Ray Richmond

So on Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche – a misnomer if ever there was one, as the man is “acting” nothing like an actual Attorney General – admitted defeat in declaring the nearly $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” (better known by sane adults as the “slush fund”) permanently dead. Deceased. Scrapped. Gone. Sayonara.

And then, two days later, like a zombie rising from the grave, Senate Republicans refused to bury it for good.

In passing the $70 billion ICE funding bill, it declined to feature a provision banning the fund designed to compensate the criminals who launched an attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, only to be pardoned by President Trump.

Yeah, for all of the supposed angst that Republican lawmakers had about potentially financially rewarding the very same thugs who left the Capitol in shambles and were hellbent on hanging the Vice President of the United States, they ultimately caved because they didn’t want to hurt Little Donnie’s fragile feelings.

Mind you, this is the same appalling scheme that had generated such bipartisan concern and widespread public outrage days before. But in the end, the Republicans did what they do best. They ultimately backed down and deferred to their lord and master while exhibiting not the tiniest amount of spine, because cowardice and hypocrisy are their joint default settings.

When asked why no guardrails were put in place to protect against the fund, Senate Leader John Thune said – in referring to Blanche’s earlier statement – “I think what was talked about, and then ultimately done away with is, in my view, it’s a settled issue.”

Oh, really now?

If that’s the case, then why not get rid of it entirely so there is no danger of it coming to be in the future? Why preserve the possibility?

I think I can answer this with a measure of assurance: today’s Republican Party operates not as an independent body but merely an extension of Trump and his will. Trump not only owns the party outright; he fully owns the will of every senator and representative inside it.

Even those who have no reason to walk beside Trump in lockstep because they have no risk of being “primaried” are afraid of him, of his MAGA fanatics, of the price of defying him. And so, they leave the door open more than just a crack in case there’s a chance for this massively corrupt bill to be resurrected at some point over the next few months. Because while the brainwashed loyalists don’t need to be paid to do Trump’s violent bidding, their motivation and resolve can’t help but be increased by making a few bucks or thousands on the side.

Make no mistake, this thing remains all about stealing the midterms and Trump leaving no felonious stone unturned in making sure the election doesn’t veer dangerously into authenticity and integrity. That would prove a nightmare.

This is what gave rise to the “anti-weaponization” idea to begin with. And what a genius notion it was to make its handle the very opposite of its design. It is, in fact, the ultimate “weaponization” fund. Orwell himself couldn’t have created something with a greater sense of absurdity.

And so, the same party that has spent years screaming about government power and persecution has done its best to preserve it through legislation – or in this case, through a way to hide it going forward.

See, that’s really all that the Republicans were upset about before. It wasn’t the notion that pardoned felons were being rewarded for their handiwork, past and future; it was that they hadn’t done a good enough job disguising it. It wasn’t the degeneracy. It was the identification.

Now, by allowing the slush fund to live on, albeit more quietly, they have more time to figure out a way to attach it to some other bill and no one will notice. They just have to be more creative in their concealment.

This is what we can all glean from the fact that the people who warned us about political persecution have refused to permanently close the door on a fund designed to incentivize misconduct.

It stands as a further lesson that we should never listen to what Republicans say but watch what they do. That’s the only accurate gauge of their intent, their desires, their loyalty, their eagerness to reduce their morals and ethics to whatever can fit inside a thimble when their power is put at risk.

This is what happens when you cease to be a political party but instead a loyalty cult organized around the desires, grievances and appetites of one man.

They have all learned that when it comes to their jobs, their marching orders surround the appeasement of Donald John Trump. If what they do and say helps him, it’s good; if it doesn’t, it’s bad. Fidelity to the Constitution is irrelevant.

It now may well be up to the courts to block the fund, and we all know how that generally turns out. The lower courts will agree it’s illegal, but the Supreme Court will find it to be just fine in their shadow docket assessment as long as Trump’s name is attached to it.

The corruption lately runs deep and across all branches of government. That’s been clear since Trump took office nearly 17 months ago. What’s even more jarring is the open transparency, the hubris, the sheer chutzpah inherent in the depravity.

I posted something the other day on social media that caused numerous MAGA-ites to accuse me of having a Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) agenda. I struggled to defend myself against such a ridiculous charge, so I’d like to put in writing right here that we need a counter-argument to label their own form of madness. Something that speaks to their irrational and unbalanced infatuation with the man.

It's time for us to make Trump Obsession Syndrome (TOS) go viral.

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

Can you feel it?

There’s something weird in the air, and I think I’m perfectly justified in tossing out this piece of unfounded conjecture based on sheer gut instinct:

Donald Trump is suddenly acting like a man who is about to quit his job.

Wishful thinking? Quite possibly. But he doesn’t seem like he’s having any fun lately, and that’s the whole ball of wax for a guy like Trump who carries no actual ideology and no sense of duty or mission when it comes to the country whose interests he has been tasked with protecting as its president.

For Trump, it’s all about Trump, as we know. Full stop. He no longer seems inclined to pretend he gives a single crap about…well, anything. He just claimed he didn’t give a good goddamn if the peace talks with Iran were over or not. He was no longer trying to save the Kennedy Center and didn’t care about what it was called after a judge’s ruling. He gave up without putting up even a tiny fuss about his $1.8 billion slush fund.

He also famously noted that he didn’t care about the financial struggles of the American consumer due to exploding gasoline and grocery prices. And far from trying to rescue his Great American Country Fair on the National Mall in D.C. on June 24, he labeled all the artists who pulled out “losers” and said screw it, I’ll just entertain everyone myself.

He has rapidly transformed his presidency into a vendetta on American citizens, like a high school kid who’s been shunted aside by his clique. “You don’t like me? Well, I don’t like you more!"

Trump is behaving like an utterly broken man who is done even trying. He’s tired. He’s infirm. He’s losing cognition. The walls are moving in on him. He has to know on some level that the country, and the world, have lined up against him. And so, coward that he is, I’m speculating that he sees cutting and running to be his best move.

This is, in general, all very Un-Trumplike behavior. The man will fight tooth and nail to defend his purported “honor” over the pettiest thing. But now he’s just tossing his hands in the air and metaphorically saying, “To hell with it – and all of you!”

But here is why I’m thinking he may be about to pack it in, and soon: It’s all about the spectacle for this guy. He could get the biggest bang for his purloined buck, as it were – not to mention the greatest hit of martyrdom – by going out in a blaze of ignominious glory by saying sayonara on his 80th birthday: June 14.

He could pretend that the extra-long celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4 is designed to honor him, and he alone.

And meanwhile, Trump could satisfy everyone, both himself and all others, by walking away and leaving the country to clean up the considerable mess he created – like a toddler flinging his or her soiled diaper following a lengthy meltdown.

Yep, Trump is bored with the war he launched. He said so directly that the discussions to end it “started to get very boring” during his already legendary CNBC phone interview on Monday. He tends to lose interest very quickly, like every man-baby whose attention is regularly diverted by the newest shiny object.

