PUTIN PLAYS THE MORON EVERY DAY

 

 

MASTER LIST OF TRUMP'S GRIFTS AND CRIMES

 

Pay Me Trump is exploiting the Presidency with relentless consistency. Just look. Todd Zwillich May 30     You’ve likely already heard about many or most of the conflicts and invitations to corruption Trump has spawned in just the first four months of his second term. Here’s everything, all at once, together, in no special order. The scope is mind blowing, and tragic: ·         CBS lawsuit - I put this one first because I sense it’s flying under the radar. Trump is demanding $25 million and an apology to settle his private lawsuit against Paramount over a 60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview he considered unfairly edited during the 2024 campaign. Paramount, which owns CBS News, offered $15 million, which Trump rejected this week. But $15 million and journalistic integrity isn’t what’s at stake for Paramount. They have an $8 billion merger deal pending before the Trump Administration. Paramount executives have even been warned that settling with the President of the United States before the merger deal is done could expose them to potential bribery charges. That’s right: A corporation controlling one of America’s largest news networks understands that the president could kill its financial prospects if it doesn’t capitulate and pay up to him personally. ·         World Liberty Financial - Trump and the Trump Org. are 60% partners in this crypto-brokerage business. Early on in their investment, Justin Sun, a Chinese national under an SEC fraud investigation, poured $30 million in token purchases into World Liberty, an estimated $18 million of which went directly to the Trump family, and the president. The SEC, which answers to Trump, then suspended its investigation. Sun’s total investment has since been upped to around $75 million. World Liberty was also the place where a UAE-backed fund purchased $2 billion in stablecoins to invest in Binance. Trump will earn tens of millions per year in interest on the $2 billion in addition to millions in transaction fees for the original purchase…all courtesy of the royal family of the a Middle-Eastern government. Trump is also in charge of enforcing (or not enforcing) regulations on the crypto industry, as well as holding the keys to whether new crypto rules become law. ·         $TRUMP - Donald Trump launched his personal memecoin just before taking office. It’s not clear how much he owns. Last month the group the runs the coin offered a private dinner with the president to top 220 holders. The top 25 got a VIP White House tour. Attendees spent a total of $148 million to attend the dinner, hosted at Trump’s private club in Virginia. Incidentally, Justin Sun, who had been avoiding travel to the US for fear of arrest, bought $20 million worth of the $TRUMP memecoin and showed up without fear to attend the dinner. ·         $MELANIA - First Lady Melania Trump has her own meme coin, with a current market cap of $203 million. And speaking of the First Lady… ·         Amazon - Disney bid $14 million for the rights to Melania’s autobiographical documentary film. Then Jeff Bezos’ Amazon swooped in an paid $40 million. Melania nets an estimated $28 million from the deal. Amazon is embroiled in a massive antitrust suit with the Federal Trade Commission and has billions in government contracts. ·         Trump Media & Technology - Trump is the majority shareholder in the company that controls Truth Social. It’s publicly traded, meaning any individual or entity wishing to increase his net worth need only buy stock. Alternatively, anyone wishing to leverage Trump could threaten to sell shares. This week the company announced a $2.5 billion Bitcoin buy. As tariffs, trade wars and $3 trillion in new debt in the GOP reconciliation bill weaken the dollar, that’s a potential upside for Bitcoin. That means Trump increasingly stands to gain personally from the policies he’s pushing that weaken the dollar’s standing as the world’s reserve currency. ·         Tariffs and the Trump Org. - Trump still makes money IRL. His sons are busy negotiating development deals—some worth billions—in countries looking for ways out of Trump’s tariffs. Pressure to avoid 27% tariffs and the “personal attention” of President Trump spurred the Vietnamese government to “break its own laws” and fast-track a $1.5 billion Trump golf and resort deal earlier this month. Other Trump real estate deals are going ahead in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. ·         Starlink - US trade officials are also pushing countries negotiating on tariffs to buy contracts with Elon Musk’s satellite internet company. Starlink has secured deals in India, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Lesotho and Vietnam. Musk spent $280 million on Trump’s 2024 election. ·         Qatari jet - Who can forget Trump’s $400 million gift jet courtesy of the Qatari royal family? Even GOP lawmakers couldn’t hold back their discomfort with the gift to the Defense Dept, to be later transferred for Trump’s personal use at his presidential library foundation. After expressing discomfort, they’ve done nothing about it. ·         Executive Branch - If you pay Don Jr. and his partners $500,000 you can get into the posh club they’re launching in DC’s Georgetown. For the payment you get access to a place meant to “cater to the business and tech moguls who are looking to nurture their relationships with the Trump administration.” ·         Trump properties - This one seems almost quaint at this point, and it’s worth millions. Donald Trump continues to profit directly from every event and presidential visit to one of his properties. That includes the crypto dinner in Virginia, which paid Trump for hosting the event for a meme coin where investors also paid him. Trump charged the US Secret Service nearly $2 million in his first term alone just to accommodate personnel at Mar-a-Lago. ·         Pardons - Trump issued more than two dozen pardons and commutations this week to a legion of admitted fraudsters, tax cheats and thieves. There’s no direct evidence I’m aware of that he’s been paid money for them. BUT a sordid cottage industry sprang up in Trump’s first term where cronies charged clients tens of thousands of dollars to lobby Trump for pardons. Former CIA officer and convicted felon John Kiriakou claimed Rudy Giuliani asked for $2 million. How much money, if any, was kicked up to Trump is unknown. This week Trump pardoned tax cheat Paul Walczak after his mother touted her political support and spent $1 million to attend a Trump fundraiser…at Mar-a-Lago (meaning Trump personally made money on the dinner itself.) But, worse than in the first term, supplicants, applicants and everyone else are now aware that all they need do to increase the president’s net worth is buy stock in Trump Media. If more anonymity is desired, purchase $TRUMP. No one need ever know except them, the boss, and the blockchain. Hold onto this list and look at it once in a while. Its sheer size—and the variety and consistency of self-dealing it represents—are critical reminder of what’s at stake for journalism, for democracy, and for all of us.

