies wrongdoing. But since it’s inarguably true that the disgraced brother of the King of England is suspected of “misconduct in public office,” and that suspicion could well lead to a prosecution and conviction, we now have our Exhibit A that not even being a royal excludes you from criminal investigation.

No one named in those scandalous files is above reproach. If esteem and power don’t protect a former prince, they can’t shield a billionaire either.

Or a president.

Donald Trump has made a lot of claims about Epstein and how he ultimately found him to be a “creep” — a term no one under the age of 75 uses anymore.

But forget about the purported falling out, or why it actually occurred. Look to the years when Trump and Epstein were joined at the hip.

In a 2017 audio interview with the journalist Michael Wolff, Epstein claimed Trump was his “closest friend for ten years.” Epstein had no reason to lie. And you don’t hide your true nature from your best pal.

Remember that Trump told New York magazine in 2002, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Also, recall the birthday message artistically presented in the shape of a naked woman that Trump allegedly wrote for Epstein’s 2003 birthday album, closing with, “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.” It featured Trump’s signature in the spot where a woman’s pubic hair would be.

Trump sued the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion for reporting the letter. But this is a man, let’s not forget, who openly boasted of grabbing women by the genitalia, if using a far coarser term.

All of which is to point out that the odds of Trump having been a mere innocent, looking the other way while his closest friend criminally trafficked and violated girls, seem very close to zero.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. But to be real, everything this administration is doing to distract and deflect on the files just makes Trump look guiltier than anyone. He didn’t suddenly discover Epstein was a “creep.” He wasn’t appalled by the behavior of Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.

“I was Donald’s closest friend for ten years.”

Look at that line again. If it’s true, that would mean Trump doesn’t belong in the White House but the Big House. Again, not a novel observation. But as time moves along, his being shielded from scrutiny grows clearer by the day.

The latest collection of Epstein files showed records from 2019 of the FBI interviewing a woman who alleged Trump forced himself on her after Epstein introduced them in 1984. The girl was in her early teens at the time. That document was purged from the Department of “Justice” database. Poof. Gone. It reappeared later.

Everything Trump has done of late and will do going forward must be viewed as a wag-the-dog distraction, including the threat to attack Iran. Would he really launch a war to buy time and take everyone’s eyes off of the files? Bank on it.

As we saw this week, if Trump were Prime Minister of the U.K. instead of President of the U.S., more than likely all this evidence would have triggered an arrest. The more Trump boasts that he’s been fully exonerated, as he claimed again on Thursday, the more culpable he looks.

Here is another thing the files show Epstein said about his onetime best buddy: “I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump. Not one decent cell in his body.”

Sounds just like the kind of guy you’d want as your closest friend.

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

This Trump crank is less welcome — and way, way more dangerous — than a full colonoscopy

I got a colonoscopy the other day: something everyone who has one seems to complain about. They bitch about being required to drink the prep that cleans you out, then about having a tube up the nether regions, albeit while unconscious.

Quite frankly, I look forward to it. This is, after all, a medical marvel that can prevent cancer or catch it in the earliest stages. This time, I had a single benign polyp removed and was told to come back in seven years’ time.

Colonoscopy is a preventive measure every adult from middle-age onward should schedule at regular intervals, to stave off colon cancer. This is simple common sense and one of many reasons why we now live longer than ever before.

Think about this: in 1826, the average American adult could expect to live to about 38 years old. Yes, extremely high infant and child mortality was largely responsible for bringing that number down, along with rampant infectious disease and lack of sanitation. But in general, you often died pretty young.

By 1926, U.S. life expectancy had risen to roughly 58, a two-decade jump. A hundred years later, that number stands a few ticks above 78, another 20-year leap.

In other words, the average time each of us has on earth has effectively doubled over the past two centuries. All things considered, that’s not too shabby.

Enter Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Assuming the role last year, he saw not a human population doing pretty well, and a medical establishment making astonishing progress against maladies that once killed by the millions, but a toxic hellscape of death from which only he could save us.

Remember: this man has no medical background, no formal medical education, and no conventional medical expertise. His knowledge of medicine is no greater than yours or mine or that of any other layman. He’s a lawyer, specializing in environmental cases.

And yet he claims to know more than the medical and scientific establishments combined.

It’s frightening just how dangerous this guy is. His crackpot views in declaring war on vaccination have exploded into a genuine crisis, because he’s convinced a not-insignificant portion of the U.S. population that all vaccines are hazardous – considerably more perilous than the diseases they’re designed to prevent.

This is, in a word, insane. And it’s threatening us all.

Kennedy likes to believe that this is all about individual choice. In fact, it involves so much more. Misguided or irresponsible parents who listen to him and decide not to vaccinate their child may help spread a pathogen that can infect and kill other kids and adults — entire communities, even.

This makes RFK Jr. as great a menace to mankind as any we face in our actual environment. In working so diligently to fix a system that isn’t broken, he puts all our lives in danger.

Last week, Kennedy made headlines with his mind-boggling admission that he used to “snort cocaine off of toilet seats,” apparently seeking to make the point that he isn’t scared of germs and in fact sees them as his friends, key to strengthening the immune system.

That is all well and good, as are his ideas around nutritious diets, eliminating processed foods, and reducing contaminants. But then off he goes into nutzo land with things like “terrain theory” (focusing on body environment as a defense against infection) and eschewing established biomedical science and core principles as hopelessly flawed.

What RFK Jr. and those who follow his warped thinking fail to acknowledge is that America, and the world, was not too long ago caught in the grip of crippling and often deadly epidemics involving smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, and polio, events that spurred massive suffering and mortality.

Through vaccines, in tandem with antibiotics and other medical advances, we have largely defeated these sources of significant misery. Modern miracles of scientific know-how abound — vaccines very much to the fore. And yet a small but growing percentage of the population now sees them as unsafe.

I’ll tell you what’s unsafe: actually being stricken with these dreadful conditions, as those who must now endure measles as part of various outbreaks are finding.

In spring 2020, when we were all consumed with fear over COVID-19, I was one of some 40,000 people who volunteered for the Pfizer vaccine trial. Friends praised me as “courageous” but I didn’t see it that way. I felt fortunate to be jumping the line, secure in the idea that ingesting an unproven serum was likely safer than contracting the actual virus, which was killing by the thousands.

I didn’t get sick, the vaccine graduated to widespread use, and millions of lives were saved. Do you hear people quaking in fear over COVID anymore? No. The reason is the vaccines. Nonetheless, RFK Jr. seems determined to ultimately pull them off the market, as improperly tested and potentially harmful.

I know Kennedy has no use for data, but here’s some anyway. Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2020, the first full year of the pandemic, COVID claimed an estimated 350,800 U.S. lives. In 2021, that toll peaked at 416,900, the third-leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer.