He doesn’t even seem to have his heart in the immigration crackdown anymore. It was never something he actually cared about in the first place, naturally. It was just a means to an end to endear him to his MAGA hordes. DHS is reportedly starting to sell off some of the massive detention warehouses it had purchased. Alligator Alcatraz has already been closed.

And. Trump. Couldn’t. Care. Less.

Oh yeah, he also doesn’t care about the midterms. How do we know? He said so himself. I have no doubt his Republican colleagues would love for him to step down before he does the November elections any more damage.

But even besides all of that, one could make the argument that Trump has already plundered the Oval Office for everything he can. He’s made billions for himself and his immediate and extended family, enriching them with all variety of schemes – most of them transparently corrupt.

And keep your eye on the Internal Revenue Service immunity debacle. Even with the dumping of the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” the concurrent agreement that permanently shields Trump, his family members, and his businesses from any IRS audits or actions, past, present or future, in perpetuity, continues forth.

In many ways, it’s an even greater unethical debasement of the presidency than the slush fund. One could make the case that it’s one of the key reasons why Trump ran for the office again in 2024, to stop the government from going after him for the likely innumerable tax sins he and his clan have committed over the years and plan to commit again.

So if you’re Trump, you’ve already used the office for what you want. And if you know that the final 2 ½ or so years of your administration are going to be packed with inquiries and lawsuits and losing decisions, why would you want to stick around to face that inevitable music?

This is to say nothing of his ongoing accountability dodge of the Epstein Files. Judgment Day is bound to come, sooner or later, and at this point, Trump just may want to hide out and dictate his directives from the safe distance of Mar-a-Lago rather than the White House fishbowl.

What’s that you’re saying? Trump’s ego would never allow him to step down? He’s too fearful of prosecution to ever willingly expose himself to life as a regular citizen before he has to? Don’t be so sure. For one, I don’t think Trump genuinely fears incarceration at this point. I think he believes his money and repute will protect him through the final chapter of his miserable life.

So I’m betting that Trump may well be preparing to leave it all behind, play golf and spit into the wind without having to face any of the negative blowback anymore.

To this I say, please merciful God, let it be so.

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

Here is a headline I never expected to read in The New York Times: “U.F.C. Fight Venue Takes Shape on the White House Lawn.”

Yes, this is what the President of the United States considers an appropriate, even dignified, way to honor America on her 250th birthday: cage matches that transform the South Lawn of the People’s House into a trailer-trash paradise. Donald Trump is mentally locked into a mindset that considers violent spectacle the highest form of human endeavor.

For the rest of us, it’s not just humiliating; it’s a vulgar abomination from a man whose level of taste peaked at age 6 and never evolved. And so, he’s desecrated the nation’s most famous piece of real estate, perpetrated by a chief executive who considers spray-on gold to be the most cosmetically appealing touch of décor.

It’s an act of historical vandalism by a president turned on by desecration. Holding an Ultimate Fighting Championship event demonstrates contempt for everything we stand for. He’s like a dog marking its territory with a million gallons of urine.

The star-spangled arch depicted over the cage on the lawn is designed to honor both the nation’s and his own birthdays. He’s turning 80 on June 14, the day it’s planned for, with a 5,000-seat arena surrounding the area. And I can’t make this part up: official weigh-ins for the bouts are being hosted at the Lincoln Memorial – introducing a vicious exhibition in front of a monument honoring a president assassinated in cold blood.

What can we compare it to?

It’s like a Cabinet meeting being replaced by a Bass Pro Shop sponsorship.

It’s like the fall of Rome sponsored by DraftKings.

It’s like a nation confusing brute strength with performance art.

It’s like if the Situation Room were programmed by adolescent boys with unlimited caffeine.

It’s like a presidential library being built entirely out of Monster Energy cans.

It’s like Mount Rushmore being redone as a fight poster.

It’s like the executive branch discovering it can get louder applause for chokeholds than legislation.

It’s like Caligula discovering brand synergy.

It’s like a campaign rally peddled as a pay-per-view extravaganza.

It’s like your grandparents scheduling the entertainment at your 21st birthday party.

It marks the full-on transformation of persuasion into intimidation, institutions into insincerity, leadership into performance, civic life into content creation. It’s hyper-masculine theater getting hyped as our national pastime. The Roman Colosseum lives in 2026.

Of course, the matches will be broadcast live on CBS and streamed via Paramount+, because the new owners Larry and David Ellison are so far in the tank for Trump that they can barely see out of it. They have rendered CBS News and, by extension, 60 Minutes utterly obsolete as balanced news organizations. They are instead Fox News Lite and getting heavier all the time.

In tandem with the Great American State Fair music abomination featuring musical artists with no drawing power even in MAGA strongholds, the entire putrid production symbolizes an America that is hopelessly degrading and, in fact, long dead. It has no soul, no feeling, no esteem. It’s patriotism as merchandising. History as branding. Freedom as nostalgia. All of it hollow to the core.

How did this come to be? It’s happened because Trump has no respect for anything he doesn’t somehow have his personal stamp on. Now he wants a $250 bill with his glaring mug stamped in the middle, because devastating our economy isn’t quite enough. He needs to wreck our currency, too.

All of this will one day merely be a traumatic memory. Actually being forced to live through it is its own special hell. Rising up and recording our disgust at all of this doesn’t feel like nearly enough, and in fact, a louder and more sustained voice needs to take hold to counter the creeping normalization.

The indifference is what’s deafening and dangerous. The shrugs and the exhaustion. The “Oh yeah, that’s just Trump being Trump.” That can’t be our collective reaction because it enables him, encouraging the next outrage on our institutions, the next assault on our senses of decency, morality, judgment, principles.

On Trump’s watch, the grotesque has become commonplace. He’s taken the American flag and symbolically wiped his backside with it. He’s seized our dignity as a country and bent it to his phantasmagorical sense of who and what we should be.

One of the most devastating ways he’s done this is to transform our politics into his own personal reality show and his presidency itself into a cash register. Not enough has been made of his making more than 3,700 stock trades during the first quarter of 2026 alone, hyping the companies he’s invested heavily in on his running Truth Social propaganda machine. He has used his powerful pulpit to pull in hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly as much as $1 billion on those trades alone. That’s to say nothing of his crypto windfall.

So we’ve long since established that the law doesn’t apply to Trump – at all. To pretend otherwise is to mock the very idea that genuine ethics matter in the slightest.

Yes, he’s sold out the presidency itself in every way imaginable. And less tangibly but equally alarmingly, he’s peddled our propriety, decorum and self-respect to satisfy his inner tactless oaf. His lizard brain is greatly limited in what satisfies its host, and he’s foisted that degradation on all the nation’s citizens. MAGA really stands for Make America Garish Again.

And so we have a semiquincentennial celebration more befitting the main event at a monster truck rally, orchestrated by a man who makes the clan on The Beverly Hillbillies look like the Rockefellers. He believes the White House belongs to him, so he’s (temporarily ruined it like he does everything else he touches.

Just know that most of us share the revulsion you’re feeling.

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

There is nothing that Donald Trump and his corrupt cronies would love more than to rewrite history and make January 6, 2021, into nothing more than an overhyped little protest rather than the violent insurrection that everyone knows it was.

