Two quick caveats first: 1) I don't assume that my opinion influences politicians, and 2) I almost never have hard-core litmus tests of the "If they vote this way then I simply won't support them" type because there is room for honest disagreement on many issues and because politicians are imperfect and have competing interests and pressures.
BUT, I will never support a politician who overtly supports (which is not the same as not condemning, though that would be better) the Trump "anti-weaponization" slush fund combined with the DOJ granting Trump, his family, and his friends and all their businesses a get-out-of-jail-free card for any previous crimes related to their taxes and maybe, depending on interpretation, on any crimes or civil violations of any sort.
This is the single most corrupt thing I've seen from the federal government in years, and maybe in my lifetime, as far as an official government policy. Usually, if they're going to do something that corrupt, they hide it and it's found out later. Like Watergate, for example.
In a sense, this is worse than Watergate because of the precedent it would set if allowed to stand.
So, again, without thinking I'm influencing anyone so I may just be shouting into a tornado, I will look for opportunities to support primary challengers to any Republican who expressly supports this particular Trump corruption (as @ByronDonalds did on @CNN earlier today.)
@ParkerJGabriel That’s obviously a big break for the Broncos as Mahomes’ injury is worse to come back from than Nix’ ankle.
This is a much easier game week 1 than week 12.
A man with no working truck convinced Wall Street he had built the next Tesla. His company hit $30 BILLION. All he did was push it down a hill with no engine.
> Trevor Milton founded Nikola in 2014, named after the same inventor as Tesla.
> The goal was to build hydrogen powered trucks that would make diesel obsolete. He had no trucks.
> In 2018 he released a promotional video called Nikola One In Motion. It showed a sleek semi truck accelerating smoothly down an open highway.
Investors went wild.
> What nobody knew was that the truck had no engine, no fuel cell, and no propulsion system of any kind.
> Milton's team towed it to the top of a hill, tilted the camera to hide the slope, and let it roll.
> He spent the next four years doing the same thing with words. On podcasts, television and social media.
> Investors were told Nikola could produce its own hydrogen. It could not. They were told the trucks were ready for production. They were not. They were told orders were flooding in. They weren't.
> In June 2020 Nikola went public. Within days the company was worth $30 BILLION, more than Ford.
> Milton's personal stake hit $7.3 BILLION overnight.
> A $32.5 MILLION ranch in Utah followed. A record for the state at the time.
> In September 2020 Hindenburg Research published a report calling Nikola "an intricate fraud" built on "an ocean of lies." Milton resigned within ten days.
> A federal jury convicted him of securities fraud and wire fraud in 2022. Sentenced to four years in prison the following year.
> He never went. He was free on $100 MILLION bail pending appeal.
> He and his wife donated $3.2 MILLION to Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.
> In March 2025 Trump gave him a full pardon. The pardon erased $168 MILLION in restitution to defrauded shareholders.
> Nikola filed for bankruptcy the following month, leaving thousands of investors with nothing.
The company never had a product. The only thing that was real was the $30 BILLION valuation, the $7 BILLION that landed in his pocket and the pardon that made sure none of it had to be returned.
The White House says real estate investors Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff will go to Pakistan on Saturday for Iran negotiations. JD Vance and Marco Rubio are not going.
ICYMI, because you probably did, somebody placed a massive short on oil right before Energy Secretary Chris Wright posted a Tweet claiming US naval forces had escorted an oil tanker through the Hormuz Strait. Oil dropped $5 a barrel over the next few minutes. The short covered.
8 minutes later, it was revealed Wright's story was a complete fabrication, and he deleted all mention of it on the internet. Oil prices shot back up $5 a barrel.
The mystery short seller made 100 million dollars in 8 minutes.
Anyhow, here's principled conservative Ron DeSantis not giving a shit about that and instead trying to tell people that oil prices are going to collapse because *checks notes* it's only up 63% in the last few trading sessions instead of 91. Because in volatility events, you should always take a victory lap on price before things setttle.
@ZachKleinWSB@AllbrightNFL How do we know he played the “ENTIRE season” with the issue? If he knew he had it, wouldn’t he have fixed it at some point?
My guess is he had something before the season and therefore he *thinks* it was there the entire season.
Big: The NYT just confirmed the missing Epstein files related to charges of potential abuse by Trump himself and is treating it as a blockbuster story:
https://t.co/ueDQLrlplq
🚨Huge story this evening🚨
Jeffrey Epstien paid private detectives to remove equipment from his home and store them in secret storage units across the US.
Search warrants reviewed by The Telegraph suggest US authorities never raided the lockers, raising the possibility that they may contain unseen evidence relating to Epstein and his associates.
https://t.co/hHDMHUAuLo
🚨Huge story this evening🚨
Jeffrey Epstien paid private detectives to remove equipment from his home and store them in secret storage units across the US.
Search warrants reviewed by The Telegraph suggest US authorities never raided the lockers, raising the possibility that they may contain unseen evidence relating to Epstein and his associates.
https://t.co/hHDMHUAuLo
This is a spectacularly important study.
Published in Nature, it provides solid evidence that this platform pushes those on the right further to the right, more pro-Trump, more pro-Russia,…
And that these effects are programmed into the platform
https://t.co/coNPOvjA9E
NEW: I caught the DOJ deleting a record showing Ghislaine Maxwell has potential blackmail on Trump. The document reveals that DOJ gave Maxwell's lawyers three FBI interviews with an underage Trump accuser that have not been released to the public.
https://t.co/CPx7L9YBGB
@gtconway3d There was a story about Trump yelling at Marge that his friends might get hurt by the release of the files.
Do we know if the settlement agreement is public?