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

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Trump Admin Broke Rules to Move Ghislaine to Club Fed Camp

Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice was moved to a lower-security facility after her two-day talk with the Justice Department.

Convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell secured a secret prison transfer after the Bureau of Prisons waived a rule designated to punish sex offenders.

Maxwell, alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein‘s accomplice, has spent the last three years serving a 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida. She was transferred to a lower-security federal prison camp closer to her family in Bryan, Texas, last week after she reportedly spent two days speaking with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about her connections to Epstein.

The move required the bureau to waive its policy that convicted sex offenders must be held at least at a low-level prison, according to NBC News. Maxwell received a waiver to facilitate the move, according to MSNBC reporter Ken Dilanian, which gave her access to a less restrictive prison environment than the one in Tallahassee.

A federal prison camp is a minimum-security facility with dorm-like housing, meeting the Bureau of Prisons’ lowest security-level designation. Low-level security prisons are a step up from prison camps.

A prison consultant told Dilanian he had “never seen this done before for a sex offender,” Dilanian wrote on X.

The Bureau of Prisons, which confirmed Maxwell’s move last week, did not respond to immediate requests for comment, including whether it waived the policy for Maxwell. Maxwell’s attorney also did not respond to an immediate request for comment.

Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown predicted that Maxwell would be moved on the Daily Beast podcast this week. Brown, whose reporting on Epstein in 2018 renewed interest in the story and led to new federal charges, noted that jails were inherently dangerous places. “She wouldn’t necessarily be safe anywhere,” Brown said.

“It is so easy to cover up a crime in jail,” Brown said. “The cameras are broken, guards fall asleep—they are, for the most part, very corrupt.”

The move also came after she was reportedly threatened by other inmates for being a “snitch,” according to the Daily Mail. The publicity around her conversations with the Justice Department reportedly put a target on her back.

“As soon as Ghislaine spoke to the government, she was considered a snitch by other inmates at Tallahassee,” a source told the Mail. "There were very real and very credible threats on her life."

Federal Corrections Institution (FCI) Tallahassee, where Maxwell had stayed before her transfer, has faced challenges in recent years. Multiple guards have been convicted of sexually assaulting inmates in recent years, and Maxwell had already faced threats from inmates after she reported them over a blackmail campaign, according to the Mail.

The Bryan, Texas, prison, however, is “a professionally run prison camp with a great warden, working cameras everywhere and properly trained staff,” the source told the Mail on Sunday.

“There is a different class of people at Bryan, so she is less likely to be attacked,” the source said.

The prison also houses disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah. The families of Epstein victims condemned the move, saying it “smacks of a cover-up.”

Maxwell is currently working to overturn her December 2021 conviction for grooming young girls for Epstein to abuse. Her lawyers have argued that a 2007 plea agreement between Epstein and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Florida, which agreed not to prosecute multiple unnamed co-conspirators, also applied to her, Reuters reported.

Maxwell has also reportedly sought a pardon from President Donald Trump, who has not ruled it out as his alleged connections to Epstein have become a topic of intense speculation even among his most loyal followers.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/snitch-ghislaines-prison-move-was-due-to-death-threats/?

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Trump Brags About ‘Very White’ Rose Garden’s Awful Makeover

The White House is about to get even more white.

President Trump has claimed his newly paved Rose Garden is receiving “great reviews” after unveiling the highly criticized design last week.

The plush White House lawn in the centre of the garden has now been paved over with white stones to create a large patio that mirrors Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

In his brand new Washington patio, the seal of the president of the United States features on the edges of the paving, near the drainage.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Trump said he was already getting positive feedback on the paving work, which began in June.

“We’re getting great reviews on the Rose Garden,” he stated, without clarifying who the reviews were coming from.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

The renovation to the Rose Garden was finalized and and unveiled on Friday. The work was overseen by the National Park Service and funded by the Trust for the National Mall, according to Vogue.

The president also shared his inspiration for the choice of pavers in the historic 7,500 square foot area near the South Lawn.

“It’s a beautiful white stone,” Trump gushed. “It’s a stone that’s the same color as the White House itself. And because it’s very white, it’s going to reflect the heat. It’s not going to be very hot like if you had a dark stone.”

The original design of the Rose Garden, with the large central grass panel, was created in 1962 at the request of President John F. Kennedy.

However, Trump said the grass was impractical for press conferences, as women complained their heels were sinking into the lawn.