So it’s vitally important that we continue to scream and stomp our collective feet about the $1.776 taxpayer-funded slush fund created by the sleazebag acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, for his boss in the Oval Office. It’s designed as a payoff for the crazed thugs who stormed the Capitol that fateful day, because it apparently wasn’t quite enough for the “president” to have pardoned them.

Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges and former U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn have sued to block the creation of the fund, calling it, “The most brazen act of presidential corruption this century.”

That’s actually underselling it.

The reason why this is so fraudulent and unthinkable speaks to the horror that went down that infamous day. And while the story has been told numerous times, regular reminders of its terror and scope are essential to be sure it doesn’t fade from memory.

Start with the fact that Hodges and Dunn defended the Capitol and the lawmakers inside it (including Republicans who have struggled to minimize its scale) that day. Hodges was the man in the infamous photograph of the violent mob crushing a cop between metal doors.

Let’s remember that the carnage began shortly after noon, when rioters tried to break into the building to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Joe Biden president. Hours of hand-to-hand combat ensued as police struggled in vain to hold the insurrectionists back from killing elected officials and their staff.

On the west front of the Capitol, rioters broke down barriers and assaulted officers, spraying them with chemicals and hitting them with pipes, tools, and stolen bike racks. After finally busting through the police line and breaching the Capitol, they smashed windows, stalked the halls, chanted for the execution of Vice President Mike Pence and defiled the offices.

The advancing mob punched officers, speared them with flagpoles, attacked them with tasers and stolen riot shields, and worked to drag them into the crowd with the intent of seriously injuring or killing them. They engaged in an almost medieval style of combat, screaming and smashing and clawing and attempting to crush officers with their sheer weight and volume.

Hodges alleges in his lawsuit that he was “hit from above with a heavy object, kicked in the chest and driven to the ground. A rioter then grabbed Hodges by the face and tried to gouge out his eyes, unsuccessfully. As Hodges and his fellow officers fought to stop the rioters from flooding into the building, he was sandwiched between the metal doors by the enraged attackers.

It took more than three hours following the Capitol breach for Trump and his Department of Defense to (reluctantly) approve and dispatch the D.C. National Guard. It is all without precedent in American history.

Some 140 officers were injured in the January 6 attack, ranging from concussions and chemical burns to broken bones, traumatic brain injuries, crushed spinal discs, and other serious trauma. These rioters were not fooling around. They were intent on revenge and felt their role in American history was to take out anyone who got in their way.

Several officers who responded so heroically that day later died by suicide, including Howard Liebengood and Jeffrey Smith. It is unfathomable that any sentient human being could see what happened and come to any conclusion other than the group of marauders were trespassing criminals hellbent on retribution.

Yet somehow, according to the Department of “Justice,” it was ultimately the Biden Administration that was “weaponized” against these criminals. They were wronged by being prosecuted after committing an act of armed rebellion. And now it’s up to you and me to foot the bill.

It should be noted that Hodges and Dunn feel justified in suing to stop the fund because they’ve had to live with constant death threats and harassment from the brainwashed MAGA hordes.

Their suit notes that any payoff to these rioters “will both compensate and empower the very people making those threats. Militias like the Proud Boys will use money from the Fund to arm and equip themselves…Most chillingly, it will signal to past and potential future perpetrators of violence against Dunn and Hodges that they need not fear prosecution; to the contrary, they should expect to be rewarded.”

The timing of this is naturally hardly coincidental. Signals are being sent with zero subtlety that whatever Trump’s thug militia does on his behalf to stop the midterms, they will be legally protected and nicely compensated.

As part of his ongoing campaign to make sure everyone denies the evidence supplied by their eyes and ears, Trump claims this is all a big overblown misunderstanding, and these people have all been victimized by a gross injustice.

In the era before everyone carried around their own smartphone capable of instant video, this would have been far easier. Unfortunately for Trump, the events of that day have been extensively, exhaustively documented through video, testimony and criminal prosecutions. And no one who has seen the first-hand footage from that day can emerge anything but traumatized.

Trump knows how utterly preposterous and disgusting this nearly $1.8 billion travesty is. But he doesn’t care. His sole concern is retaining complete power for another two years, the means and consequences be damned.

So vile is this fund that even many Republicans in Congress have noticed that its implementation wouldn’t be good for them. Will it force them to retain their spines once the inevitable pushback comes from their lord and master? Uncertain. My guess is they’ll ultimately cave, as that’s what they do.

But this fund is so despicable that, like the Epstein Files, it needs to remain fresh in the public consciousness. Allowing it to be normalized is not an option.

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

Under the heading of Fiddling While Rome Burns, a new potential viral plague is gaining steam in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda – a strain that has no targeted vaccine to prevent it nor treatment to cure it, making it a nightmare to try to contain.

But you know our president is too focused on his ballroom to give it much thought.

The reality is this: as of Tuesday, an Ebola virus outbreak in the above-named African nations had more than 500 suspected cases and some 130 deaths. According to the World Health Organization, It involves the much rarer Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, as opposed to the significantly more common Zaire form for which a vaccine and treatments exist.

How is the United States responding? Well, the State Department is “strongly urging” Americans not to travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan or Uganda, and to reconsider travel to Rwanda. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an order barring foreigners from entering the U.S. if they were in any of the above-named countries in the previous 21 days. It assessed the risk to the general American public as “low.”

This is all well and good. The problem is that under President Trump, we have pulled out of the WHO and gutted the CDC, greatly restricting our capacity to monitor and respond to an international public health emergency like the Ebola one. We are now less able to detect, coordinate around and contain an Ebola threat early.

The weakening of our virus containment apparatus should concern everyone, disturbingly restricting many of the systems that matter most in the first days of an outbreak (i.e. right now). By leaving, the U.S. voluntarily ended formal participation in WHO technical committees and real-time surveillance groups and withdrew staff embedded in WHO operations. That means fewer U.S. personnel plugged into international outbreak intelligence.

The radical cuts to the CDC mean fewer epidemiologists and, therefore, less surge capacity and ability to respond quickly. In short, it points to a hampered ability to respond to Ebola before it arrives here and reduced resilience once it does.

Why did Trump withdraw us from the WHO? Because he blamed the organization for what he perceived as a delayed response to COVID when in fact it was merely scapegoated for the president’s own deplorable lack of urgency.

Public health experts widely regard America’s reaction to the COVID threat as massively slow and flawed. It could have been nipped in the bud, but Trump, early on, treated the virus less like a deadly health emergency than a temporary PR problem. If strong mitigation measures (mask guidance, distancing, limits on gatherings, testing expansion) had begun even two weeks earlier, it’s likely tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented.

Let’s take a look back at a partial timeline of Trump’s COVID response quotes:

February 2, 2020: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”

February 10, 2020: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. The stock market is starting to look very good to me!”

February 26: “The 15 cases (in the U.S.) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”

March 6: “You have to be calm. It’ll go away.”

March 15: “It’s something we have tremendous control over.”

By April 2020, U.S. deaths from COVID would surpass 20,000. By the end of 2020, there would be more than 385,000 confirmed COVID-related fatalities in the United States, making it the third-leading cause of death that year behind heart disease and cancer.

