Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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Trump Humiliated as Citizens Fail to Flock to His Free Event

The president spoke via video to a sea of empty seats.

Donald Trump’s recycled religious video message was broadcast to rows of empty seats at the president’s free event to “rededicate” America to God.

Rededicate 250

The event was organized by the White House-backed Freedom 250, which is holding several events to celebrate the nation’s anniversary over the coming months.

House Speaker Mike Johnson was the main Republican to appear in person, with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pre-recording video messages screened at the event.

Trump also only appeared on screen,

The video message from Trump aired on Sunday was also the same footage he recorded in April for an event called America Reads the Bible, according to the Associated Press.

The Daily Beast has contacted Freedom 250 and the White House for details on crowd figures.

Washington’s National Mall can hold over a million visitors. According to Politico, 1.2 million people were estimated to have attended Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidential inauguration in 1965, while 1 million attended the Bicentennial fireworks display in 1976. Meanwhile, the National Mall was the site of a large-scale demonstration for women’s reproductive rights with the March for Women’s Lives, which up to a million people attended in 2004.

The location hosts around

Ahead of Sunday, the Rededicate 250 website said they expected “several thousand attendees” throughout the day.

While no official crowd estimate was immediately available,

Although entry was free, the event’s website stated that all attendees, including children, had to register through an RSVP form.

The live-streamed event showed that crowd numbers fluctuated over the day, though empty seats at the front of the stage were a common sight during performances.

The crowd was sparse at the start of the event, around 10:30 a.m, as footage from the livestream shows.

While the crowd had filled out, empty seats were still visible hours later.

Trump supporters, meanwhile, called the day a huge success. Teenage pro-Trump influencer Bo Loudon claimed D.C. was “filled to the brim with patriots honoring God,” while Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka wrote on X that there was a “huge crowd.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-humiliated-as-citizens-fail-to-flock-to-his-free-event/?

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Trump Cashed In One Day After Handing Tech Firm Major Deal

The president’s own filings show him buying and selling bonds in a company to which his administration had just handed a major boost.

Donald Trump made a flurry of trades on a tech company just as his administration announced a major agreement with the same firm, according to the president’s own financial declarations.

The president bought bonds in an AI company in the days before it was announced that the firm had been selected for a government program. He then sold bonds in the same company one day after the announcement, which boosted the company’s share price, an investigation by the Daily Beast and i

Trump has pursued a massive overhaul of the AI sector since entering the White House for the second time, slashing back regulations and loosening oversight of major tech firms in what critics have slammed as a windfall for his billionaire backers. He and his family also hold sizable investments in the market, prompting widespread concern over possible conflicts of interest.

The president’s efforts have partly taken shape in the form of his so-called “Genesis Mission,” an initiative the White House says is designed to harness AI in the fields of scientific research and innovation. The Department of Energy

Trump’s accounts show he made two purchases of CoreWeave bonds worth between $250,001 and $500,000 each, for a max total of $1 million, in the week before the announcement, according to the president’s financial disclosures, compiled by ProPublica and reviewed by the Daily Beast and PunchUp.

The day after the news broke, he sold those bonds for a total of between $1 million and $5 million—a much higher bracket than he’d bought them in only days before.

It’s a complicated picture, with exact amounts impossible to pin down because the documents contain only estimated ranges for the value of the transactions. Trump could have made millions. He could have made nothing.

What’s clear is that whatever the upshot of the sale, it did nothing to dissuade the president from buying more bonds worth between $1 million and $5 million the same day, and worth up to a further $1.25 million the following month.

The Daily Beast contacted the White House for comment on this story, which referred questions to the Trump Organization. A spokesperson for the company said the president’s investment decisions are made by independent financial managers, rather than Trump himself.

“Neither President Trump, his family, nor The Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments,” the spokesperson said. “They receive no advance notice of trading activity and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio management of any kind.”