“We’re going to make that into a stone surface”, stating that women were “going crazy, the grass was wet, their heels are going right through the grass, like four inches deep,” he told The Spectator in February.

“We had to do it,” Trump said Sunday, reiterating how people would “sink” into the grass. ”It’d take three, four, five days for it to dry out, and we couldn‘t use it for really the intended purpose," Trump said. “So whether they had events or they had news conferences, we couldn‘t use it.”

Previous administrations have tinkered with the Rose Garden, from Ronald Reagan swapping out varieties of roses to the Obamas installing a kitchen garden.

In 2020, Melania Trump switched colorful cherry trees and tulips for a more muted tone in line with the original palette of horticulturist Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, who redesigned the garden during the Kennedy administration.Trump has not finished leaving his stamp on the White House and making it more like Mar-a-Lago. As well as adding his beloved gold ornaments and finishes, last week the president announced he would build a $100 million ballroom inside the White House.

He also claimed he was the perfect president to handle the construction.

“It’s a very incredible structure, it’s going to be beautiful, normally I could build a building like that in 4 or 5 months,” Trump said on Pod Force One.

“But it’s very intricate inside, it’s beautiful, the best marbles, it’ll be a great tribute to the White House. Other presidents have talked about it but it never got done. I’m the builder. I know how to do it.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-brags-about-very-white-rose-gardens-awful-makeover/?

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Washington’s Legacy Is the People’s House, Not Trump’s Versailles

The nation’s first president rejected a plan to build a big, ostentatious White House. Now, Trump wants a glamorous ballroom.

In 1791, a French architect named Pierre Charles L’Enfant chose the site of what would become the White House.

L’Enfant envisioned the president’s house as a grand palace to compete with the great houses of Europe. He planned an ostentatious building four times the size of the current White House.

The flamboyant Frenchman already had the ear of George Washington. He had planned Washington D.C. around a grid of airy rectangular blocks. A public walkway was the centerpiece. The National Mall stretched two miles from Capitol Hill to the Potomac River.

Congress was positioned at the high point of the nascent capital, connected to the new White House by Pennsylvania Avenue.

For L’Enfant, the presidential palace would be his pièce de résistance, inspired by the pomp and grandeur of Versailles and London.

But Washington and his planning commissioners did not agree. They didn’t want a royal residence. They wanted the people’s house.

In February 1792, L’Enfant was fired, and a very different architect was hired.

Irishman James Hoban, a farmer’s son from County Kilkenny, was enamored of Dublin’s buildings and Leinster House, in particular. The classic Palladian architecture with its symmetrical facade and classic details was seen by Hoban as the perfect model for a home for a “people’s president.”

Washington would never get to live in the house that took Hoban eight years to complete. John Adams was the first to move in, albeit only for five months, before Thomas Jefferson succeeded him after the 1800 election. Every president has lived there since.

It truly became the White House after the British burned the building down in the War of 1812, and Hoban managed to retain the exterior walls of whitewashed sandstone.

As the latest inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, President Donald Trump is enthralled with its history. He comes alive when taking visitors on tours of the old house, even if he has a habit of mixing up his facts. He has put his own gilded stamp on the interior of a mansion that can look bare and cold.

And he can never quite decide who was his favorite former president in a toss-up between Washington and Ronald Reagan. Some days, he may even switch to Andrew Jackson or William McKinley.

What is certain is that he is obsessed with leaving a legacy. Maybe it’s his age. What 79-year-old man doesn’t give a thought to what he will leave behind?

But more likely it’s his identity. Trump is a builder, a real estate guy. He doesn’t see a view; he sees possibilities.

What good is a rose garden when you need a drinks patio?

The only issue here is that Trump’s view of the White House is more akin to Pierre L’Enfant than to George Washington and James Hoban.

His plans for a 90,000 square foot ballroom in the East Wing are double the size of the current building. With more than triple the capacity of the East Room, currently the largest room in the White House, it’s no great surprise that the plans bear a striking resemblance to Trump’s event hall at Mar-a-Lago.

And, of course, Mar-a-Lago is nothing like the nation’s first president’s idea of a people’s house.

For a start, you can’t get in without a hugely expensive membership or a connection to its owner. It’s in the middle of a Palm Beach neighborhood where mere millionaires are looked down upon as pretenders. The chandelier in the tea room probably costs more than most people’s houses.

And the original White House cost $232,372 to build. The ballroom bill is $200 million.