By 2024, the last year for which statistics are fully available, the number of deaths from COVID had dropped to 31,400. That’s still significant, but the disease had fallen out of the top 10 U.S. causes of death.

You think that happens without a vaccine? Not a chance in hell.

The bottom line is, we don’t need vaccines to disappear. Quite the contrary. We need RFK Jr. to go away. Now.

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

This monstrous force is hurtling towards its final reckoning

An Open Letter to Donald J. Trump, a.k.a. The Man Who Won’t Be King.

Mr. Trump:

It’s just me, one of the many American citizens who suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Yes, that’s right, I suffer because you’re deranged, while the MAGA hordes supporting you pretend you’re actually human. Crazy, huh?

This letter is not an appeal but a testimony. It is not written with the expectation you will see it, or reflect on it. I know that’s not your thing. I craft it out of sheer disgust and a cathartic need to unload what’s been building inside me for a decade.

You are not simply a leader who has failed his country and the world. You’re a fraud who through a series of astonishing circumstances achieved faux-legitimacy and unprecedented power. You are a grave accident whose time in office history will record as a massive breakdown of our system of checks and balances.

History is not confused about figures like you, Mr. Trump. It will count the thousands of sins you’ve committed, the tens of millions you’ve harmed, the grinding cruelty you’ve demonstrated, the breathtaking indecency you’ve worn like a badge. And it will document it all indelibly.

You will not be remembered as a strongman but as the weakest of men. You will be recalled as someone who revealed how fragile norms become when ambition far outdistances character — and the volume of damage one person can cause when shame no longer applies.

You didn’t stumble into destroying democracy. You enthusiastically embraced it. You didn’t accidentally corrode public trust. You mined it, sold it, and called the wreckage “strength.”

You mistake fear for loyalty, truth for whatever flatters you, patriotism for praise. You demand respect while showing contempt for every person who opposes you and every institution that limits you.

You claim to respect “law and order” while making a mockery of both. At every moment that demands character, you’ve chosen theater, stagecraft, bullying. Everything you touch rots. Rather than preserve and protect what’s great about America, you’ve chosen at every turn to burn it down. And what you don’t incinerate, you cover in fake gold and name after yourself.

You have turned vengeance into the centerpiece of your administration, because it’s all you know how to do. You operate the highest office in the land as if it were the lowest, running it as a criminal enterprise. You dangle pardons like bribes and reduce justice to a personal service industry for the powerful and connected.

You have so blatantly normalized conflicts of interest that they no longer require concealment. Influence has grown transactional. Your financial benefit from the presidency has shredded centuries of precedent, and this leaves you prideful. Ethics, after all, have always been for suckers in your world.

You’ve treated government as a shield against responsibility and taught a generation that deceit is more than acceptable if performed brazenly enough. It’s always been about the grift with you.

Your sole asset is an uncanny ability to exploit and self-enrich. You charge everyone with corruption while bathing in it yourself. Your default is to lie about everything. You decry elites while living off their indulgence.

Your legacy will not be policy or achievement or advancement but malice, devastation, misery.

You have turned dissent into a criminal act punishable by persecution, sometimes arrest or even death. The deplorable way in which you have divided the country has left our future as a united republic in doubt. There has never been a more harmful force in the nation’s history. Your putrid stench infects every area of society.

The good news for the rest of us is that time is no longer on your side. Diet and age and inactivity are starting to catch up. When they do, perhaps you’ll be able to fully grasp the immense horror you’ve perpetrated, even if regret isn’t baked into your DNA.

I know you believe yourself immortal, your authoritative control unstoppable, but that’s all just a function of your megalomania, Mr. Trump. Adolf Hitler believed the same thing, and things didn’t turn out terribly rosy for him, did they?

I only toss the Hitler reference in here because I know how much the comparison excites you.

Here’s the thing: you aren’t fooling anyone. We’re onto you.

Also, whether or not you committed crimes akin to those committed by Jeffrey Epstein is less relevant than the fact you were best pals with him and approved of what he was doing. You have your own history of adjudicated sexual abuse.

Yep, time is tapping you on the shoulder all right, Mr. President. Karma is calling, and it would like a word. You have escaped accountability – real accountability – for so long, from so many, for so many depravities, and the bill is coming due. You can continue to run, but you won’t be able to hide forever. Not a whole lot longer, I suspect.

It is for this reason that you are alone among presidents whose service should not be acknowledged this Presidents Day weekend. Instead, the holiday signifies our ongoing struggle in defiance of your best efforts to take the nation down, while understanding you’d love nothing more than to pervert the celebration as President Trump’s Day. I know how much it pains you to acknowledge the contributions of others.

When your world finally crumbles, no one will be there to cushion your collapse. That’s the price you pay for being a lowlife. Your moral reckoning long ago arrived but whatever is heading your way will be well-deserved. You are a tyrant, a racist, a misogynist, a homophobe, a sexual abuser, a coward, a fascist, a hypocrite, a con artist, a traitor, and the ugliest and most dangerous person this country has produced.

It won’t be pretty when you’re finally held accountable for your countless offenses against humanity. But it sure as hell will be satisfying.

Yours in contempt,

Ray Richmond

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

The simple reality of this stinking scandal is all roads lead to Trump

It’s been building for more than a decade, but my head finally exploded after hearing the news that not only had convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell pleaded the Fifth in refusing to answer questions about Jeffrey Epstein during a deposition before the House Oversight Committee (HOC) — she also said through her lawyers she’d only speak the “unfiltered truth” if granted clemency by President Donald Trump.

I believe this is called blackmail.

The same statement said “both President Trump and President [Bill] Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing” and that “Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why.”

We’re all being asked to believe that a single thing emerging from Maxwell’s mouth after a pardon would have any resemblance to the truth. The woman will naturally say and do anything to get herself out of prison, or whatever it is they call the minimum-security playground currently housing her.

The very idea that Maxwell’s legal team would even release something this brazenly shameless speaks volumes about where we are as a country. It’s mind-boggling that such an offer could even be committed to paper.

Does it actually give Trump cover to pardon Maxwell, under the supposed pretext of revealing the unvarnished truth of the Epstein saga? Trump may think so. But then, he claims to think a lot of things, few rational, none sincere.

We live in Crazytown U.S.A., ladies and gentlemen. Everything that’s come out in the redacted Epstein Files stinks. The affair is taking down powerful men internationally, but here in America it’s much more about protecting those who can purchase guilt-free status.

I’m sick to death of all the pretending. We are constantly asked to suspend disbelief, to substitute the implausible for the obvious, because the human being whose culpability appears greatest happens to be the one with the farthest to fall and the greatest power.

Come on. An innocent man wants the truth out there to clear his name. A guilty one hides, deflects, diverts, threatens — everything Trump has done since day one of the Epstein outrage.