Ebola is a different beast altogether, of course. For the uninitiated, it’s an illness caused by a group of related viruses first discovered in 1976 in the nations now known as South Sudan and Congo in a region near the Ebola River. Fruit bats are thought to carry the viruses without being sickened by them.

People stricken with Ebola may first experience so-called “dry symptoms” such as fever, aches, pains and fatigue before progressing to “wet symptoms” that include diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding. It’s contracted through contact with the bodily fluids of an infected, sick or dead person and contaminated objects like clothing, bedding, needles or medical equipment.

Ebola is, more often than not, fatal. There have been several outbreaks since 2000, and in more than 70 percent of cases the victim died. It is clearly an extremely virulent virus that spreads easily through direct contact.

Are we vulnerable in America to an Ebola plague? Not in the traditional sense. Since it spreads only by direct contact and not through easy airborne transmission like COVID or the measles, a large uncontrolled U.S. spread is much less likely.

However, that doesn’t mean the disdain the Trump Administration has shown for any agency whose statistics he sees as a threat to his ability to spread propaganda doesn’t open us up to a far higher risk than necessary.

Stepping back from W.H.O. and thinning out the C.D.C. makes for a country that’s less preventive and more reactive. Think of it like removing smoke detectors because you already own a fire extinguisher. You still have tools, but you may well learn about the fire later than you should.

In short, Donald Trump is not the president you want when any disease starts spreading out of control. He is, in fact, the worst, because he makes it all about him and his ego rather than the good of the country he’s purportedly trying to protect.

The time to start planning for Ebola to reach our shores is right now. But I have a feeling no one inside TrumpWorld is thinking much about it. Not his hand-picked C.D.C. Not anyone with whom he deals daily. Certainly not Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr.

It’s especially at times like this when I mourn the fact we don’t have a real president.

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

There is a reason why we can’t stop talking about the “president’s” breathtakingly appalling IRS “settlement.” It is not in the slightest hyperbolic to call it the most scandalous and despicable arrangement in American history. And in the era of Trump, that’s really saying something.

The $1.776 billion slush fund arranged by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch — otherwise known as Trump’s chief enabler — and the rest of the president’s corrupt cronies is a blatant admission that the criminals now have full control of the country we once knew as the United States. It’s now little more than a banana republic.

The very idea that Trump is referring to this as the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is sickening beyond comprehension. The shameless Department of Injustice is calling this money “a perpetual appropriation,” which means it’s being set up to reward misconduct in perpetuity — and it’s we taxpayers who are astonishingly having to do the rewarding.

You know the fix is really in when Blanche has full control of the thing. He’s appointing the five-member commission that’s forking over the money. Trump can remove any member without cause if they protest. Only the AG will see the quarterly reports of who gets the money, with no obligation to run it by Congress, much less the public.

Anyone who says they were harmed by the Biden Administration can grab a piece of the action. That includes the nearly 1,600 people charged in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, most of whom were pardoned. Now they can receive compensation for their violent destruction, too.

Sorry to have arrested you for beating cops and destroying the building. We’re letting you out for bad behavior, and here’s $100K for your trouble.

Who says crime doesn’t pay? In fact, in the Trump Administration, it often pays incredibly well and is getting better all the time.

It’s like a bank owner pardoning the robbers who trashed his own branch, then giving them employee bonuses for “showing initiative.”

It’s like a parent whose son sets the house on fire, and instead of consequences, hands him the insurance payout and the keys to the car.

Trump didn’t just excuse the arsonists. He hired them as fire inspectors.

This is the federal government transformed into a full-scale enterprise of organized crime. The Mafia would be wise to take note.

Let’s not sugarcoat this but call it what it is: an ATM for thugs, loyalists, propagandists, and insurrectionists. Anyone who lied or busted a few heads for the president or his allies will now be compensated. Heck, you could turn it into a full-time job. Attack a Trump enemy each month, file a claim, bingo — it’s essentially a salary.

Indeed, it would be shortsighted to think this will only reward past crime. This fund is designed to let everyone know that not only will you not be abandoned if you break the law on Trump’s behalf; your bank account will benefit, too. Interfering in our elections is now a well-compensated career.

If you take care of the president, he’ll take care of you right back. Loyalty officially has an assessed financial value.

It’s the transparent looting of America by a felonious movement that no longer even bothers to conceal its contempt for integrity and constitutional order. The president is raiding the Treasury like a third-world dictator and sharing the gold with those who continue to prop him up.

Could this conceivably be legal? Of course not. But legal no longer factors into the mix. Now, it’s just about what you, and he, and they, can get away with. Rule of law? C’mon, that’s so last century. The law is now effectively defined as whatever you can get away with.

You’ll notice that no one seems capable of stopping this latest piece of authoritarian horror. Trump just does it. Who knew there would be no consequences for brazenly defying all rules of moral and ethical behavior at the highest levels of government?

And now consider this: every crazy MAGA loyalist will now be even more emboldened to do their king’s bidding. No matter how nasty their deed, so long as it’s done on Trump’s behalf, they’ll have a pardon and a payday awaiting them for their trouble.

Lawlessness reigns supreme, ladies and gentlemen. That was made even clearer on Tuesday when the DOJ issued an order permanently barring the U.S. from pursuing any tax claims or other legal actions against Trump, his family, his trusts, and his companies, forevermore — all because his feelings were so hurt when his tax returns got leaked.

I had to read this three times to be sure it wasn’t The Onion.

As if the man’s unfathomable immunity while on duty weren’t enough, now he’s free to pursue any and all forms of fraud (tax and apparently otherwise) without fear of prosecution. Because Todd Blanche needed to drive home that point about his boss being above the law just a bit more forcefully.

To repeat, this means that Trump can cheat on his taxes with impunity, or pay none at all, and there’s not a thing anyone can do about it. Sound familiar?

All of this shows what can be accomplished when embarrassment and disgrace no longer factor into the mix. It speaks volumes about where this country stands on the cusp of its 250th anniversary. And it’s positively tragic.

Forget Iran, or Russia, or China, or any of the other crisis spots impacting the country from outside our borders. The greatest threat to the republic remains the collapse of democracy here at home, and there has never been a more dire risk since at least World War II.

It’s like we’re being run by a bunch of mustache-twirling villains who don’t even seem to fully comprehend everything they’re doing to destroy us on a daily basis.

Oh who am I kidding? They just don’t care.

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

And now, he’s paving the way for you and me and all taxpayers to foot the bill for the enemies of democracy.

You know how the “president” filed that lawsuit in January seeking $10 billion in damages from the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department for the purported damage inflicted by his tax returns getting leaked? Well, as ABC News reported on Friday, Donald Trump is fully prepared to settle it by creating a $1.7 billion slush fund to pay off his allies, including the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol whom he already pardoned.

This money would come from the Treasury’s Judgment Fund, a pool of taxpayer assets that serves to pay out legitimate court judgments against the country. Instead, it would remunerate Trump’s allies, essentially those who purportedly were harmed by what he calls the Biden Administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system.