So the question persists: Is Trump’s new White House being built for the 1 percent?

He will argue that the White House is not worthy of his golden age. It is small, compared to the homes of the royals and the heads of state he visits around the world. Trump only likes the best. The biggest.

And he’s never going to make a good camper.

“They’ve wanted a ballroom at the White House for more than 150 years, but there’s never been a president that was good at ballrooms—really good, in fact,” Trump told reporters when unveiling his plan on Thursday. “When they have big events, you entertain the president of China, the president of any place, and you have big crowds, they’ve always had a tent.”

It’s true. Many visitors will say the experience of being carted in and out of the tent set up on the lawn isn’t worthy of the venue. It all feels a bit small for the most powerful country on the planet. America isn’t known for its modesty.

Nevertheless, when the White House was built, it was important for the young country to differentiate itself from Britain. The Founding Fathers were not perfect. Nearly half of them were slaveholders. But they intended the government to be accountable to the people.

The phrase “We the People” signifies that the power to govern ultimately resides with the citizenry, not with any individual or small group, however much money or power they may have.

As a man who enjoys his country’s heritage and is proud of his historic home and all it took to get there, the 47th president would do well to remember that.

Last week on the windblown links of Aberdeenshire, Trump spoke proudly of using the features of the environment to create a special golf course that retained the character of the Scottish Highlands.

He embraces his Scottish roots with a passion. The president looked more relaxed and happy than he had been for months.

Time will tell whether he will embrace the approach of an Irishman when it comes to renovating one of the nation’s great treasures. The true home of the Republic.

Or if he revives the grandiose dream of a Frenchman to transform the White House into a showpiece for the very rich and privileged—and as a memorial to himself.

I’m guessing the latter.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/washingtons-legacy-is-the-peoples-house-not-trumps-versailles/?

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Trump Melts Down at ‘CRAZED LUNATICS’ in Late-Night Rant

The president is unhappy that his nominees are stuck in the Senate and he is struggling to keep calm.

Donald Trump lashed out at Senate Democrats as “CRAZED LUNATICS” for allegedly demanding billions in exchange for votes on his executive picks.

In a typically unhinged late-night Truth Social post, the president accused Democrats and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of intentionally stalling more than 150 of his nominees before the Senate’s August recess.

“Democrats, lead by Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, are slow walking my Nominees, more than 150 of them. They wanted us to pay, originally, two billion dollars for approvals,” Trump wrote. “The Dems are CRAZED LUNATICS!!!”

Schumer and Senate Majority Leader John Thune had reportedly been working on a deal to confirm nearly two dozen of Trump’s nominees before the recess. Schumer had pushed for the release of billions of dollars in government funding, including $5 billion for the National Institutes of Health, in exchange for votes on Trump’s picks, according to CBS News.

The tactic enraged Trump, who urged the GOP to reject the “political extortion” and told Schumer, “GO TO HELL!”

“Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Saturday.

Senate Republicans, who control the upper chamber, are eyeing a so-called “nuclear option” when they return in September to allow speedy confirmations of Trump’s picks. That could include drastically reducing the amount of debate time allowed for each nominee before a final vote, or trying to reduce the number of nominees needing Senate confirmation.“We are absolutely trying to avoid a nuclear option issue, but at some point you’ve got to have an operational government,” South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds told Politico.

Meanwhile, Schumer has mocked and taunted Trump as the Senate failed to reach an agreement.

“Donald Trump tried to pressure, threaten, cajole, name call Democrats. He took his ball home and got nothing,” Schumer said in a Sunday video posted on X.

Schumer even joined in the meme wars, sharing a clip of Trump stumbling on the stairs to Air Force One overlaid with the viral “Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday” audio.

Schumer did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-melts-down-at-crazed-lunatics-in-late-night-rant/?

ps:There's only one lunatic and he keeps putting his foot into his mouth everytime he opens it!!!!!

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Trump Praises ‘Very Nice’ Loomer as Her Body Count Grows

He calls the far-right activist, who set up an anonymous tip line to help get federal workers disloyal to Trump fired, a patriot.

Donald Trump has called conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer a “very nice person” as she wages her personal war to clean house in the Trump administration.

The far-right Trump mega fan has taken credit for the firings of at least 16 people who she said were not sufficiently loyal to the president. She calls it being “Loomered.”

So far, her body count includes assistant federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, National Security Agency directors Timothy Haugh and Wendy Noble, Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and Jen Easterly, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under President Biden.