What we get instead is Rep. James Comer (R-KY), oversight chair, going after former President Clinton and his wife, Hillary. The Clintons have called for an open hearing, with cameras. But Comer isn’t interested in getting to the bottom of anything, preferring to concentrate on sullying a couple of long-targeted Democrats.

I truly don’t much care what the Clintons have to say about Bill’s apparent involvement. I want to put Trump in the spotlight. Force him to lie under oath, because we know he would. Simply making him answer publicly for his involvement in the greatest pedophile scandal in modern history would be a major step toward a measure of accountability.

Maxwell’s lawyers asserted that Trump and Bill Clinton were innocent in order to make her outreach appear non-partisan and somehow genuine. But it’s all just part of the coverup.

I want U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, fronting for the corrupt Department of “Justice,” to be called to testify about what he discussed with Maxwell that landed her a Club Fed hotel suite where she gets to munch escargot and cuddle puppies. Part of the quid pro quo for keeping her big yap shut, perhaps?

Why aren’t the Dems – and, for that matter, the survivors/victims of Epstein and his pals – demanding that Blanche get on the stand and make sure he’s threatened with the same Contempt of Congress charge that they slapped on the Clintons if he refuses?

The reality is that all roads lead back to Trump.

Trump is mentioned in the 3 million pages of released Epstein files some 5,300 times. It’s well established that Epstein and Trump were best friends for at least a decade. The odds Trump wasn’t aware of Epstein’s criminal penchant for trafficking and abusing underage girls are approximately zero. He is guilty of, at the very least, felonious complicity.

Comer: “We’re interested in talking to anyone that might have information that would help us get justice for the survivorship.”

Oh really, Congressman? Well then, step right over here. I’d like you to meet a dude who’s mentioned in the files more than 5,000 times. Think he might have a couple of tidbits that could interest you? No? Perhaps you’d like to fill us in as to why not?

It was on Nov. 17, 1973, that President Richard Nixon famously declared during a televised press conference, amid the Watergate scandal, “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”

People have also got to know whether or not their president is a pedophile or someone who protects those who commit such heinous acts. The only way to purportedly know the answer is to question Trump while he’s sworn to tell the truth.

There is no precedent to think we should just take Trump’s word for it, as he has no credibility. At least getting him on the stand conveys the presumption of forced candor.

It’s well past time to get this all out in the open instead of cherry-picking enemies like the Clintons. This has never been a Democrat vs. Republican issue but one pitting the powerful vs. the powerless. The survivors themselves have grown sadly, disgustingly irrelevant, mere collateral damage to an ever-raging hurricane.

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

This long-running Trump lie is a cancer — and it will soon be uncurable

Over the past decade, I’ve been one of those crazy conspiracy theorists who believes our elections have been rigged, all right … but not by the Democrats, as Donald Trump persistently claims.

Who knows what Elon Musk was able to pull off with his Starlink satellite system in 2024? It seems to me the 2016 and ‘24 elections could well have been manipulated at the electronic level, to hand victory to Trump. It honestly isn’t so far-fetched. Will it ever be provable? Probably not. But that doesn’t make it any less possible/probable.

Beyond that, it’s downright miraculous how every time the Dems win, it’s only through “voter fraud,” but when the Republicans win it’s all perfectly legit — according to them. And this is how you murder democracy. When neither side trusts election results, that’s pretty much the end.

What’s interesting this time are the great lengths to which Trump and his enablers are going to pre-rig the 2026 midterms, taking no chances on making it happen after the fact. They learned that lesson the hard way after losing the White House in 2020 and then turning the earth upside-down to try to change that result, over and over and over, without success.

About those great lengths. This week, we saw subtle hints that may soon metastasize into lawless action.

“We should take over the voting in at least 15 places,” Trump told right-wing podcaster (and ex-FBI Deputy Director] Dan Bongino. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

The supposed need for this lay in Trump’s claim without evidence that in 2024 there were “states that are so crooked … that I won that show I didn’t win.”

Trump doubled down in an interview from the Oval Office, saying the federal government should “get involved” in elections and usurp state laws by exerting control.

If states “can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over,” Trump said.

Nationalizing voting would enable the Republican party to falsify ballots as it saw fit. And after the FBI seizing ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, and Attorney General Pam Bondi making turning over the voter database from Minnesota a condition for pulling ICE out of the state, it’s clear that part of the strategy this time is to control the voting apparatus, on the pretext of protecting the system.

It is of course the Republicans that are perpetrating the swindle, knowing all too well they stand little to no chance of winning the midterms in a straight fight. So they’re trying to take it away from the states and put the fate of the republic in the hands of a corrupt and compromised Department of Justice.

Let’s say there are enough complaints about election results that the DOJ orders U.S. Marshals to confiscate all voting machines and paper ballots for “review.” Claims of fraud, sabotage, or concocted “irregularities” could stop results being certified.

The goal seems to be to throw the midterms into chaos, sparking a barrage of litigation that will wind up in the hands of that group of partisan bozos known as the Supreme Court.

We all know how things have turned out with them lately.

The table is being set. Congressional districts continue to be gerrymandered, so far with limited success. But there’s talk of placing armed and masked ICE agents at polling places in Blue States, as a way to intimidate voters. And there is Trump’s persistent threat to invoke the Insurrection Act — the looming danger of martial law as a ploy to cancel elections outright.

It's a pre-response to the near certainty that the Republicans lose the House and possibly the Senate. It’s nearly always the case that the party out of power dominates the midterms, and that goes quadruple under an administration working so hard to perpetrate a fascist takeover.

What’s particularly alarming is that Trump leads a group of sycophantic dolts and MAGA cultists who will do anything for Dear Leader and pay no attention to what might be legal, the rule of law being so quaintly outdated.

Who is going to stop them from interfering with the elections?

Let’s say the Supreme Court makes one of its famous shadow docket decisions, except this time the ruling aims to stop Trump grabbing voting apparatus state by state?

He will insist it’s being done to “save the country” — and continue.

Furthermore, Republican incumbents who lose House and Senate races might simply refuse to step down, backed by Trump, because the vote was “fraudulent.” There will be no evidence, of course, and such an action would invalidate the nation’s entire political structure — but that seems to be the abuser-in-chief’s goal anyway.

Who is going to enforce things from going off the rails? If the judiciary’s decisions are ignored, it would be left to decent Republicans to do the right thing, and intervene.

I hear you laughing from here.

I say all of this not to spread despair, but to appeal for everyone to be on red alert. This is where things look to be heading.

The only things that might prevent this are:

  1. Republicans finally locate their spines.
  2. We the people rise up in sufficient numbers that the system holds.

Trump can be successfully opposed. The truth-telling opposition must be active on all fronts, including social media and the street. The louder and more insistent it gets, the greater Trump’s decline will accelerate.

  • Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
  • This column was updated on 8 Feb. 2026, to correct an error regarding AG Pam Bondi's request for voter information in Minnesota.

America's most dangerous woman still serves Trump — and it's not Kristi Noem

Even among a crowd as inept and peculiar as President Donald Trump’s cabinet, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, stands out as quite the loon. And by loon, I mean treacherously duplicitous threat.

Trump has proven himself expert at choosing precisely the worst person for every job, seeming to pick based on who would be the most disastrous possible choice. It’s uncanny. Looking at you, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and you, Pete Hegseth, and you, Kristi Noem.

But particularly, looking at Gabbard, the former member of Congress from Hawaii who ran for president as a Democrat back in 2020.

There are so many reasons Gabbard shouldn’t be within 10,000 miles of a post with “intelligence” in the title, and not merely because she so lacks the quality in question, or even because of that weird gray streak in her hair.

You may have heard about how last week the FBI seized truckloads of 2020 ballots from an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, as part of Trump’s ongoing mania surrounding his loss in that election. Talk about a man who can’t take no for an answer.

Lurking there in the shadows of the election center, for reasons no one seemed able to determine, was Gabbard. Why she should have been ordered by Trump to oversee the raid when she’s meant to lead national intelligence is a curious question indeed. But there she was, hanging with and directly questioning FBI agents.

Not only that, but on Monday the New York Times broke the story that after the raid, Gabbard used a cellphone to call Trump. He didn’t pick up but reportedly called back shortly thereafter, to question and praise the agents.

Following up, on Tuesday the Guardian reported that Gabbard is essentially freelancing, conducting her own 2020 investigation and keeping Trump briefed.

“She’s doing her own thing,” an “administration official familiar with the matter” told the paper, which said Trump told Gabbard to go to Georgia.

It is, in a word, madness. In another, it’s frightening.

It all shows us two things:

  • One, Trump is taking his 2020 presidential election insanity to a whole new level of involvement and will to overturn a settled issue.
  • Two, Gabbard has proven herself, like everyone else in Trump’s administration, a sycophant who will do her boss’s bidding unquestioningly, no matter the bounds of legality.

When it comes to Gabbard, however, there’s more.

She has been openly accused of parroting Russian propaganda, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Her views on foreign policy have been described as promoting Russian interests, including a famous 2017 meeting with then Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

If there’s one thing you really don’t want in an overseer of sensitive and classified information, it’s to be seen as more sensitive to the views of the enemy. It’s not a good look.

There is also the matter of the drastic, some would say erratic political pivot Gabbard made after serving as a Democratic U.S. Representative to Hawaii from 2013 to 2021.

Gabbard decided 2022 would be a good time to dump her party and go independent, followed two years later by becoming a Republican. It may have had something to do with her feelings being hurt after the failure of her long-shot 2020 presidential campaign.

We also must not forget the unhinged three-minute video she posted to social media last June, warning of a potential “nuclear holocaust” and chastising the “political elite and warmongers” for bringing the world “closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before.

“And perhaps it’s because they are confident they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families that regular people won’t have access to.”

As the saying goes: WTF?

The video was posted following a visit to Hiroshima, Japan, near the 80th anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped on that city. Gabbard also questioned whether “the remilitarization of Japan” was “truly a good idea.”

The woman is clearly bonkers, but her words did speak to the administration’s determination to turn allies into foes and totalitarian foes into allies.

It was also last summer that Gabbard released a series of declassified documents she claimed exposed a “treasonous conspiracy” by President Barack Obama and his intelligence team, designed to sabotage Trump. That led to Attorney General Pam Bondi pushing to convene a grand jury investigation.

It's all delusional. But we’ve come to learn that today’s absurdity is tomorrow’s reality.

Tulsi Gabbard DNI Tulsi Gabbard, at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

One more thing about Gabbard has emerged this week, in a Wall Street Journal report. A whistleblower complaint against her reportedly involves material so classified, it’s been withheld from Congress for eight months and is said to be locked in a safe.

Not even Andrew Bakaj, an attorney for the whistleblower, has been authorized to review it. And yet the person who is the subject of this complaint, Gabbard, has successfully kept it hidden and remains in her job, because apparently no possible misconduct is considered inexcusable when the president is operating a criminal enterprise.

How is it that eight months have passed without this apparently massive disclosure seeing the light of day, a delay that could cause grave danger to national security? Because concealing information is at the heart of all this administration does or refuses to do.

Gabbard is fortunate that to her boss, loyalty matters far more than expertise, or even allegiance to country. It’s true, even when that person’s incompetence jeopardizes us all.

This is why Tulsi Gabbard is the most dangerous woman in America, and why her being booted from her job is at least as important as Noem being dumped from hers.

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

The same dark figure lurks behind everything Donald Trump does

When I think of America’s so-called president and the way he goes about his job, the same phrase pops into my head: “Nice little country you got there. It’d be a shame if something were to happen to it.”

Trump speaks the language of mobsters. He threatens, bullies and makes deals pretty much the same way as do the Corleones and Sopranos. Justice flows one way. If we don’t like it, tough.

The MAGA universe appears to view this uncivilized behavior as brute strength to be admired. The rest of us see it as boorish and beastly. But whatever you want to call it, it seems to have been ripped from the pages of a manual for organized crime.

As a huge fan of The Sopranos, I immediately recognized this White House gang’s style. In fact, having written a 2024 companion book, The Sopranos: The Complete Visual History, I feel uniquely qualified to compare methods — and to outline how Trump steals from Tony Soprano.

Here are the parallels I see:

  • Loyalty over competence: Loyalty is prized over all else. Tony rewards people who are loyal first and effective second. In the mob, you back the boss, even when he’s wrong. Trump rules in much the same way, valuing fealty, whether someone is with him, over anything approaching expertise. One moment of disloyalty and you’re radioactive.
  • Family as power structure: Tony’s belief system is inseparable from the interests of his extended mob clan. Trump has obliterated the line between government and family business, creating a vibe more New Jersey than D.C. Blood — or brand — outranks institutions.
  • Public bluster, private grievance: Both Tony and Trump project dominance while obsessing over even the tiniest supposed slight. Tony stews. Trump posts. Different mediums, same psychology. Respect is currency. The boss is always the victim. The mob boss sees himself as persecuted even while dominating the room. To Trump, investigations are “witch hunts,” losses are “rigged,” criticism is “abuse.”
  • Omertà over transparency: Tony’s people simply don’t talk to outsiders, especially authorities. Trump’s inner circle treats the media, investigators, even Congress as hostile forces. Silence, stonewalling, and counterattacks carry the day. Truth isn’t denied so much as deemed irrelevant.
  • Titles are cover stories: In organized crime, everyone has a job title that obscures what they really do — mostly, protecting the boss and the family. In Trump’s second term, aides hold official roles while functioning as enforcers (Secretary of War Pete Hegseth), propagandists (Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt), or validators (Chief of Staff Susie Wiles).
  • Threats are vague, but targeted: In both the Jersey and D.C. mobs, there is constant talk of investigations, prosecutions, or retaliation without specifics, so as to diminish accountability while ratcheting up fear. The result is that targets self-censor and retreat without the boss having to act.
  • Enemies linger round every corner: Critics are reframed as enemies, traitors, or criminals. Tony always believes he’s under siege from rival families and the FBI, while Trump blames “radical left Democrats” and the press while allies not considered loyal enough are “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only). Institutions that resist are deemed corrupt.
  • Constant internal jockeying: Mob crews are rife with paranoia. Today’s favorite is tomorrow’s rat. Trumpworld thrives on chaos: aides competing for favor, testing boundaries, signaling loyalty to avoid suspicion. Confusion itself is a strategy.
  • Morality is transactional: Right or wrong are flexible if it benefits the boss. Tony calls it “business.” Trump calls it “deals.” Principles are useful until they aren’t.
  • Retaliation is the point: In Tony’s world, punishment isn’t just about correction; it’s a matter of sending a message. Trump and his people often seek vengeance openly, against critics, prosecutors, journalists, former allies, everyone. Even symbolic punishment is enough as long as everyone gets the message. Fear subs for governance.
  • Public performance of strength: Tony and his minions are all about showcasing dominance: expensive suits, loud bravado, exaggerated confidence. Trump’s circle exhibits strength through rallies, social media posts, press appearances, and absolutist rhetoric. Setbacks are reframed as triumphs. Admitting weakness would be a grievous, unforgivable sin.
  • The mess left behind is massive but somebody else’s problem: With both “families,” the boss must outlive the institutions surrounding him. People, norms, and the system take the hit while Tony and Trump insist it is they who were treated unfairly.
  • Bullying beats diplomacy: The expectation that people at the top of the mob food chain will behave honorably is wielded as a good cop/bad cop negotiation strategy. In Trump’s presidency, a “might makes right” mentality works to both bludgeon opposition and intimidate foes into compliance.
  • Bottom line: The Sopranos is about power without accountability pretending to be family. Trump and his aides are about power without accountability pretending to be adored by the masses.

It should also be noted that for all the unabashed criminality and institutional corruption of the characters on The Sopranos, its community nonetheless had a moral center the Trump-o-sphere lacks: Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco,) the empathetic, supportive, ethical, and principled psychiatrist struggling to help Tony look himself in the mirror.

Dr. Melfi did her best to analyze and contextualize. She was attacked and/or dismissed when the truth became untenable, but at least she tried. And her work often exposed some form of self-professed honor at the root of Tony’s behavior.

There is no such voice of conscience or sanity in Trump’s circle today. Therein resides a problem that has been examined ad infinitum over the last year: the lack of any adult voice in the room.

You know we’re in serious trouble when a fictitious mobster carries a more urgent sense of integrity and accountability than a real-life American president.

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

This was the moment the tide finally turned on Trump

It feels different this time.

You can sense the Trump administration knows it has finally stepped in it, with its baseless, soulless response to the ICE murder of Alex Pretti, a peaceful protester and legal observer, in Minneapolis last weekend. The administration served up a transparent lie — one so obvious it couldn’t be effectively spun.

Yet they still tried to spin it, assuring us Pretti wasn’t the victim of an execution, that he was a “would-be assassin” (Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s words) who went to a protest to “massacre” law enforcement agents.

That narrative evaporated the moment video of the incident went public. No matter which angle you looked at, the truth was clear: Pretti was pepper-sprayed, manhandled, beaten, disarmed, and then — prone, helpless — had 10 bullets pumped into him.

He was holding a cellphone. Not a gun. They don’t look that much alike.

We soon found out his name, that he was 37, that he was a resident of Minneapolis, a law-abiding citizen of the United States, and an intensive care nurse for the Veterans Administration.

Central casting couldn’t have created a more honorable human being.

Didn’t matter.

As Pretti lay on a cold slab in a Minnesota morgue — as when Renee Nicole Good ended up in the same place, after ICE murdered her earlier this month — the smear machine went into overdrive.

Pretti was brandishing a firearm, we were told. He was determined to inflict maximum damage, the regime lied. The “suspect” reacted violently to the officers, apparatchiks jeered. Those officers feared for their lives and fired defensive shots.

Lie. Lie. Lie. Lie.

Once it was apparent that angle wouldn’t fly, reprehensible Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino and sociopathic Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem resorted to Plan B. No one carries a semi-automatic handgun to a protest, they claimed, unless they have evil intent, and thus deserve to be blown away.

Forget the fact Pretti’s gun was tucked into his waistband, that he never touched it before it was removed from his person, and that he was carrying it in full accordance with Minnesota law.

Therein lay the ultimate hypocrisy. Pretti had a license to possess a handgun in a state that allows concealed carry. This is everything Republicans crow about. They perpetually insist their beloved Second Amendment is at the heart of our rights as Americans.

Even the NRA pushed back at the Trump regime. So did gun activists. Elsewhere, the name Kyle Rittenhouse was trotted out as an example of an outrageous double standard.

Rittenhouse, you may recall, was all of 17 years old and armed with an assault rifle when in August 2020 he arrived at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and proceeded to shoot three men. Two died but Rittenhouse became a hero of the right, before and after his acquittal for homicide in 2021.

Somehow, among the Trumpists, what was good for Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t apply to Alex Pretti. That helped spark a GOP split. By Monday, it had exploded into a crisis.

Trump’s murderous madness had reached a tipping point. It seemed even the president himself and his propaganda mistress, Karoline Leavitt, were open to some form of investigation of the execution of Pretti — even civil discussions with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey — rather than continuing to back the attempted evidence destruction and coverup.

Administration figures, Republican governors, representatives, and senators were pushing back, saying things may have gone too far. That was code for wanting Noem’s head on a platter, and the carnage to stop. It was at least an admission that the optics were less than stellar.

News came: a reassignment (read: firing) for Bovino; White House border czar Tom Homan called in to clean up the mess.

You know we’ve crossed a surreal divide when the solution to a crisis is a dude forced to unconvincingly deny accepting a bribe from undercover FBI agents — $50,000 cash in a paper bag, no less.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters he was looking for an “honorable and honest,” impartial investigation.

But then, on Tuesday afternoon, word filtered out that the “Justice” Department had decided there would be no federal investigation (sham or otherwise) into the violation of Pretti’s civil rights by those who fired the fatal shots — only a probe from Customs and Border Protection on whether its officers followed “agency policy” in killing Pretti, and another from DHS centering on Pretti himself and if he broke any laws while being shot dead.

