Rico Realistic

On boats and enterprise software systems; affiliated with empathetic people in the Northeast.

[Maine @TheMaineWonk]

🦞A local Maine Lobsterman here on MDI lost his boat in a fire over the weekend right as we get into high volume lobster season.

Nathaniel & his wife Kirsten could use your help staying afloat after this tragic loss. Locating and outfitting a boat in the middle season is going to be painstakingly difficult as well as the major loss of income.

Locals have set up a GoFundMe.

https://t.co/75DpmDDkm7

[Diana Manister @DianaCialino]

Trump is desperate to avoid investigations of his MANY crimes while in office: the money he took for pardons, the tax money he stole for monuments to himself, the bribes he took for giving out government contracts, and the benefits he took away from the people!

[Don Salmon @dijoni]

He’s not lying. Trump is a danger to America.

[Rico Realistic @SSU_Egg]

@AMAZlNGNATURE Wrong. Comorants and gannets both swim under water. Very likely others, too, but I’ve seen those two in person.

[Michael Steele @MichaelSteele]

We question Mr. Secretary because we know that ish did not happen. You know there are cameras on the Pool 24hrs, right?You do not have photographs of anyone submerging in the Reflecting Pool to cut a gash longer than a football field. But we do have video and photos of the liner peeling from the floor of the pool. Stop it. As soon as you are asked to prove vandalism, you whine about why are you being questioned about it.

[GOP Ls @GOP__Ls]

🚨 Trump traded hundreds of stocks the day before he paused his tariffs, making him over $12.8 million.

He then illegally hid these trades for months.

[Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews]

And there it is: With just hours remaining until deadline to release more Epstein Files under lawsuit filed by @KatiePhang — Justice Dept asks judge for two-month delay, claiming it risks revealing victims’ identities..

… (which the Trump Admin has already done)

[MeidasClips @MeidasClips]

Phang: Blanche maintains that FOIA was my only and remains my only option. And then he has the balls to say the following. He says that my lawsuit "threatens the interdependence and the reciprocity between Congress and the executive branch." You know, folks, last I checked, I don't see a lot of interdependence or reciprocity between Congress and the executive branch.

What I have seen, I've seen people like Todd Blanche, Pammy Jo with the bad hair, Kash Patel, Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and others, assembling repeatedly in the Situation Room at the White House with Todd Blanche quarterbacking strategy on how to avoid turning over the Epstein files to the American people.

Does that sound like interdependence or reciprocity?

[The Free Press @TheFP]

How did the president make $2 billion since returning to office?

Profiteering off of the American people.

“You do not need to think Trump is the end of American democracy, or that everything he does is evil, to see this for what it is: the biggest grift in American history,” the editors argue.

Read the full editorial here: https://t.co/c7U8eT9oSI

[Super 70s Sports @Super70sSports]

Everybody who knew anything about baseball in 1986 thought Don Mattingly was an obvious future Hall of Famer.

[Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1]

Jack Smith on MS NOW: "I'm very concerned of what's going to happen in the next election, absolutely."

"I think the state attorney generals have a tremendous role to play here. They can make sure the rule of law functions in their state. And I would also say that I think a thing that all of us can do is support election workers and election officials. The last time around, we saw that those people stood firm and they were, in many cases, the difference."

[Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1]

Some donors who intended to give to the bipartisan, congressionally chartered America250 initiative were instead steered to the partisan, Trump-backed Freedom 250, according to a new report from House Natural Resources Democrats.

The report says that could amount to "potential wire fraud and charitable solicitation fraud." https://t.co/gKmF7ypX8p

[Andy O'Brien @aobrien2010]

AIPAC & other right-wing groups have gifted Susan Collins with $64,665 in lavish vacations since 2021.
By contrast, Maine Senator Angus King hasn't embarked on any paid-for luxury travel like Collins. Drain the swamp!

https://t.co/U20cI7qHPy

[Christiane Amanpour @amanpour]

"We were covering a form of regime change in our own country." @jonathanvswan and @maggieNYT tell me how it quickly dawned on them that Trump's second stint in the White House would be "different from any US Presidency that we've ever seen."

[Inside Politics @InsidePolitics]

Jonathan Swan tells @DanaBashCNN Trump's more than $1 billion in crypto profits probably doesn't "scratch the surface" of Trump family gains: "This financial disclosure does not account for a lot of the money that's going into the Trump family through different mechanisms."

[Christiane Amanpour @amanpour]

Trump's "net worth is off the charts, bigger than what it was prior to this presidency." @maggieNYT says we're just scratching the surface when it comes to how Trump has used the presidency to inflate his wealth.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Pressed on a financial disclosure showing he made at least $1.4 billion off crypto in 2025, Trump lied by saying "I don't get involved" (he's personally promoted his crypto businesses), then dismissed a follow up about how he's profiting off the presidency, saying "everybody is profiting."

Here's the full exchange:

[Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1]

People connected to the Trump White House are using their connections to advocate for pardons — in exchange for a fee:

"It is general knowledge in our practice that for $2 million, you can have a pardon," one prominent white-collar defense attorney said. "The clients come to us and tell us, 'I've been told I need to go hire this specific person, and [then] I will get a pardon.'"
https://t.co/zrnSjV6emK

[Matt Royer @royermattw]

Here’s what makes this so bleak:

In 1976, people flocked to DC for the Bicentennial. A whole week of celebration. It was proud, it was joyous, and it was packed.

Our generation never got that. And most of us will be pushing 90 by the next one.

This was our turn. There was a bipartisan commission, America250, built to give it to us — a celebration that belonged to everyone.

Instead, the administration stood up its own group, Freedom 250, to push the real one aside. They fired the original organizer. They routed tens of millions in taxpayer dollars to the president’s version while the bipartisan one went unfunded. States pulled out because it had become too partisan. The musicians quit, so he turned the concert into a campaign rally about deportations and grievance.

They didn’t celebrate the country. They celebrated themselves.

And you can see the result on the grass. A 250th birthday that should have belonged to all of us, turned into one man’s vanity project.

Empty. And sad.

[Steve Rattner @SteveRattner]

The number of financial side deals the Trump family is running is so shocking it can sometimes be hard to track.

According to @Reuters, their crypto ventures alone have delivered $2.3 billion to Trump & co. while creating a similar-sized loss for investors.