Loomer, who is known for anti-Muslim rhetoric and claiming the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job,” has also set up an anonymous tip line to help her find people who are disloyal to Trump and get them fired.

On Sunday, the president was asked about his relationship with Loomer and the kind of influence she has over him.

“She’s very nice,” Trump told reporters.

“I mean, I know she’s known as a ‘radical right,’ but I think Laura Loomer is a very nice person. I’ve known her for a long time.”

Trump also seemed to explain her motivation for recommending that staff in his administration be “Loomered.”

“I think she’s a patriot, and she gets excited because of the fact that she’s a patriot,” Trump said. “And she doesn’t like things going on that she thinks are bad for the country. I like her.”

Last Thursday, Trump called Loomer “a very strong person” and “a great patriot” but dismissed her role in getting people in his administration fired.

“She makes recommendations on things and people, and sometimes I listen to those recommendations, like I do with everybody. I listen to everybody, and then I make a decision,” Trump said.

“She always has something to say, usually very constructive… she recommended some people for jobs.”

On Saturday, Loomer posted on X, “There is a CIA Coup of the Trump admin taking place right now,” adding, “Something is terribly wrong.”

Speaking on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast on Saturday, Loomer said she has “intel agencies” inside the White House helping her find “deep state” members who have managed to “sneak inside” the FBI, Department of Defense, and the National Security Council.

Loomer said there should have been an “executive mandate” on the first day of the new Trump administration to clean house.

“If you worked for Obama or Joe Biden and you are in this administration you have 48 hours to resign or else we are going to fire you,“ Loomer told Bannon of what she believed should have been done.

“It seems like every single day I have to flag this information to the Trump administration,” Loomer said.

“I guess now the mainstream media has decided to portray me as President Trump’s Rasputin,” she added of the comparison to the Russian peasant who closely influenced the last imperial dynasty to rule Russia.

“They think that I’m some kind of villain because I’m trying to protect President Trump from all these traitors who have somehow found a way to stay inside his administration.”

Loomer said anyone following the MAGA agenda will pass her vetting system.

“If you are actually serving the president and you are doing what you’re supposed to be doing, you have nothing to be afraid of,“ she said.

“But if you are subverting the president and trying to hide your Obama holdover buddies so they can get jobs, you should be afraid because you’re going to get found and you’re going to get Loomered.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-praises-very-nice-laura-loomer-as-her-bodycount-grows/?

ps:I ask again, Who is actually his chief of staff or should I ask "In charge!"

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Trump threatens higher India tariffs, accuses nation of funding war in Ukraine

President Trump on Monday threatened to further raise tariffs on India over the nation's purchases of Russian oil, accusing the country of profiteering.

https://www.axios.com/2025/08/04/trump-tariffs-india-russia-oil?

ps:Why keep fooling around with threatening India? Just do what needs to be done, give Ukraine the ammunition they need!!

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An Assault on Truth

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Awarding superlatives in the Donald Trump era is risky. Knowing when one of his moves is the biggest or worst or most aggressive is challenging—not only because Trump himself always opts for the most over-the-top description, but because each new peak or trough prepares the way for the next. So I’ll eschew a specific modifier and simply say this: The past five days have been deeply distressing for the truth as a force in restraining authoritarian governance.

In a different era, each of these stories would have defined months, if not more, of a presidency. Coming in such quick succession, they risk being subsumed by one another and sinking into the continuous din of the Trump presidency. Collectively, they represent an assault on several kinds of truth: in reporting and news, in statistics, and in the historical record.

On Thursday, The Washington Post revealed that the Smithsonian National Museum of American History had removed references to Trump’s record-setting two impeachments from an exhibit’s section on presidential scandals. The deletion reportedly came as part of a review to find supposed bias in Smithsonian museums. Now, referring to Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, the exhibit states that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal.” This is false—Trump came closer to Senate conviction than Clinton did. The Smithsonian says the material about Trump’s impeachments was meant to be temporary (though it had been in place since 2021), and that references will be restored in an upcoming update.

If only that seemed like a safe bet. The administration, including Vice President J. D. Vance, an ex officio member of the Smithsonian board, has been pressuring the Smithsonian to align its messages with the president’s political priorities, claiming that the institution has “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.” The White House attempted to fire the head of the National Portrait Gallery, which it likely did not have the power to do. (She later resigned.) Meanwhile, as my colleague Alexandra Petri points out, the administration is attempting to eliminate what it views as negativity about American history from National Park Service sites, a sometimes-absurd proposition.