Of course, it’s the president himself who is doing all of the weaponization. And it’s beyond deplorable. In this scenario, every recipient’s name would be hidden from the public record, so none of that pesky shame need be revealed as people pocket their blood money.

Who controls this “Judgment Fund”? That’s another thing. It’s a five-member commission that would have complete authority to distribute the money as they see fit. And if any of those five defy Trump? He can simply replace them. There is no oversight or transparency or accountability.

This is of course the stuff of authoritarian regimes. And that’s entirely the point.

How can this happen in the United States of America? That will perhaps be for the history books to clarify. For now, it’s inexplicable.

But let’s back up a moment.

The original $10 billion suit was filed by Trump along with sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and the Trump Organization against a former IRS contractor named Charles Littlejohn, who pleaded guilty in federal court of leaking the Trump tax returns. He was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Trump claimed the $10 billion figure to be a fair number to account for his damage to business and person over the leak. But considering it is the president’s own Department of Justice that is supposedly representing the “other side,” it’s been completely ludicrous.

Trump has been, in fact, suing himself.

It was officials in the DOJ are currently negotiating the potential settlement cited above. According to The New York Times, it could also include an agreement that the I.R.S. would drop any audits of Trump, his family members, or businesses.

Sticking with the money part, Trump has obviously been using that $10 billion figure as a bargaining chip, seemingly never imagining he’d ever be able to get away with enriching himself at such a massive figure. If he could, it would potentially more than triple his net worth – an amount that was said to be less than $3 billion when he took office in January 2025.

It is basically a government version of a no-bid contract, because sitting at the negotiating table is none other than Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s lackey who essentially does whatever the boss demands. And right now, the client’s thinking seems to be, “Hey, I’m only asking for less than $2 billion, and none of it’s directly for me.”

In TrumpWorld, this is what passes for reasoned thinking.

The federal judge overseeing the case, Kathleen Williams – an appointee of President Barack Obama in the Southern District of Florida – has requested briefs from both sides by this coming Wednesday. By “both sides,” however, we are talking about Trump and his Justice Department that is anything but non-partisan.

So, what’s the conflict? This is evidently something Williams would like to know, too. She wonders how the president can sue an agency he controls. Quite simply, it’s insane.

To put this into something approaching perspective, the largest administrative settlement the Justice Department has ever paid under the Federal Tort Claims Act was $138.7 million, split among 139 women, over the FBI’s failure to properly handle sexual assault allegations in 2015-16 in the Larry Nassar sexual abuse case involving USA Gymnastics.

Now we have a sitting U.S. President demanding more than 70 times that much – over leaked tax info. Even the payouts to the 9/11 victims’ families were rarely more than $10 million. But $10 billion would be a thousand times that much.

It happens that Littlejohn leaked the returns of thousands of high rollers and billionaires, not just the Trumps. One of those, hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, also sued the I.R.S., settling in 2024 for zero in damages. Instead, he received a public apology from the agency, the I.R.S. having successfully argued that the government can’t be held liable for the actions of a contractor.

Somehow, though, it’s different when the plaintiff is the president. Why? There’s the 10 billion-dollar question. It shouldn’t be, of course, unless he’s outside the rule of law – which we all know Trump to be.

Expect a settlement to come by early this week, before Judge Williams officially decides the case is utterly without merit and can toss it in the trashcan.

It would be the height of irony were Trump to fleece the populace via the I.R.S., an agency he’s fought with his entire life to avoid paying his fair share. On the other hand, it would be entirely on brand for the man who claims not to think about Americans’ financial situation to negotiate himself a monstrous payoff for positively no reason whatsoever.

But again, given how the man has so effectively transformed this presidency thing into the greatest kleptocracy con going – and how the human guardrails that once hindered his greediest instincts are long gone – it would make equal sense that he’d want to create a fund where his cronies can share in the booty.

It remains flat-out astonishing that this criminal is using the legal system to extract so much wealth from a country that’s rendered itself powerless to stop him. Can anyone? In the short-term, unfortunately, it’s doubtful.

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

It was with great fanfare that Satan’s offspring Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. announced on June 16, 2025 the launch of Trump Mobile and T1 Mobile, a “transformational” new cellular service designed to deliver “top-tier connectivity, unbeatable value, and all-American service for our nation’s hardest-working people.”

The Trump boys made a lot of promises at launch. For $499 and $47.45 a month (get it?), it would supply a shimmering gold-plated (naturally) smartphone with a 6.78-inch screen for subscribers who would receive unlimited talk, text and data, 24/7 roadside assistance through Drive America, telehealth services, free international calling, and no contracts or credit check — cancel anytime! And fully MADE IN THE USA!

They might have also added, “no actual phone,” as everyone who forked over the required $100 deposit is still phoneless some 11 months later.

It wasn’t until later that the small print noted the deposit was non-refundable. Whoops. And that the rebranded Android phone was in fact mostly manufactured in China with final assembly in Florida, using components made abroad. This forced a marketing change to an “American-proud” design and a “with American values in mind” description. Why they even bothered when the phone itself may never actually materialize is unclear.

Meanwhile, a reported 600,000 people who dutifully sent in their hundred bucks are out of luck. For their money down, they received a valuable lesson in terms and conditions.

There may, in fact, never be a Trump Mobile device. It’s entirely possible there was never any intention to make one at all, potentially just another smoke-and-mirrors scam from the people who brought you Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump Mortgage, Trump University, Trump Magazine, Trump Water, Trump Watches, Trump: The Game, the Tour de Trump Bicycle Race, Trump Sneakers, the Trump Bible, and on and on.

There is no end to the ways that the Trump Crime Family will swindle the gullible out of their hard-earned greenbacks. You may think I’m kidding when I say the disclaimer now maintains, “A deposit does not constitute a purchase, create a sales contract, reserve inventory, or guarantee the device will be produced or delivered.” They might as well just say, “It’s the first smartphone with a campaign slogan instead of an actual release date!”

You talk about a sucker being born every minute. In the Trump era, it’s every second. But the fact that there are still souls who trust these cheats doesn’t mean they aren’t due the product they paid for.

The customers who have been on the waitlist were initially told the phone was coming out last August. But it’s faced multiple delays, with revised shipping estimates moving to October 2025, December 2025, January 2026 and March 2026. Now we’re in May, and there is no hint of when, or if, the phones will surface — and certainly no discussion of refunds. Perish the thought.

In fact, Trump and Sons have pocketed $59 million in literal chump change from the preorder deposits so far. That’s money the president can use to bet on the stock market, or invest in crypto, or take a bath in.

So for the moment, all that people sitting at home with no Trump Mobile T1 to satisfy their communication needs have are jokes to keep them entertained, like:

• The battery life is incredible because no one’s been able to turn one on.

• It runs on Android, IOS, and perpetual disappointment.

• The launch has been delayed so many times that even the voicemail says, “We’ll circle back.”

• It’s the first phone whose most active feature is the preorder button.

• At this point, the Trump phone and the GOP healthcare plan should launch together.

But seriously, if you go to the phone website (trumpmobile.com), the scamming grows even more specific. Here’s one gem: “Trump Mobile does not control and is not responsible for the availability, performance, content, or quality of Included Services. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Trump Mobile disclaims all liability arising from or related to your use of any Included Services.”