Forbes reported earlier in January that Trump’s net worth now stands at $6.5 billion, marking a $1.4 billion increase over the course of his second presidency so far. Much of that gain has been driven by Trump’s expanding portfolio in tech, the same sector across which his administration has been gutting regulations and rolling back oversight.

His media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, announced a $6 billion merger in December with a nuclear fusion firm aimed at powering AI data centers. The deal landed just a week after the president signed an executive order effectively curbing state and local governments’ power to enact their own AI regulations.

Trump Media is also reported to have accumulated roughly $2 billion in digital assets alone between January and July last year, while Trump family members made roughly $1.55 billion from sales of tokens issued by World Liberty Financial, a crypto-venture set up by the president’s elder sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-cashed-in-one-day-after-handing-tech-firm-coreweave-a-major-deal/?

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One-Time Trump Adviser Sounds Alarm on ‘Tsunami Election’

The author of books praising Trump’s economy is now striking a more critical tone.

A one-time Trump choice for the Federal Reserve Board is cautioning Republicans that the weakened economy may become a midterm nightmare.

“Republicans could face a tsunami election in November if inflation continues to stay high,” economist and co-author of The Trump Economic Miracle, Stephen Moore, told The New York Times.Moore acknowledged that he was not “surprised” by the economic fallout from Trump’s war in Iran, as administration officials have reportedly been studying market data while bracing for the national average gas price to potentially reach $5 a gallon.The economist described gas prices as “the chief gauge people use to determine how the economy is doing,” a trend that appears to be reflected in recent polling, with rising prices eroding public confidence in the economy.

The latest CNN/SSRS poll found that Trump’s net approval rating on the economy had fallen to 30 percent, the worst level recorded for him on the issue.

“It’s one thing after another, and I think that is why people feel so bad,” Moore told The Times.

Moore’s comments are notable given his close association with Trump, having advised his first presidential campaign and authored Trumponomics, a book praised by the 79-year-old president. He was later unsuccessfully nominated for a position on the Federal Reserve Board and has not typically been critical of Trump’s economic policies.“It’s quite hard to point to things that people would feel great about that would inspire a lot of optimism,” the economist continued, adding that the only people who could currently benefit from the state of the economy are those at the “top of the income distribution.”Yet, despite growing criticism and clear signs of economic anxiety among Americans, Trump has not indicated that he fully grasps the urgency of the situation.When asked by a reporter on Tuesday, “When you’re negotiating with Iran, Mr. President, to what extent are Americans’ financial situation motivating you?” the commander in chief responded: “Not even a little bit,” adding, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”The president has also repeatedly described the affordability crisis facing Americans as a “hoax,” even as gas prices rise following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and grocery costs record their largest jump in four years.Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows grocery prices—an area Trump vowed to bring down during his 2024 campaign—are up 2.9 percent compared with a year ago.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump has told aides that he does not care about the outcome of the crucial November midterm elections and has blamed his party for failing to improve his political optics.

He is expected to hit the campaign trail as many as 30 times before November, with the White House hoping his presence can help sway voters who might otherwise stay home.

At the same time, voters in his home state of Florida have reacted sharply to his reported comments about their financial situation, with one calling the president a “pompous idiot” in an interview with MS NOW.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/one-time-trump-adviser-sounds-alarm-on-tsunami-election/?

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Trump, 79, Regurgitates Crackpot Nuclear Slop in Wild Posting Spree

The president went off the rails with a series of posts depicting himself pressing the big red button from a space station and walking with an alien.

The president of the United States can’t stop posting AI slop.

Donald Trump spent his Sunday afternoon firing off a barrage of bizarre AI-manipulated videos and images on Truth Social, while peppering his feed with bitter jabs at his foes.

In a series of bonkers posts, the elderly president, whose cognitive health has come under mounting scrutiny, shared AI-generated images of himself as the commander of an imagined space station or spaceship, overseeing an imaginary war.