During his first term, Trump criticized the removal of Confederate monuments, which he and allies claimed was revisionist history. It was not—preserving history doesn’t require public monuments to traitors—but tinkering with the Smithsonian is very much attempting to rewrite the official version of what happened, wiping away the impeachments like an ill-fated Kremlin apparatchik.

The day after the Post report, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced that it will shut down. Its demise was sealed by the administration’s successful attempt to get Congress to withdraw funding for it. Defunding CPB was a goal of Project 2025, because the right views PBS and NPR as biased (though the best evidence that Project 2025 is able to marshal for this are surveys about audience political views). Although stations in major cities may be able to weather the loss of assistance, the end of CPB could create news and information deserts in more remote areas.

When Trump isn’t keeping information from reaching Americans, he’s attacking the information itself. Friday afternoon, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released revised employment statistics that suggested that the economy is not as strong as it had appeared, Trump’s response was to fire the commissioner of the BLS, baselessly claiming bias. Experts had already begun to worry that government inflation data were degrading under Trump. Firing the commissioner won’t make the job market any better, but it will make government statistics less trustworthy and undermine any effort by policy makers, including Trump’s own aides, to improve the economy. The New York Times’ Ben Casselman catalogs plenty of examples of leaders who attacked economic statistics and ended up paying a price for it. (Delving into these examples might provide Trump with a timely warning, but as the editors of The Atlantic wrote in 2016, “he appears not to read.”)

The next day, the Senate confirmed Jeanine Pirro to be the top prosecutor for the District of Columbia. Though Pirro previously served as a prosecutor and judge in New York State, her top credential for the job—as with so many of her administration colleagues—is her run as a Fox News personality. Prior to the January 6 riot, she was a strong proponent of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Her statements were prominent in a successful defamation case against Fox, and evidence in the case included a discussion of why executives yanked her off the air on November 7, 2020. “They took her off cuz she was being crazy,” Tucker Carlson’s executive producer wrote in a text. “Optics are bad. But she is crazy.”

This means that a person who either lied or couldn’t tell fact from fiction, and whom even Fox News apparently didn’t trust to avoid a false claim, is being entrusted with power over federal prosecutions in the nation’s capital. (Improbably, she still might be an improvement over her interim predecessor.)

Even as unqualified prosecutors are being confirmed, the Trump White House is seeking retribution against Jack Smith, the career Justice Department attorney who led Trump’s aborted prosecutions on charges related to subverting the 2020 election and hoarding of documents at Mar-a-Lago. The Office of Special Counsel—the government watchdog that is led at the moment, for some reason, by the U.S. trade representative—is investigating whether Smith violated the Hatch Act, which bars some executive-branch officials from certain political actions while they’re on the job, by charging Trump. Never mind that the allegations against Trump were for overt behavior. Kathleen Clark, a professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, told the Post she had never seen the OSC investigate a prosecutor for prosecutorial decisions. The charges against Trump were dropped when he won the 2024 election. If anything, rather than prosecutions being used to interfere with elections, Trump used the election to interfere with prosecutions.

This is a bleak series of events. But although facts can be suppressed, they cannot be so easily changed. Even if Trump can bowdlerize the BLS, that won’t change the underlying economy. As Democrats discovered during the Biden administration, you can’t talk voters out of bad feelings about the economy using accurate statistics; that wouldn’t be any easier with bogus ones. Trump is engaged in a broad assault on truth, but truth has ways of fighting back.

Related:

• Donald Trump shoots the messenger.
• The new dark age

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Trump Rewrites History by Putting Up Confederate Statue

The bronze likeness of Gen. Albert Pike will be put on a plinth around a mile away from the White House.

President Donald Trump plans to bring a statue of a Confederate general back to the heart of the nation’s capital.

The likeness of Gen. Albert Pike, which stood outside the Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters in Washington, D.C., had ropes slung around its neck before it was yanked from its plinth and set alight during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Pike, a Confederate army general who championed the secession of the South, had worked with Native Americans from tribes that owned slaves and joined with the Confederacy to defend slavery during the Civil War. The statue honoring Pike, standing about a mile from the White House, had long been denounced before it was removed.

The National Park Service announced Monday that the bronze monument will soon return to its old spot in Judiciary Square, as crews finalize a refurbishment.