In other words, much of what Trump and Leavitt were spouting was just lip service, and the coverup remained in progress.

When you get right down to it, the real issue is that a group of monsters has been trained to stay on message about how it isn’t the administration breaking down democracy, and that it’s our eyes that are deceiving us.

Now they’re finally being called out.

Lawlessness, fascism, and cruelty are finally being condemned. Not a moment too soon. It took Trump just a year to destroy the government, alienate our allies, upend the world order, terrify the populace and tear to shreds every ideal we hold dear.

For Trump and the GOP, getting slaughtered in November’s midterms should be the least of their concerns. First should be rescuing the republic from the brink.

If the murder of Alex Pretti is the wake-up call it appears it could well be, his slaying will not have been completely in vain.

First on the list of things to be fixed — ended — is the relentless assault on innocent Americans by malevolent, untrained, unyielding, anarchic secret police. This experiment in state-sponsored horror has only fostered fear and hatred. Defund ICE now.

Thankfully, among Republicans, it seems a few sleeping dogs are stirring. Unfortunately, nothing will bring back Renee Good and Alex Pretti. They’re gone. True justice will never be served.

We owe it to them to cleanse their character. Good and Pretti were not murdered because they were “domestic terrorists.” They were said to be lovely, engaged people, not heroes, but far from the demons they are disgracefully said to have been — by the real domestic terrorists.

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

This GOP Epstein gambit is plain hypocritical — and can't shield Trump for long

You’ve got to hand it to the Republicans. The hypocrisy they practice daily is truly world class, and never more so than as it applies to the Epstein Files.

You may have heard that on Wednesday, the ironically named House Oversight Committee — whose unwillingness to examine any culpability from the current administration in the matter of the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein matter is quite the “oversight” — voted to charge former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with criminal contempt of Congress, over their refusal to testify in the Epstein investigation.

This would be the same Department of Justice probe that is now more than a month behind schedule in releasing more than 99 percent of the unclassified materials demanded under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Evidently, the GOP thought the legislation was called the Epstein Files Disappearing Act.

What’s the hold up? Such an excellent question. I might have overheard a few excuses:

  • “The boxes that contain them are just too heavy. We’re trying to hire some really strong guys to lift them.”
  • “We’re way behind on rent at the storage facility where they’re being housed, and they won’t let us access them until we get square.”
  • “They’re still being vetted by our crack team at the assisted living home.”
  • “We’re struggling to translate them from Latin.”

The few batches of documents the DOJ has released are just enough to paint Bill Clinton as a guy who liked to hang with Epstein and his convicted sex trafficking accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. Remarkably, nearly every other name in the docs is redacted. Or perhaps they simply have odd names, spelled with thick black lines drawn through them.

Let’s face it: the excuse that more time is needed to scale the redactions and protect the victims’ identities is a complete crock. Even if we’re talking about more than two million docs and exhibits, dedicating a team of 20 or 25 (or 50 or 150) people to the task of poring over them shouldn’t take nearly this long.

It's clear this is a matter of delaying justice, and we all know what they say about justice delayed. But where is the contempt charge for Attorney General Pam Bondi? Nowhere to be found, of course.

When you’re Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the Republican Oversight chair, accountability is a one-way street, and the rule of law applies only to Democrats.

Indeed, it’s downright remarkable that this sit-on-their-hands, see no evil, hear no evil House suddenly sprang to life when the Clintons told them to get bent. Even nine Democrats awakened to advance the contempt legislation. (They were seemingly just overjoyed to be voting on something that crept forward.)

This is not at all to diminish Bill Clinton’s involvement with Epstein and Maxwell. It’s creepy at best: shameful and inexcusable. The fact he was once President of the United States shouldn’t grant him immunity, even if the Supreme Court would probably see it differently — or would if his name was Trump.

But the Clintons are correct in seeing this as the transparent piece of political retribution that it is, and the double standard it exposes could not be more stark and appalling.

Should the full House approve the contempt citations in early February, criminal referrals to the DOJ could carry fines of up to $100,000 each and a year in prison.

Oozing self-satisfaction, Comer declared this week that the Clintons “possessed information directly relevant to the investigation.”

Apparently, the 99 percent of the Epstein docs whose release is mandated by law but remain locked away are by comparison irrelevant.

It shold also be noted that Bill Clinton has offered to submit to an interview by Comer under oath, and both Clintons were prepared to present sworn statements noting what they would say in testimony.

Not good enough for Comer.

This isn’t about seeking real accountability. It’s a dog-and-pony show designed to disparage the Clintons and distract, as ever, from the incriminating horror that’s really in those files.

At the heart of going after a former president and former presidential candidate (and cabinet member) is Donald Trump’s petty and destructive attack on the Democratic Party. If this works out, you can bet he’ll come for Barack Obama next. It’s a hateful power play, nothing more.

The elephant rampaging through this room is Trump himself. Does Trump not “possess information relevant to the investigation”? By all accounts, he had a longer and closer relationship with Epstein than anyone. He’s also the guy who made sure Maxwell was transferred to the cushiest lockup imaginable, where they do everything for her short of plying her with champagne and caviar and buffing up her nails.

The delay tactics and bait-and-switch fails to address the fact that the Epstein docs are all about Trump and his pedophile buddies. This was why it hit so close to home for Trump, leading him to give a decidedly unpresidential finger, when that guy at the Ford plant shouted, “Pedophile protector!”

We should be shocked if we see 5 percent of these Epstein documents before the midterm elections. My educated guess is that as long as the Republicans are in charge of Congress, that will be just fine with the virtuous disciplinarians who claim to have suddenly located their law-and-order spines, just in relation to the Clintons.

Make no mistake, the former first couple are being punished for their willingness to address the Epstein inquiry at all, while Trump skates free. It’s the Republican way of justice.

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

Trump says he's stopped eight wars. Here are ten he's started

If there is one thing that watching Donald Trump in the first year of his second term has taught me, it’s that he will claim anything at all to be true. The man lies as the rest of us breathe, so it’s impossible to believe a thing he says. Not that this stops him trying, selling his BS like the con artist he is.

My favorite Trump whopper has been his regular insistence that he has personally stopped eight wars — as he most recently claimed in his deranged text to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

The chief message seemed to be that Trump was a man of peace until he was denied the Nobel Peace Prize, so now he’s a man of war, with his sights set on snatching Greenland from Denmark — not Norway, Don — by force if necessary.

Crazy Grandpa has had his itty-bitty feelings hurt, so he’s gonna show the world just how unfathomably ridiculous it was for him to think he could ever be seriously considered for an award honoring unity and diplomacy.

But back to “I stopped eight wars!” Trump seems to imagine that if he says it over and over, it will somehow become true. Except that, like everything else he utters, it’s nowhere near the realm of reality.