MORE LIES FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

 

As more fake citations emerge in the ‘MAHA’ report, White House struggles with a defense

To describe references to nonexistent scientific research as “some formatting issues” is like saying the Titanic confronted “some evening issues.”

May 30, 2025, 7:52 AM CDT

By Steve Benen

Almost immediately after Donald Trump and his White House team unveiled “The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again” last week, problems emerged. The Washington Post reported, for example, that some of the report’s suggestions “stretched the limits of science,” and offered “misleading representations” of scientific research.

A week later, a devastating report published by NOTUS advanced the underlying story considerably, highlighting the unambiguous fact that the MAHA document “misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.” Soon after, The New York Times identified “additional faulty references” in the report. From the Times’ article:

The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues. But the report, from the presidential Make America Healthy Again Commission, cited studies that did not exist. These included fictitious studies on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, mental illness and medications prescribed for children with asthma.

While there’s been no official explanation for how, exactly, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team managed to release a much-hyped official document with fake citations, multiple reports noted the likely culprit. As The Washington Post reported, “Some of the citations ... appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.”

In a normal administration functioning in a healthy political environment, a fiasco like this would lead to multiple resignations. But in the Trump era, officials play the game by a different set of rules.

For example, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was pressed for some kind of explanation for the MAHA debacle. The president’s chief spokesperson responded by claiming there were “some formatting issues” with the document.

In case this isn’t obvious, “formatting issues” tend to refer to things such as page margins, font size or perhaps misnumbered pages.

To describe references to nonexistent scientific research, in an official federal document related to public health policy, as “some formatting issues” is like saying the Titanic confronted “some evening issues.”

Leavitt nevertheless added that the White House has “complete confidence” in Kennedy. She didn’t elaborate as to why, exactly, Kennedy remains in the president’s good graces, though it appears to have something to do with Trump’s indifference to whether the conspiracy theorist leading the Department of Health and Human Services gets things right or wrong.

THE TACO TRAITOR - TACO IS A TERRIFIC TAUNT FOR TRUMP THE CHICKEN

 

 

 

  

 

TACO has the potential to hurt Trump.

(1) It’s simple. Trump Always Chickens Out. You can put that phrase anywhere, apply it to anything, and everyone knows what it means.

(2) It’s meme-able. You have the slogan. You have the word mark. And you have an universally recognizable image. Hell, there’s even a pre-built emoji for it. 🌮 You can put this thing anywhere and it will be a symbol of the democracy movement.

(3) It’s universal. You can apply it to any situation. Trump pulls back on tariffs? TACO. Trump gives in to Putin? TACO. Trump increases the national debt? TACO.

(4) It’s organic. No Democratic strategist came up with TACO. It’s an observation that emerged from the finance world—from the very same bros who voted for Trump in the first place. You can feel the disdain of his own supporters dripping off of it.

(5) It hits at something deep inside Trump. It’s about his soul. It’s about his weakness.

(6) It’s a provocation. Real talk: It’s usually good that Trump chickens out. It’s good that he didn’t try to use the military to remain in office in January of 2021. It’s good that he pulled the 150 percent tariffs back to 45 percent, or 30 percent, or whatever they’re at this morning.

But in the current dynamic, that’s how Trump wins. He says he’s going to do some insane thing, his supporters give him credit for doing it—but then he pulls back in order to avoid the worst real-world consequences.

By hitting him with TACO over and over, you (a) reveal his pull-backs as weakness and (b) dare him to go through with the stuff that will screw up the real world—and, in theory, create pain for his movement.