I slip and slide through the tides of my youth.
What's age? Too young to worry, too old to dream.
What's age? Imagination to me, tragedy to some.
What's age? I guess we find out when we're older. Touché.
This is so insanely corrupt, I can’t even believe it.
More than half the donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom just won over $50 billion in new federal contracts in six months.
And here’s the part that should make your blood boil.
Sixteen of these 27 donors were facing federal enforcement actions, antitrust reviews, labor cases, securities charges. Many of those cases have been quietly dropped or scaled back since Trump took office. You write a check, your legal problems disappear. That’s not a coincidence.
The White House won’t even release the full donor list. They’re hiding it on purpose, because daylight is the one thing pay-to-play can’t survive. A federal judge already ruled ballroom construction has to stop until Congress authorizes it.
Government is supposed to serve the people, not auction itself off to the highest bidder. When access goes to whoever pays the most, working families always end up paying the price.
We either end the corruption, or the corruption will end us.
https://t.co/4MGFzSseFl
Follow the money on this one. It is rotten to the core.
The Pentagon just lent $620,000,000 to a tiny North Carolina startup called Vulcan Elements. The company is two years old.
It had fewer than 50 employees.
And three months before the deal was announced, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture firm quietly took a stake in it.
Here is the part the administration tried to bury.
Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was weighing, Vulcan was the only deal initiated by a top White House aide. That aide was Peter Navarro, a close friend of Trump Jr. The order came down to move fast.
One official put it plainly: The call came from the White House. We have to get this done.
Staff worked late nights to push it through in weeks. Deals like this normally take many months of vetting. And when it closed, Vulcan’s valuation jumped from about 200 million dollars to roughly 2 billion.
A windfall for the investors, including the president’s son.
This is public money. Your money.
Routed through the Pentagon to enrich the president’s family and their friends. The Bush administration’s own chief ethics lawyer called it corruption we pay for.
And there is more coming.
A drone parts company Trump Jr. holds a stake in is also under Pentagon review.
This is not a one-off. It is a pattern. The president’s family is treating the federal Treasury like a private bank, and the bill lands on every taxpayer.
https://t.co/4kB1cZNmlE
I’m going to be honest. I’m a huge fan of policing your own. MLB does it. NHL does it. NFL does it. The only way to get players to stop acting like idiots, is to let them know when they are. If a team is going to constantly flop and foul bait, then you may as well get your money’s worth. I’d love to see more of this in the NBA. It’s the only way things are going to get cleaned up. Obviously, the league isn’t going to fix it.
This fucker cracked the code in that if you simply inundate the world with extreme daily corruption, democracy can’t keep up and eventually most people become inured to the damage you’re doing. The must come a reckoning, but it’s hard to see when or even how.
This week alone:
DOJ opens an investigation into the woman Trump raped.
The White House is caught steering a $620 million contract to Don Jr.’s firm.
The Pentagon hands out a $10 billion contract after Trump buys stock in the company.
Foreign governments are caught funneling hundreds of millions into a random JPMorgan account tied to Trump’s “Board of Peace” with no oversight.
It’s just Thursday.
The corruption isn’t hidden anymore. It’s happening out in the open.
This New York Times piece is worth your time. Here’s what is happening, as simply as I can put it.
Back in January, Trump sued the IRS, an agency he controls, demanding $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns a number of years ago.
IRS lawyers did their jobs. They wrote a memo laying out the defenses that could beat the suit, including the fact that Trump filed too late. His own lawyer was in court when the leaker pleaded guilty in October 2023, more than two years before Trump sued.
The Justice Department never showed up to court. Never argued back. Never used the defenses sitting on their desk.
The judge got suspicious and ordered both sides to explain whether they were actually opposing each other or just colluding. The day before that brief was due, Trump dropped the suit.
Same day, his Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization fund.”
Trump gets a formal apology. The IRS agrees to drop any audits of him and his family, even though a 2024 Times report found a loss in an ongoing audit could cost him over $100 million.
The acting Attorney General, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, picks the five commissioners who decide who gets paid. Trump can fire any of them. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are not ruled out.
This is the most corrupt thing I’ve ever seen from an American president.
Where in the hell are my Republican colleagues?
https://t.co/La0nlLuz1r
Can't stop thinking about Elon Musk, the wealthiest man alive worth $828 billion, spending $290 million to elect Trump, becoming $563 billion richer since Trump was elected and ending humanitarian aid that will lead to the deaths of 4.5 million of the poorest kids on the planet.
I haven't seen anyone tracking all of the alleged (or open) Trump corruption, self-dealing, and quid pro quos in one place. For the last 15 months, I've been tracking every single tip+story I can find and organizing it. Today, I published a 6,000 word piece with every example.
Trump is now describing in some detail the Montreal Cognitive Test, which doctors use to spot the early signs of dementia, and which he proudly declared his doctors have made him take three times. He thinks it’s an intelligence test.