In one of them, he is depicted sitting at a futuristic command center overlooking Earth from space and pressing a red button.

One of the monitoring screens in the background shows a massive mushroom cloud towering into space, accompanied by the words “TARGET DESTROYED.”

The 79-year-old grandfather of 11 posted the AI image twice, the second time with the words “SPACE FORCE” superimposed over it, in a reference to the branch of the U.S. military established in 2019 during the first Trump administration.

Trump also posted an image of himself walking alongside a naked alien at what appears to be a military site.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s posting spree began shortly after 4 p.m., when he posted the first in a string of nearly identical AI-generated videos depicting a U.S. battleship shooting down an Iranian missile, coupled with a clip from Monday’s Oval Office event on maternal healthcare.

During the event, Trump acted out Navy sailors using a computer system to intercept incoming missiles.

“OK. We have it in our sight: Fire. Boom,” he said, pretending to type commands to execute the imaginary strike.

Next in his stream of posts, the president shared a clip of himself teeing off on the golf course, which abruptly cuts to a 2021 video of GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy explaining his vote to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack—before a golf ball strikes him in the head.

The Louisiana senator was ousted Saturday night by a Trump-endorsed challenger in his bid for re-election, to Trump’s delight.

Cassidy’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump then posted an AI rendering of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which he is currently renovating in a controversial project. The post appeared to mock criticism of the costly overhaul by superimposing an image of a screaming woman over the pool.

A few minutes later, Trump doubled down by posting an AI image of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden with Rep. Nancy Pelosi swimming in the pool, filled with sewage.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Pelosi told the Daily Beast in a statement:

“Instead of working to lower costs for Americans, the President is spending his time golfing and posting deranged AI images. President Obama, President Biden and Speaker Pelosi live rent free in his head because they have actually delivered progress for America while his Administration has been a complete and total failure. Sad!”

Offices for Obama and Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump also set his sights on another Democrat foe, Gavin Newsom, posting an AI-generated photo of the California governor hunched in a padded white cell, with the word “Trump” surrounding him, as well as another image of the governor as a zombie.

Newsom, 58, fired back on X, writing about another AI post where Trump depicted the California governor as a zombie on a license plate, “Even a Zombie Newscum still looks healthier than our current President. #PrayersForGrandpa.” The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While Trump was rage-posting about space wars, aliens, and his political enemies, the White House hosted an event on the National Mall “rededicating” the nation to God.

Trump, who said in 2020 that he considers himself a non-denominational Christian but has not attended a service in more than a year, skipped attending the event in person to go to his golf club in Virginia.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-79-regurgitates-crackpot-nuclear-slop-in-wild-posting-spree/?

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Justice Department announces a $1.7B fund to compensate Trump allies in a deal to drop IRS suit

The Trump administration has announced the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies of the Republican president who believe they were mistreated by the Biden-era Justice Department. The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was announced by the Justice Department on Monday as part of a deal to resolve President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. Democrats and government watchdogs immediately pledged to fight what they called a “corrupt” and unprecedented resolution. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

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Trump Pushes the Button on Giant MAGA Grift

The president wants taxpayers to fund compensation packages for those prosecuted under the Biden administration.

Donald Trump has withdrawn his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service—paving the way for the president to set up a $1.7 billion slush fund for his allies.

The president filed the lawsuit against his own government, which the taxpayer would have

It was previously reported that Trump was considering shelving the lawsuit in order to create a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully persecuted by the Biden administration, including those charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Trump’s move to withdraw his lawsuit against the IRS was confirmed in a legal filing in a federal court in Florida.

The compensation fund against those claiming they were victims of the “weaponization” of the justice system under President Joe Biden is part of a host of demands Trump agreed to in order to drop his lawsuit against the IRS, ABC News reported.