Translation: We’re barely putting our name on this thing. Call China if you’ve got a problem, pal.

It’s pretty much what we would expect to see from a brand that cares significantly more about promotion than quality. They slap the Trump name on things to generate cash without any concern for the unfortunate saps who buy the product or service, as those who enrolled at Trump U discovered the hard way.

That’s the thing with all things Trump. No one has ever emerged from purchasing anything his poisonous handle has been associated with and thought, “Wow, that was SO worth it.” More often, it’s, “What the living hell was I thinking?”

I’ll be surprised if the Trump phone ever actually surfaces. I’ll be even more shocked if anyone is ever reacquainted with their deposit. Trump is not in the habit of reimbursing or holding up his end of any deal. It’s part of his charm.

The confounding part is the folks who continue to trust him despite getting screwed time after time. It is, as they say, the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. As if we needed additional evidence that anyone who backs Trump is full-scale nuts.

Here’s another thing to consider: Do we really think that a Trump-branded phone would be released without it being packed with digital surveillance technology that scoops up information on the owner? I mean, how creepy would it be to walk around with a communications device bearing the Trump name constantly in your pocket, or purse, or in your hand?

As if the man wasn’t controlling our lives far too much as it is. I’ve already grown to despise the color gold or anything golden in my eyeline, up to and including the McDonald’s golden arches.

I am, however, pretty sure that the phone – if and when it actually comes into being – will come with one-button calling to Hell.

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

It happened in a college class in the late 1970s, or what I like to recall as The Stoned Age.

Our math professor gave the students an option: write a term paper or – as an alternative – gather all the students in the class together (there were 26) and collectively make a billion chicken scratches on pieces of paper. If we could successfully pull it off, we’d all get an A.

My classmates thought the latter was a great idea, and one night a week before the paper was due, a half-dozen of us started making scratches. We made it up to 1.7 million of them over the course of four days, as I recall, before we gave up – well under one percent of the total needed.

The professor had made his point: a billion is a helluva big number. We figured out that if we were to make a scratch on paper every second, it would take 31.7 years. That’s with no sleep, no breaks, no eating, no bathroom visits. Just eternal scribbling.

Similarly, it would take you nearly 32 years to spend a billion dollars if you plunked down a buck every single second, a rate of $86,400. Every. Single. Day. (Spending $1 trillion would take more than 31,000 years.)

I bring this up now to drive home the point that $1 billion is an insane amount of money. We don’t often consider that it’s a thousand million. That much money could fund between 50,000 and 65,000 students for an entire school year in a typical American public school – or, alternatively, one White House ballroom.

You may have heard that our truth-challenged president suddenly understands he can no longer build his dream bunker ballroom on private funding alone, or at all. So, he’s now seeking a billion dollars in taxpayer money to fund his vanity monstrosity. This is, again, the very same project that he promised wouldn’t cost us peasants a single dime.

It wasn’t enough that this human wrecking ball of a chief executive tore down the entire East Wing of the White House after promising he wouldn’t. Now he has to fleece the populace on top of it, because you know his loyal toadies in Congress will come up with the money for their lord and master.

The fact that everything about the ballroom leading up to this moment has been fueled by lies from Trump is a given. He lies as easily as he breathes — easier actually, since drawing breaths is no longer his strong suit.

Let’s move beyond that to imagine how far a staggering amount of money like a billion dollars could go in funding an astonishing amount of public good.

Here is what you could do with it:

• Replace tens of thousands of failing lead water pipes in older cities and improve drinking water systems.
• Build hundreds of permanently affordable apartments for homeless veterans.
• Fund mobile medical clinics in rural counties with hospital shortages caused by Medicaid cutbacks.
• Retrofit public schools with modern air conditioning and heating systems.
• Reopen shuttered libraries and community centers.
• Fund free breakfast and lunch programs for entire school districts for years.
• Pay off medical debt for hundreds of thousands of families.
• Restore wetlands and flood barriers in hurricane-prone regions.
• Create addiction recovery centers in areas devastated by opioids.
• Expand Amtrak routes and modernize rail stations.
• Fund free community college tuition for thousands of students.
• Build mental health crisis centers and reduce ER overcrowding.
• Upgrade VA hospitals with modern equipment and staffing.
• Expand childcare assistance for working families.
• Build public housing for seniors on fixed incomes.
• Provide grants to struggling family farms.
• Repair aging bridges, roads, and water systems.
• Fund maternal healthcare clinics in underserved areas.
• Build addiction treatment beds instead of jail expansion.
• Upgrade prison conditions and rehab programs.
• Create job-training centers for displaced workers.
• Fund local journalism initiatives in “news desert” communities.
• Expand early childhood education and universal pre-K.
• Improve cybersecurity protections for hospitals and utilities while strengthening nationwide infrastructure.
• Expand suicide prevention hotlines and crisis response teams.
• Rebuild neglected playgrounds and recreation facilities.
• Increase legal immigration processing capacity to reduce backlogs.
• Improve airport, rail, and subway systems.
• Upgrade air traffic control and transportation safety systems.
• Hire thousands of teachers, nurses, firefighters, policemen, and social workers to reduce the burden on overworked and underfunded staff.

And this is just a drop in the bucket of what could benefit with $1 billion. The tangible needs that would go such a long way in helping make life easier and better are numerous and, by this administration, perpetually neglected.

How do Republicans justify blowing that much dough on something so ridiculously unnecessary? They don’t. But here’s why Trump seems to want it so badly: if he were to decide to challenge the idea of having to leave office at the end of his term, which we all know is possible if not probable, he could hole up in his state-of-the-art ballroom bunker designed as a below-ground living space.

What would that billion be financing? An underground hospital/bomb shelter/fortress secured with missile-resistant steel and drone-proof roofing materials. It would feature its own communication center and military command apparatus completely independent of the city above.

In other words, if you were a crazy dictator hellbent on sticking around past your expiration date, this would be exactly the kind of place you’d plan. It would have everything but its own Bunkerland McDonald’s, and I’m sure Trump would figure out a way to insert that into the blueprint, too.

The final indignity is that me and you are now the ones being tasked with footing the bill for this outrageous structure seemingly designed to protect an authoritarian and make sure he never has to relinquish power until he’s dead and gone.

Should this outrage continue to move forward, there are at least a billion reasons why Republicans should be forced to wear this around their collective necks like a scarlet “B.”

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

My first thought after I found out there had been gunshots at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday was quite possibly the same as yours and can be summed up in a single word: staged.

The fact that enough information about the shooting suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, has emerged to mostly tamp down the suspicion of it being bogus doesn’t in the slightest minimize what was so disturbing about it. This administration is so deceitful, corrupt and insincere that our default is now that we’re probably being played — because most of the time, we are.

In this case, however, the shooter doesn’t fit the typical lone wolf profile. Allen, 31, is a Caltech engineering graduate from Torrance, CA, with a master’s degree from Cal State Dominguez Hills. He’s a mechanical engineer and computer scientist as well as a game developer. This isn’t some loser dude living in his parents’ basement playing Mortal Kombat and firing out hateful messages to his fellow malcontents. He was Teacher of the Month at a tutoring and test prep center.