Here are the eight wars he supposedly stopped: Israel-Hamas (Gaza), Israel-Iran, India-Pakistan, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Cambodia-Thailand, Egypt-Ethiopia, Serbia-Kosovo, Rwanda-Democratic Republic of Congo.

In all eight conflicts, Trump claims to have mediated/brokered ceasefires and peace agreements. In precisely none was lasting reconciliation achieved or, where tensions have reduced, was that ascribed solely or even mostly to his intervention.

Still, now that he’s officially proclaimed to have jumped off the peace train — “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace” — because he was snubbed by the Nobel Committee, it might be instructive to look at ten wars he’s personally started, or intensified, since his return to power.

  • The War on Trade: Never mind that Trump's trade policy is a consistently unpopular mess — he just can't stop threatening and levying tariffs on anyone and everyone he meets, friends and foes alike. The Supreme Court may be about to throw a spanner into Trump's works, in a case about who gets to levy tariffs. That won't stop Trump trying, anymore than serious economists’ advice might persuade him he hasn’t a clue what he’s doing.
  • The War on Science: In tandem with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump has mercilessly attacked the most successful public health program in modern history, denouncing such proven miracles as the vaccines for smallpox, polio, hepatitis A, COVID, and flu. Operation Warp Speed has become Operation Warped Reasoning. The administration has routinely suppressed, downplayed, undermined, or simply ignored scientific research. They fight it because they don’t understand it. Their synapses can’t absorb it, so they assault it at every opportunity, lashing out like a trespassing rattlesnake.
  • The War on Tylenol: Perhaps a sub-campaign to the War on Science. Poor Tylenol. All it has ever done is try to take away our aches and pains. Now, people with no medical training or expertise claim its chief ingredient, acetaminophen, causes autism when taken by pregnant women. No causal link has been found, but a delusional 79-year-old man and an aide who looks as if he just survived a grenade blast and sounds like he swallowed glass beg to differ.
  • The War on the Environment: Trump’s bombardment of environmental policy has decimated protections for land, oceans, forests, and wildlife and worsened the climate crisis. It’s brought near irreversible destruction. But the future has little use for Trump because he can’t buy it, sell it, or use it as a bargaining chip.
  • The War on Common Sense: It follows a general pattern. Everything Trump says is gospel. Everything the other side says is lunacy, designed to rip apart your life. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
  • The War on Knowledge: Shaking down universities and starving public schools of funding is a calculated strategy designed to chill free speech and academic excellence. The idea it’s a response to antisemitism on campuses in a canard, and a transparent one at that.
  • The War on Race: It started with dismantling DEI and affirmative action and escalated to combat so-called “woke” culture. But over the past several months, Trump hasn’t even bothered to disguise the fact he’s targeting Black and Brown America, and really anyone non-White Christian. It is racism without apology.
  • The War on Mainstream Media: It pretty much goes without saying that anyone with authoritarian aspirations can’t tolerate a press that doesn’t fawn all over him. All must be brought to heel. Among the mainstream networks, CBS is now in Trump’s pocket. One down.
  • The War on Joy: At his core, Trump is the unhappiest man we will ever have the misfortune to try in vain to understand. He hates seeing people happy. He thrives on hostility, misery, discontent. It’s his fuel. He doesn’t know what to do with delight, so he fights it with every fiber of his being. This explains his opposition to anything smacking of harmony.
  • The War on Everyone who Disagrees with Trump: This is really what it comes down to. It’s behind the ICE attacks in Minneapolis and everywhere in blue America. The man is so monumentally insecure that he can’t handle any opposition at all. This is why the travesty of ICE no longer has much to do with undocumented immigrants, if it ever did.

These are merely the wars Trump has started inside our own borders. Outside them, he’s about to spark a real one in Greenland, simply because like all toddlers who have always gotten their way, no one can tell him no. It really is that stark.

Someone must stop this madness. Now.

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

These signs show Trump's maddest threat yet might be blocked … amid the blizzard of crazy

Seizing Greenland? Seriously? This is where we’re at? It seemed like some bizarro Dr. Strangelove fantasy. And yet what was once dismissed as preposterous has exploded into a genuine diplomatic emergency.

It was the capper to another surreal week in Trump’s America, one that would have left George Orwell muttering, “Told ya.”

There is no sane reason for Trump to want to “own” Greenland, but plenty of insane ones. When asked why acquiring it by force was important to him, his response to the New York Times was, “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success.” As if that answer made even the thinnest shred of sense.

For our president, a glacier-strewn Arctic island is simply a plaything to possess, even if it would result in blowing up our NATO alliance and releasing utter turmoil throughout Europe.

We’ve all long known that wherever Trump goes, chaos follows. It’s his brand. Everything he touches, dies. That didn’t matter so much when he was just another pathetic rich old man screaming into the ether from his Mar-a-Lago balcony. But since he assumed the presidency a second time, every move he makes has great national and international bearing. This is highly unfortunate.

Just think about all of the turmoil and madness that was being juggled over the past week alone:

  • That wild Greenland fantasy. Who cares if it would perhaps irreparably disrupt the world order? Little Donnie wants it, even as his sycophantic aides try to dissuade him. Their boss is drunk on the power of being the self-proclaimed “hunter and not the hunted,” permitting him whatever he wants — consequences be damned.
  • Having kidnapped the Venezuelan president and declared himself “acting president,” Trump vowed to steal the nation’s oil while installing a puppet proxy. No one evidently bothered to tell him that refining the oil was more expensive than it was worth. But oh well.
  • Threatening to attack Iran for attacking its own protesting citizens while at the same time attacking U.S. citizens for … protesting. “Only we can do that to our people!” Trump might as well have declared. The hypocrisy is stunning.
  • Deciding the best strategy for tamping down anger was to restrict any “investigation” into Jonathan Ross’s murder of Renee Nicole Good to a federal cover-up, excluding city officials while opting to probe the dead woman’s motives.
  • While pictures of citizens in Minneapolis being pulled out of their houses and cars and otherwise assaulted and terrorized played all over the media, Trump doubled down, insisting lack of respect for law enforcement was the real problem.
  • Classy as ever, the president flipped off and mouthed “F--- you!” twice to an auto worker at a Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, after the worker yelled, “Pedophile protector!” as Trump walked through. The White House defended the president’s response as “appropriate and unambiguous” … while complaining about Minneapolis protesters “putting their middle finger, proudly so, at the camera.” Seriously.
  • On Thursday, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to restore order in Minnesota — seemingly a precursor to cancelling November’s midterms.
  • Trump told Reuters there was no need for the midterms. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted he was joking. If so, this was about as amusing as an oncologist telling a patient, “You have cancer. Just kidding!”

Meanwhile, there is the looming catastrophe of doubled or tripled healthcare premiums for millions of Americans, while others on Medicaid are booted off coverage entirely.