This includes demanding a public apology from the IRS and no longer demanding that the DOJ pay him roughly $230 million in compensation over the investigation into alleged Russian collusion during the 2016 election and the 2022 FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago home over classified documents.

The information arrived from a rogue IRS employee who is currently serving a five-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to stealing Trump’s tax data and leaking the president’s tax returns. Trump claimed he and his family suffered “embarrassment” and that their family business was “unfairly tarnished” as a result of reporting based on the leaked tax returns.

Nearly 100 House Democrats have filed a legal challenge to stop Trump from creating the $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded pool to compensate his allies.

“This is pure fraud and highway robbery,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement. “No one can be both plaintiff and defendant in the same case. And no president can concoct a fake case for $10 billion in damages against the government so he can be plaintiff and defendant and then ‘settle’ his bogus case against himself as a judge.

“This case is nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021, and sycophant accomplices to his election-stealing schemes.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-pushes-the-button-on-giant-maga-grift/?

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Trumpworld's presidential gold rush

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios

Democrats erupted yesterday over President Trump's $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund for MAGA allies who claim political persecution, vowing to investigate what they called textbook corruption, Axios' Zachary Basu writes. Why it matters: With each passing month, Trump is weaving the financial interests of his family, his allies and his political movement more tightly than ever into the fabric of the American presidency. The weaponization fund grew out of an extraordinary legal conflict: Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion in January while simultaneously controlling the agencies and lawyers on the other side of the case. The taxpayer-backed fund will be overseen by a five-member commission appointed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal attorney. Bypassing Congress, the fund could pay Jan. 6 defendants, conservative activists, former Trump aides and other allies who have faced investigation. 🔎 Zoom in: The Justice Department's announcement came as Trump's latest financial disclosure revealed more than 3,700 individual stock trades last quarter. The trades — involving some companies heavily exposed to federal policy decisions — represented a staggering escalation from the previous quarter, when Trump disclosed just 380 transactions. Popular Information's Judd Legum reported that Trump publicly praised or promoted several companies, including Apple, Dell and Thermo Fisher, around the same time he was buying their stock. The Trump Organization says outside advisers control the president's investments. The big picture: Trump's first term generated recurring conflict-of-interest scandals around hotels, golf clubs and foreign patronage. His second has produced a far more sprawling ecosystem for enrichment. At the center of it is crypto: Trump-linked meme coins have minted billions for the family and its inner circle, with top holders unlocking dinners at Mar-a-Lago and private events with the president. World Liberty Financial has rapidly become one of the Trump family's most lucrative and controversial ventures, placing the president's political brand and influence at the center of a fast-growing crypto empire. 🔭 Zoom out: Since Trump took office, his sons have invested in a range of new industries, including AI, drones and critical minerals. Their overseas real estate portfolio has also expanded dramatically.

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🚁 1 for the road: Trump's next renovation

President Trump is planning to build a permanent helipad on the White House South Lawn to keep the powerful new Marine One helicopters from scorching the grass, The Wall Street Journal reports.

• The new VH-92A Patriot is much more powerful than the VH-3D Sea King it replaces. The old fleet has flown every president since Gerald Ford.
• Officials have known since 2018 that the new helicopter could damage the lawn.
• Presidents Biden and Trump have both flown on the new helicopters on trips outside of D.C., but never to and from the White House.

Trump is also expected to install a helipad at Mar-a-Lago while it's closed for the summer.

• Keep reading (gift link).

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Trump says he’s called off Iran strike planned for Tuesday at request of Gulf allies President Donald Trump said America’s allies in the Gulf asked him to wait for two to three days because they feel they are close to a deal with Iran. Read more.