What caused this guy to snap and allegedly rush the Washington D.C. Hilton with a shotgun, a handgun, and a bunch of knives — driven by a manifesto to target administration officials — isn’t yet clear. But the truth is that he was no random wacko. He’s a very bright guy who evidently gave this a lot of thought before making an unfortunate choice.

This is not to say that I or anyone reading these words would ever consider a similar violent act of trying to burst into a fancy event attended by hotshot journalists with the goal of tallying a body count. But many of us surely understand the frustration and anger that can lead to it.

Anyone sticking to the “It was staged!” charge would at this point have to account for a lot of significant question marks. Chief among them is why a guy of Allen’s evident intellect and progressive politics would decide on something of a whim to throw his life in the trash to help President Trump with another timely diversion from the growing quagmire in Iran and the still-looming saga of the Epstein Files.

Yet Trump sure didn’t seem shaken up in the slightest by this incident that we can’t yet seem to easily categorize. Was it an assassination attempt? A lax response to one man’s mental breakdown? A simple security breach? All of the above?

Trump pivoted so seamlessly from the abrupt cancellation of the dinner to the necessity of building his White House ballroom/bunker pronto that it left many heads spinning. He talked about drone-proofing and bulletproof glass and 150 years of presidents purportedly demanding the ballroom and all of his usual blah blah blah.

Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt on Saturday, much less killed. You see more injuries in a typical Sunday of NFL Football. That doesn’t mean the incident wasn’t entirely genuine. But everything this administration does is so designed to mislead that it’s impossible to trust anything it tells us.

That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s the shameful reality of 2026.

We have been conditioned now to treat everything we’re being told, every line we’re being fed, as suspect. The one thing we never hear is any accountability. We’re supposed to believe them and not our eyes. Instead, it’s about deflection, justification, branding. A security failure is cast as a further reason to build an unnecessary golden monstrosity onto a structure that once symbolized class and distinction but now stands for tackiness and hideous overkill.

At a moment when a normal human being would be counting his blessings for literally and figuratively dodging another bullet, Trump is consumed with construction, camera angles, ratings, profits.

Why would we buy a single thing he tells us about this or anything else? He contends that the economy is the strongest in history when it’s teetering on the edge of freefall. He says his approval ratings are high when they’re at historic lows. He insists we’re winning a war in Iran that all indications are the opposite. He struts around telling us he’s been “totally exonerated” in the Epstein Files when nothing of the sort has been confirmed. Down is up. Cold is hot. Fake is real.

We’re a populace that’s always being spun some new pile of bull. When that happens, every crisis feels like a con. We’re now the country that collectively cried wolf. The greatest danger is that if a real emergency were to befall us, at this point, no one would believe it. The suspicion would be that the president must be up to something again.

Here is also the truth about the White House Correspondents' Dinner: the event shouldn’t have gone on in the first place. No serious journalist should have been in that room. After all, the guest of honor was a man who has spent the past decade claiming journos are “the enemy of the people,” dangerously soiling reputations and unconscionably putting lives in danger. His assault on the First Amendment has been unrelenting.

This is the man that the association honored with its members’ presence, like so many victims of Stockholm syndrome bonding with their captor. Before shots rang out, the attendees were planning to raise a glass to Trump, laugh with him, celebrate with him, break bread with him — the same guy doing everything in his power to erase their existence.

In Trump’s Washington, this is apparently what passes for “celebrating a free press” when there is no longer a single free thing about it. He labels every story that he doesn’t like as “fake,” and yet these professionals still clamor for access.

It’s all pretty sick. In that sense, Cole Allen did them all a favor with his hostile act over the weekend. He cleared a room they should never have entered. The biggest catastrophe of the night is that the journalists themselves were complicit in their own demise.

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

News item: House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer tells Politico that members of his panel are open to a Trump pardon of Ghislaine Maxwell as a way to encourage her to provide testimony about Jeffrey Epstein.

Reaction: Oh sure, by all means grant the most notorious sex trafficking accomplice and groomer of underage girls in American history her freedom. That should help seal the fate of Republicans who go along with it for decades to come.

OK, now I know I’ve said stuff like this before. I’m also the guy who believed Trump would never get past pardoning the January 6 convicts en masse. And I apparently mistakenly thought, “Well, surely attacking the Pope – THE POPE! – has got to be a bridge too far.” I realize all too well that none of his transparent criminality has proven a deal-breaker to his brain-dead MAGA-ites. I get it.

But pardoning Epstein’s co-conspirator? I’m sorry, but I just can’t believe that could possibly fly on this or any other planet.

Transferring Maxwell to the minimum security (read: country club) prison in Bryan, Texas last year was one thing. Granting her complete freedom? Quite another.

I’m sorry, but I have to believe there is a low that’s too low even for people whose burners are no longer heating the teapot. You don’t make deals with a convicted felon to supply info on someone who is no longer alive. That’s the thing about these Epstein Files: we do not, in fact, give a rat’s backside about Epstein himself. He’s dead. That ship has more than sailed.

Those whose past abuse and complicity matter are the ones still living who could, just maybe, face justice if those shaping the narrative would permit something resembling real hearings to take place.

I can’t believe I even need to write this sentence, but absolutely nothing that exits the mouth of Maxwell should be seen as the truth. She’s a compulsive liar interested only in saving herself. Her word carries zero credibility. She’s lied before. She will lie again. And again. And again.

So, let’s stop deluding ourselves into believing the woman holds valuable information. She clearly does, but that won’t be what she would be sharing. She’s merely hoping to parlay the illusion of honesty into a Get Out of Jail Free card. Her pardon would come in exchange for shoveling nonsense that steers all lawless behavior away from a certain president and his wealthy cronies.

It's only because Maxwell has played the game of deflection and protection well that she is still alive. If she hadn’t, she would have long ago met an unfortunate end behind bars – and I’m not talking about suicide but the other kind of “cide” that starts with an “h.”

That her being sprung from captivity is even being seriously tossed out as a possibility is unfathomable.

Let’s do a quick recap of what Ms. Maxwell was convicted of in 2022 that led to her being sentenced to 20 years in federal prison:

• She identified, recruited, and groomed girls as young as 14, vulnerable teenagers with whom she built trust before shattering it by forcing them into sexual bondage.

• She trained victims to accept inappropriate conduct, often by participating in or being present during the abuse.

• She arranged travel, scheduling visits to Epstein’s homes/island and creating an environment where the molestation and rape could occur.

• She helped maintain the network by keeping victims compliant, sometimes encouraging them to recruit other girls and keep the supply chain well-stocked.

• She was a central organizer of perhaps the most egregious sex trafficking and pedophile ring ever, a person who lowered victims’ defenses through social manipulation and extended the reach and duration of Epstein’s vile operation.

• She was, throughout her decades by Epstein’s side, a shameless exploiter and far more than just an associate. She was the engine that drove the machine.