Oh yeah, and there’s also a little thing called the Epstein files. As of the middle of January, less than 1 percent of the Epstein files mandated for release by Dec. 19 via an act of Congress have seen the light of day — less than 13,000 of an estimated document total exceeding two million.

Here’s the thing: Trump and his minions love to pile on the pandemonium. It’s not a side effect of his authoritarian rule, but the point. It isn’t just about keeping the water perpetually on boil, to hold the Epstein files forever on the backburner. It’s also about keeping the opposition off-balance.

We can never zero in on a single issue with Trump, because bedlam predominates. No one thing can be successfully addressed because the target itself is both always moving and always enmeshed in a blizzard of targets. Trump counts on everyone being shellshocked — continuously bewildered.

But something else has also been at play since Trump took office a year ago Tuesday. Since there are no effective checks on his power, given the Supreme Court’s acquiescence to his administration’s every whim, he can do whatever he wants – and has.

Cabinet members are similarly powerful and brazen. They always seem shocked by pushback, reacting with rage and astonishment. We’re seeing this in Minneapolis. People including the president and vice president declare that up is down, black is white, and cold is hot, and no one can effectively challenge them.

Equally frightening, the masked ICE monsters breaking laws and smashing heads have been imbued with something resembling complete immunity.

The only thing giving me hope is that Republicans in the Senate are, as of late this week, vowing to stop Trump from seizing Greenland — a sovereign territory part of a sovereign nation, Denmark — by force. That any Republican would oppose their king on any issue for any reason strikes me as a minor miracle. Until they cave, that is.

It would certainly help matters to take at least one Trump-created crisis off the table, leaving us with only a dozen or so others. Though I also fear that if he backs off Greenland, part of the deal might be changing its name to Trumpland.

I’m not kidding.

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

Two women were killed. MAGA's reactions lay bare its callous indifference to reality

Like everyone, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about Renee Nicole Good and the horrible fate that befell her in Minneapolis last Wednesday. Given what we’ve seen on video, that there is even debate over whether she deserved to die is absolutely unfathomable.

Facts:

  • Good was murdered (not merely “killed”) by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, in cold blood, at point blank range.
  • Ross purposefully stepped into the path of Good’s SUV and made sure he was (briefly) in harm’s way before firing the first shot as Good attempted to steer around him. The second and third shots were the results of pure fury.
  • Good was friendly and peaceful and in no way gunning to harm any ICE agent — as seen on Ross’s own cellphone recording.
  • By contrast, Ross was rageful and homicidal, seemingly hellbent on murdering Good for the crime of failing to follow a ludicrous order. Or because her wife was talking smack to him. Or both. His dismissing her — after blowing her away — as a “f------ bitch” speaks to a devastating lack of respect for human life.
  • Good was initially denied lifesaving medical aid.
  • Good was not a “domestic terrorist” but a woman who had just dropped her six-year-old child at school. The only terrorists were the ones she encountered, wearing masks and vests.

Almost equally terrifying were the immediate attacks on Good from Donald Trump, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, and others in positions of authority in the administration — before they knew a thing about her.

Good was reduced to a supposed subhuman, by people who dismissed her as a deserving victim in their ongoing assault on Blue America.

Furthermore, the FBI quickly announced that Minnesota state officials would not be permitted to participate in any investigation into Good’s death.

In layman’s terms, that’s called a cover-up.

Now let’s travel back to January 6, 2021, and a justifiable killing.

Ashli Babbitt was part of the mob that Trump provoked to storm the U.S. Capitol. A 35-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran, she was an increasingly radicalized adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory, conditioned to believe the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump – because he said so.

Despite multiple warnings not to proceed, Babbitt attempted to climb through a shattered window beside a barricaded door to the House Speaker’s Lobby. At that point, she was shot in the shoulder, from inside the lobby, by U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) Lieutenant Michael Byrd.

After a USCP emergency response team administered aid, Babbitt was transported to Washington Hospital Center, where she died. Found to be carrying a pocketknife, she was the lone insurrectionist shot and killed by police.

USCP deemed the shooting “lawful and within department policy” and to have “potentially saved members of Congress and staff from serious injury and possible death.”

Almost immediately, Trump and MAGAworld seized on Babbitt’s killing as unnecessary, with Trump himself describing her, to Fox News, as “an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman.”

Unaddressed was the matter of Babbitt having attempted to smash her way into a government building with potentially murderous intent, as part of an angry mob looking to halt the certification of a presidential election.

Again: she was warned repeatedly to stop.

To those behind Trump’s Stop the Steal movement, none of this mattered at all. Babbitt was a perfect martyr for the cause, despite her death happening amid violent mayhem.

Trump jumped on the narrative that Babbitt was sacrificed for being a woman and it was up to him to protect women — which, given his professed penchant for grabbing women by the genitals, could not have been more ridiculous. Nonetheless, he insisted she died for lack of protection.

In April 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice under President Joe Biden announced following an investigation there was insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution of the officer who fired.

The key word here is “investigation.” A real one took place.

In early 2024, Babitt’s family filed a $30 million wrongful death lawsuit against the U.S. government. It went nowhere until last May, when the Trump administration reached an agreement to pay a $5 million settlement on the civil complaint.

Then, in August, the U.S. Air Force astonishingly confirmed it would confer full military funeral honors to Babbitt, a decision that inspired anger from those who still see the January 6 insurrection as a black eye on America’s soul.

Former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, a member of the House January 6 Committee and an Air Force veteran, called the decision “disgusting.”

Micki Witthoeft, mother of Ashli Babbitt Micki Witthoeft, mother of Ashli Babbitt, speaks in Washington, D.C., last week. REUTERS/Leah Millis

So let’s compare and contrast.

Last week, in Minneapolis, a woman in her mid-30s looking to assist those targeted by ICE, who was otherwise minding her own business and looking to depart the scene once trouble started, had three bullets pumped into her face, was denied immediate medical aid, and in death was instantly denigrated and defamed as a liberal agitator who got what was coming.

Five years ago, in Washington, D.C., a woman in her mid-30s driven by conspiratorial, delusional mania was killed for, it seemed, looking to harm her perceived enemies. Her death was mourned by the same people who now vilify Good, and her family was enriched with millions of dollars and given the thanks of a grateful military, as if she were taken while defending the nation.

What’s wrong with this picture? Literally everything.

What’s the difference between Renee Nicole Good and Ashli Babbitt and the way those on the hideous right choose to view the groundless murder of one against the killing of the other while engaged in a criminal act?

Pure, unadulterated fascism, and a callous indifference to reality.

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

Copyright © 2026 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 | Masthead | Privacy Policy | Manage Preferences | Debug Logs
For corrections contact corrections@rawstory.com , for support contact support@rawstory.com .