Why this matters: Trump said the current pause for negotiations was a “very positive development.” However there is no evidence Iran is set to meet Trump’s demands — many of which it has long rejected.   Crucially, Iran still has a big bargaining chip — its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, even as the U.S. military has enforced its own blockade on Iranian ports. Trump’s stated top objectives are still unrealized: Iran has yet to agree to abandon its nuclear program or its ballistic missile development, or cease support for its proxies in the region, including those in Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Trump’s tough-talk foreign policy is hitting a wall with Iran as it grips Strait of Hormuz   WATCH: How do global events affect gas prices at the pump?   The UAE’s image as a Middle Eastern haven is tested by the Iran war   Blanche will face questions from lawmakers over a nearly $1.8B fund to compensate Trump allies   FACT FOCUS: Trump distorts recent revisions of scientific projections of global warming   Trump touts a major TrumpRx expansion, adding more than 600 generic drugs   Supreme Court sends closely watched Native American voting rights decision back to lower court   Federal judge bans most arrests by federal agents in immigration courts in New York   US Rep. Thomas Massie’s GOP primary in Kentucky is the latest test of Trump’s power over the party   Defense secretary steps into key Kentucky election to attack Trump critic   The New York Times sues the Pentagon a second time over Hegseth’s media restrictions   What to watch in Tuesday’s primaries as Trump’s endorsement is put to the test   Will White House correspondents’ dinner be rescheduled? Some say: ‘Let’s call the whole thing off’

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Trump’s Own Handpicked Lawyer Quits Treasury in Disgust at Massive $1.8B Grift

The president had only just brought the conservative lawyer back into his administration.

The Treasury’s most senior lawyer has dramatically quit, just hours after the Trump administration unveiled a vast $1.776 billion fund to enrich Jan. 6 rioters and other MAGA loyalists.

Brian Morrissey, the department’s general counsel,

His abrupt departure came on the same day that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Morrissey, who also served in Trump’s first administration, is a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H. W. Bush appointee.

The vast payout pot, set up by the Justice Department, was created to settle Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leaking of his tax returns during his first term in the White House.

Trump dropped his original lawsuit on Monday after a judge cast doubt on the basic legality of a sitting president filing suit against a department he himself runs.

The Treasury, which now has to deposit the eye-watering sum into an account controlled by a five-member commission hand-picked by Blanche, declined to explain Morrissey’s exit.

Criticism has been widespread and visceral. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon branded the deal the “most brazen theft and abuse of taxpayer dollars by any president in American history.”

Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, 63, called it “pure fraud and highway robbery,” while nearly 100 House Democrats filed an amicus brief seeking to block the settlement. The Beast also reported Monday that recipients of the payouts—and the sums they pocket—

Morrissey used his resignation letter to thank Trump, 79, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 63, for the chance to serve, two sources who reviewed the note told the paper.

Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, will appoint every member of the commission and retain the power to remove any of them without cause.

Trump himself denied any role in setting up the deal during a White House healthcare cost event Monday, insisting the arrangement had been “very well received.”

Morrissey, a former Sidley Austin partner who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thomas, has not spoken publicly about his exit.

A Treasury spokesman said, “As General Counsel, Brian Morrissey has served the United States Treasury with both honor and integrity. We wish him all the best in his next endeavors.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House, the Justice Department, and Brian Morrissey for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-treasury-lawyer-quits-in-disgust-over-donald-trumps-massive-18b-theft/?

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Even MAGA Diehard Thinks Trump’s Gone Too Far

The president’s grifty settlement with the IRS has Scott Jennings squirming in his seat.

One of Donald Trump’s most loyal defenders is wincing at the outrageous $1.8 billion settlement the president just landed by effectively suing himself.

“All of this makes me a little uncomfortable because it’s a lot of money, and it didn’t go through the U.S. Congress,” Scott Jennings told his fellow CNN panelists Monday night.

“That’s number one,” he went on. “Number two, I don’t want to see a president necessarily handpicking people to get payments where he could be accused of just picking people out who are political allies.”

Jennings’ somewhat late awakening to potential conflicts of interest under Trump comes as his settlement agreement with the Internal Revenue Service, announced on Monday, prompts a major backlash.

Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion in January, alleging the agency failed to prevent a former contractor from leaking his tax returns to the New York Times in 2020. The IRS was under Trump’s control as president at the time of the leak, as it has been since he brought the suit.

That historically unprecedented action created something of a legal conundrum for an administration tasked with effectively defending itself from itself. The off-ramp has proven just as novel, with the Justice Department now agreeing to put together a $1.776 billion fund to pay MAGA allies who claim prosecutors unjustly targeted them under the Biden administration.

Appointing the commission that determines the recipients of those payments will fall to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense attorney.

Jennings expressed concern Monday night that this could potentially allow people who were previously convicted of egregious crimes during the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill, including those who assaulted law enforcement officials, to receive handsome payouts from the second Trump administration.

“My personal view is that anybody who committed documented violence against the government or against police officers has not been unfairly treated if they ended up being convicted of a crime because of the violence they committed,” Jennings told CNN.

“I got no real sympathy for them,” he said.

Trump has pardoned thousands of participants in those riots, some of whom have gone on to reoffend.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/even-maga-boot-licker-scott-jennings-thinks-donald-trumps-gone-too-far-with-irs-grift/?

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Trump’s Golden Age Has Arrived—It’s a Golden Age of Grift

The president has been robbing our country blind, in plain sight, and in ways no one else would dare to attempt.

The golden age our president promised us has arrived.

Never in the long history of our country have we seen a period of such innovation, boldness, and growth in any area of our economic, social, or political lives.

Today, Trump’s name will take its place alongside others that history will never forget.

It is an achievement that is almost impossible to comprehend. That is due in part to the fact that what is now happening was supposed to be impossible. Obstacle after obstacle stood in the way. For centuries, other men have sought to achieve what Trump has accomplished—and yet, he has outshone them all.

Indeed, I am reminded of the famous Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, in which he tells an apocryphal tale he asserts occurred when he was a young boy.

Cellini, a famed Renaissance-era goldsmith and sculptor, wrote that he witnessed a small lizard run into his family’s hearth, directly into the fire, and then emerge unscathed. Immediately afterward, his father slapped him across the face and explained that he did so so his son would always remember what he had just seen.

Consider yourself slapped across the face.

Consider that your country has run into the fire. Thanks to Trump, however, it seems unlikely it will emerge unscathed. Indeed, it is unclear whether it will survive the ordeal at all.

No work of Cellini or any other artist or craftsman matches the genius of what Trump is achieving in the area of his greatest gifts.

When it comes to corruption, Donald Trump is Michelangelo and da Vinci plus Bach and Mozart combined. He is a genius. He is creative in ways that make past generations of American grifters, robber barons, and mafia bosses seem like pikers.

Day in and day out, he has been robbing our country blind, in plain sight, and in ways no one else would dare to attempt.

Indeed, it is fair to suggest that if you took every other corrupt figure who stole from our public coffers from the first days of the republic until now and multiplied their larceny times that of every Gambino family capo di tutti capi, they still would not match the billions Trump has absconded with.

Monday’s news that somehow Trump and his family had reached a “deal” with the U.S. Department of Justice that follows his commands like a dutiful beagle to take $1.776 billion in tax dollars out of the U.S. Treasury and give it to his supporters and friends and co-conspirators and indeed, perhaps—because we do not have any information to the contrary—to his family and himself, is only his most recent achievement in criming, though certainly one of the most stunning.

With this bold stroke, Trump may well use taxpayer dollars—your money and mine, precious dollars from government accounts too depleted to allow us to pay for the care of our most needy citizens—to pay off members of the mob of thugs that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

That’s right, Trump may well have found a way, with the help of Todd Blanche and other DOJ officials—who all ought to swiftly be disbarred—to arrange what almost certainly is the first taxpayer-funded domestic coup attempt in the history of the United States. (In the interest of fairness, we need to acknowledge that we have conducted many taxpayer-underwritten foreign coup attempts throughout our history.)