How much does Maxwell know? A whole helluva lot. How much is she willing to actually tell? Pretty much nothing. She is, once again, valueless as an information source. Her job at this point is primarily to protect Donald Trump, and if she’s successful, she will be vastly rewarded. In fact, she’s already begun collecting on her silence with the transfer to the much cushier federal lockup.

If we have learned nothing else from Trump’s time as our chief executive, it’s that loyalty isn’t just required, it’s the whole shebang. The more criminally you will cover for Trump, the greater the respect he has for you and — often, not always — the more he will do for you. Until he tosses you under the bus anyway, of course.

But would Trump really go so far as to pardon Maxwell? Absolutely. It isn’t a matter of morality, of course. Were you to look under a moral microscope into Trump’s DNA, there would be no evidence of even the smallest twinge of fiber.

No, the only reason Trump might decline to pardon, or at least delay pardoning, Maxwell has everything to do with whether the blowback might be too intense. It’s mostly a matter of timing. Once the Epstein heat has sufficiently cooled, the odds are pretty good he would see an opening.

Let’s remember that after Maxwell’s original arrest in 2022, Trump was on record saying, “I wish her well.” Really. It was a little bit like wishing Rudolf Hess well in his military tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945.

In this case, wishing Maxwell well was his coded way of saying, “Now you be a good little inmate and we’ll see about helping you out of this mess down the road. If you’re not, we’ll have to take care of you a different way.”

It’s clear that Ghislaine heard that message loud and clear. When she was “deposed” by Trump's lawyer (now Acting Attorney General) Todd Blanche, she “testified” that she never saw Trump do a single thing in Epstein’s presence. He was basically taking naps while everything was going on.

In this administration and with this president, truth is not only dead; it never existed in the first place. Lies are the only currency this corrupt regime accepts. If it ultimately gains Maxwell her freedom, it should bring them all crashing down.

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

There is just so much back-and-forth going on between Donald Trump and Jesus Christ right now that I had a feeling the two must be secretly meeting and trying to figure each other out. And it turns out I was right.

In this Raw Story exclusive, I was able to eavesdrop on the president of the United States and our Lord and Savior as they talked shop.

Here is what I managed to scribble down:

Donald Trump: “So this is it. This is The Guy. I’ll be honest. I expected more. Bigger presence. People talk about you like you’re the greatest ever. I’ve seen greater.”

Jesus Christ: “What were you hoping to see, my son?”

Trump: “Strength. Authority. A winner. Not…this.”

Christ: “And what is ‘this’?”

Trump: “Soft. Quiet. You let people walk all over you. Meanwhile, I’m not buying the whole ‘walk on water’ thing.”

Christ: “I allow people to interact with me however they choose.”

Trump: “And they chose to kill you. Not much of a winning strategy there, pal.”

Christ: “Is that how you measure a life?”

Trump: “It’s how the world measures everything.”

Christ: “I don’t see things in the same fashion. I look at the value of the person. This is how I view achievement.”

Trump: “Yeah sure. Everyone takes advantage of you, uses you and your influence to prop themselves up – including me. You make it WAY too easy.”

Christ: “And yet people find spiritual comfort in the enlightenment I offer.”

Trump: “You talk a good game. But the truth is you’re a disaster. You had the crowd. You had the attention. You could’ve led – really led. Instead, you wandered around, told stories, upset the wrong people.”

Christ: “And what would you have had me do?”

Trump: “Take charge. Build something that lasts out of gold. Put your name on stuff besides churches. No one takes churches seriously. Not really.”

Christ: “What you build will not last.”

Trump: “See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. You disparage what you don’t understand because you’re jealous.”

Christ: “You build monuments to yourself that will crumble shortly after you shuffle off this mortal coil.”

Trump: “Not true. You’re crazy. What I build lasts forever and has my name on it.”

Christ: “I inspire people to build from their sacred dreams. Those structures are indestructible due to their foundation of insight.”

Trump: “I haven’t got the slightest clue what the hell you’re talking about.”

Christ: “And you never will.”

Trump: “Oh really? And why is that?”

Christ: “Because you are concerned only with finding someone or something to defeat. You have no interest in things that stimulate, that motivate, that inspire, that fulfill. You care exclusively about conquering, crushing, annihilating, deflating.”

Trump: “Because that’s what success is all about. I win. You lose. You’re destroyed in the process. And no one wins like me. That’s why the people love me. You’re just a guy who got nailed to a cross. I like my messiahs not crucified.”

Christ: “I died to atone for mankind’s sins. I do not view that as a loss so much as a form of sacrifice, a concept I fear you will never understand.”

Trump: “Oh I understand it, all right. I’ve sacrificed plenty. All of the criticism from losers. All of the lawsuits. All of the disrespect.”

Christ: “You will never comprehend true sacrifice until you embrace humility.”

Trump: “This is all just a load of crap, Jesus. You really think you’re above all of this, don’t you?”

Christ: “No.”

Trump: “Then what is it? Because you stand there like none of it matters – success, power, recognition, all of the things people actually care about.”

Christ: “I care about those who care about themselves.“

Trump: “See, there you go again, spouting gibberish. Exactly what people who never notch a victory say.”

Christ: “This victory of which you speak is not what I am here for.”

Trump: “Oh yeah? What did you come for?”

Christ: “I came to free human beings from the tyranny of self.”

Trump: “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?”

Christ: “I’m offering people the truth about themselves.”

Trump: “No. You’re offering them failure.”

Christ: “If it is failure that I represent, my son, then why is it that you seem so enchanted by my likeness that you use it and refer to it at every opportunity?”

Trump: “It’s a way to control people. They are so gaga over your religion – the religion you named after yourself, I might add – that they still follow everything they think you taught them about life.”

Christ: “I offer souls a pathway to contentment.”

Trump: “I teach them to avoid failure and turn it into strength.”

Christ: “You turn it into anger.”

Trump: “Anger wins.”

Christ: “For a moment.”

Trump: “Long enough.”

Christ: “To what end?”

Trump: “Domination.”

Christ: “It is a way to divide. I prefer strength through unity and loving one another.”

Trump: “Whatever. You know, for someone people call the Son of God, you haven’t done a very good job proving it.”

Christ: “How would you suggest I prove it?”

Trump: “I don’t know. Turn water into wine. Heal the sick. Cast out demons. Create chaos out of thin air. Something.”

Christ: “You would not believe it even if you witnessed it, as your cynicism clouds your every thought.”

Trump: “Excuse me?”

Christ: “You only believe what serves you.”

Trump: “That’s not true.”

Christ: “You have built your life on it. And in the process, you have left the world stained with your own egoistic vision of the darkness that inhabits your soul.”

Trump: “Oh yeah? Well darkness has worked pretty well for me so far. I’m worth $6.3 billion. What’s your net worth, Christ?”

Christ: “I cannot be measured in materialistic wealth.”

Trump: “That’s what all the losers tell me.”

Christ: “My response is that you are loved.”

Trump: “Who cares? All that matters to me is that I won.”

Christ: “Then you will never achieve what you seek. And you will never be truly satisfied.”

Trump: “You and that Pope Leo are like peas in a pod. Negative, negative, negative. Enjoy your stupid little existence. I’m done.”

Christ: “I will pray for you.”

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