The move is eye-wateringly audacious. Had Trump walked into Fort Knox with a shopping cart and walked out with it filled with gold bullion, the theft would not be more obvious or outrageous.

Yet Trump—and here is what is certainly part of his genius—has orchestrated a chorus of acceptance, support, and enabling from many of America’s most powerful leaders.

The hijacking of the DOJ to serve his personal interests would not have been possible without the six right-wing activist members of the Supreme Court, three of whom he appointed personally. The GOP “leadership” in Congress has remained supine, while the Republican Party nationwide has stood up and sought to be counted as his accomplices in this extraordinary heist.

Further, what makes the achievement of our grandmaster of malfeasance so exceptional is that it is just a single act in a comprehensive, sweeping, complex, stunningly lucrative campaign of corruption that started when he first took office and has turned the White House into a toll booth collecting cash and prizes for Trump enterprises.

Just days ago, we learned that the president has, throughout his time in office, engaged in thousands upon thousands of stock trades that appear to cash in on unique knowledge he had as president or of actions he intended to take. His sons run companies doing multimillion-dollar deals with the Pentagon and with governments worldwide seeking Trump’s favor.

Trump has accepted aircraft, donations to projects designed to glorify him, golden statues, bitcoins, and cash from suckers eager to buy up Trump swag. Trump phones, Trump watches, and the branding rights to Trump Airport in West Palm Beach are part of his scheme. It looks like the “Trump Presidential Library” may well include a hotel where people can pay to honor Trump in the way that means the most to him: with cash that ends up in his bank account.

Where is the money that the U.S. made from selling oil we stole from Venezuela? Who controls the billions that have been allocated from the U.S. Treasury and governments worldwide to the Board of Peace for Gaza? How many times has Trump sold pardons or lifted regulations or prosecuted or persecuted the innocent in exchange for campaign contributions?

Estimates suggest that Trump and his family have made billions as a direct result of actions he has taken since he returned to the White House. And of course, we live in the world of crypto and dark money accounts, where transactions can take place and we will likely never know their sources, nor will we know in whose pocket the ill-gotten gains finally ended up.

Yes, this is it. This is the golden age of corruption. And Trump is the Einstein of the science of scamming, grabbing, grifting, snatching, hijacking, purloining, and plundering our national assets, selling government services to the highest bidder, selling out the country, and helping his family and friends to do the same.

Who’s the s--thole country now, folks?

Our patrimony is being sold off—natural resources, fundamental freedoms, national security, our children’s futures, and the futures of generations of Americans to come—all to line the pockets of a bunch of immoral gangsters who, let’s be honest, do not even need the money in the first place.

Why are they destroying democracy? Because it is the only way to both keep their criminal enterprises alive and to stay out of jail at the same time.

We have lived through robber barons and the Teapot Dome and Tammany Hall and a country run to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of everyone else. Hell, we invented vulture capitalism and the “greed is good” of Gordon Gekkoism.

But to mark the 250^th anniversary of the founding of the United States, Donald Trump has taken us someplace new. He has worked every day since he resumed the presidency to lead a different kind of American revolution.

He has achieved his goal of becoming a world historical figure by becoming the founding father of a new kind of American nation, created of, by, and for him and his buddies and their bank accounts. Thanks to Trump, his family, MAGA, the GOP, the Federalist Society, and decades of rigging our systems in favor of the richest Americans, we are no longer a shining city on the hill.

We are instead a stinking cesspool of corruption, a republic for the rapacious. And the time we have to put an end to the stealing and to reclaim our nation for the benefit of its people is running out.

Tick tock, brothers and sisters. How much longer will we allow this crime spree to continue?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-golden-age-has-arrivedits-a-golden-age-of-grift/?

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How Trump Turned the Law Upside Down in $1.7 Billion Heist

The president has manipulated the system to act as plaintiff, defendant, and judge in his own lawsuit.

It is a sick joke on America’s history that Donald Trump chose the amount of $1.776 billion to bilk from taxpayers to pay his MAGA friends.

He has already picked a sport with a fragile hold on the rules—UFC—to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary with a cage fight at the White House on June 14.

Now the president is using 1776—the year the thirteen colonies declared independence from Great Britain—to frame an unprecedented challenge to the U.S. Constitution, which has been the nation’s guiding light for 237 of those 250 years.

By forcing through a self-serving settlement in his $10 billion case against the Internal Revenue Service, Trump has dangerously blurred the separation of powers that has governed the United States through 46 presidencies, including his own first term.

The blatancy leaves you breathless, because in Trump’s IRS lawsuit, he was effectively both the plaintiff and the defendant.

And by manipulating the proceedings, he ended up being the judge.

The sordid tale began with Trump once again breaking with presidential tradition and refusing to release his tax returns, right back in 2015. When the documents were leaked to the New York Times in 2019, Trump, his sons, Don Jr. and Eric, and the family organization complained that the IRS was negligent for allowing a former contractor to leak them.The Trumps were not the only billionaires who were annoyed that their taxes were made public.

Billionaire Ken Griffin was among the wealthy taxpayers, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, whose taxes were also leaked. Griffin sued the government in December 2022 for failing to prevent the leak. The DoJ initially fought the case, insisting the lawsuit should be dismissed because the contractor was not a federal employee.

Griffin won an apology from the IRS in June, 2024.

Ethical questions were raised the moment Trump filed his $10 billion lawsuit in January under the same code that Griffin cited, which allows taxpayers to seek redress from the government if their private records are illegally made public.

The Trumps argued in their suit that the IRS’s failure caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”

The contractor who leaked Trump’s taxes, Charles Littlejohn, was jailed for five years in 2023.

But the judge appointed to oversee the Trump lawsuit had a more fundamental decision to make, even before she could decide on whether the president and his family had been wronged by the leak.

Judge Kathleen M. Williams, of the Southern District of Florida—an Obama appointee—was reportedly considering dismissing Trump’s lawsuit for the simple reason that his personal lawyers were bringing the case, and his government lawyers were responding to it.

According to the New York Times, she had given both teams of Trump lawyers—personal and government—until this Wednesday to explain how it was all supposed to work when they were all reporting to the same person.

But the judge was rendered helpless on Monday when Trump announced he was withdrawing his lawsuit. At the same time, Todd Blanche, the president’s hand-picked acting attorney general—and his former defense attorney—announced that a settlement in the case had been agreed to create an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to feed money to allies of the president who feel they have been wronged by the (Biden) government.

It is, of course, a cause close to Trump’s heart. He remains bitter over being targeted on multiple criminal and civil counts after his first term.

“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Blanche, in a statement. “As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.”

Democrats jumped on the arrangement, describing it as “highway robbery” and accusing the DoJ of “colluding” with the president.

“Never in the history of the United States has a sitting president sought a monetary settlement from the government he leads, let alone sought many billions of dollars in taxpayer funds,” they wrote in a lawsuit seeking to block the deal.

Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden said if the creation of the fund was allowed to move forward, it would be the “most brazen theft and abuse of taxpayer dollars by any president in American history.”

As for Trump, he will receive an apology but no compensation from the fund, the Justice Department said.

We have become all too used to the president’s grifting. He makes no secret of the ways he has enriched himself and his family during his years in office.

But if he can take the rule of law and turn it upside down, we are in real trouble.

Trump has already shown his disdain for elections he doesn’t win and Supreme Court decisions he doesn’t agree with. Now he is running roughshod through the legal system.

The question must be asked. If we cannot rely on America’s rule of law, what do we have left?

1,776 reasons why Trump should be impeached.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-trump-turned-the-law-upside-down-in-17-billion-heist/?