The agency aims to have the statue standing by October, according Trump’s executive orders designed to, in the president’s eyes, restore “truth and sanity to American history.” The Confederacy never conquered D.C., and the District of Columbia Council called for the statue to be removed in a 1992 resolution before renewing the demand in 2017.

Critics of the statue also cited claims that Pike joined the Ku Klux Klan when the war ended, according to The New York Times, though historians say the claim cannot be conclusively proven. Pike, who was also a prominent leader of the Freemasons, was known to oppose racial integration in Masonic lodges.

He also wrote in 1868 that the “white race, and that race alone, shall govern this country. It is the only one that is fit to govern, and it is the only one that shall.”

“Site preparation to repair the statue’s damaged masonry plinth will begin shortly, with crews repairing broken stone, mortar joints and mounting elements,” the National Park Service said.

The move has rankled many, including D.C.’s delegate to the House of Representatives, Eleanor Holmes Norton. The veteran Democrat, 88, told the CBS affiliate WUSA on Monday that the statue should become an artifact rather than being displayed publicly.

“I’ve long believed Confederate statues should be placed in museums as historical artifacts, not remain in locations that imply honor,” she said.

“President Trump’s longstanding determination to honor Confederate General Albert Pike by restoring and reinstalling the Pike statue is as indefensible as it is morally objectionable,” she added.

Norton also said she will resurrect a bill that would “permanently remove the statue of Pike and authorize the Secretary of the Interior to donate the statue to a museum or a similar entity.”

“A statue honoring a racist and a traitor has no place on the streets of D.C.,” she said.

Norton and many others have argued that Pike “served dishonorably” and noted that he “took up arms against the United States [and] misappropriated funds.”

His work to preserve slavery along with the Confederates has placed him in the crosshairs of modern protesters, but Trump has previously argued that “both the good and the bad” parts of history should be remembered with public artworks.

Jason Charter, a D.C. local who was arrested by the FBI for allegedly dousing the statue with lighter fluid before setting it alight, responded angrily to the news that it will return.

“I did not get arrested by the FBI, so that statue could go back up,” he tweeted on Monday.

The move comes as part of a sweeping Trump campaign to restore Confederate iconography across public spaces and the military.

Earlier this year, the president ordered the Pentagon to reinstate the names of Army bases originally named after Confederate generals—names that had been stripped during the racial reckoning that followed the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. Trump also signed an executive order demanding that monuments taken down during those protests be restored.

White House special assistant to the president Lindsey Halligan told the Daily Beast that the statue was “removed under ideological pressure.”

“Thank you to the National Park Service for announcing the restoration of the Albert Pike statue after it was unlawfully toppled and vandalized,” she said.

She added: “Erected in 1901 and funded entirely by private Masonic organizations, the statue stood for over a century as a tribute to Pike’s contributions as a scholar and Masonic leader.

“Such action aligns with President Trump’s Executive Order 14253, which calls for reinstating monuments removed under ideological pressure. It’s encouraging to see our National Park Service stand up for historical preservation, due process, and the rule of law.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-puts-up-confederate-general-statue-targeted-by-fiery-protest/?

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Trump Hammered Over Epstein With His Own Anti-Woke Attack Line

California governor hopeful Stephen Cloobeck launched an ad riffing on the president’s 2024 “they/them” targeting of Kamala Harris.

A Democratic California gubernatorial candidate is using Donald Trump’s own words against him in a campaign ad attacking the president over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Businessman Stephen Cloobeck, who is hoping to replace the term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom in the 2026 election, is launching a large-scale online and TV campaign to suggest that “Trump is for they/them” in reference to the pair of convicted child sex offenders, while the Democrat is “working for you.”

The tagline is a play on Trump’s “Kamala is for they/them” attack line he used against the former vice president during the 2024 campaign, which went after Kamala Harris’ pro-transgender stances, including support of gender-affirming medical treatment for prisoners.

Cloobeck is keeping the heat on Trump by reminding voters of his relationship with the pedophile Epstein, who died in August 2019, and Maxwell, who is currently serving 20 years in prison for helping the disgraced financier abuse children.

The ad highlights Trump and Epstein’s yearslong friendship and includes headlines about the saga surrounding Epstein that Trump has failed to shake off, despite wave after wave of distraction attempts.

This includes reports noting the president’s MAGA base is furious at his administration for not releasing the Epstein files as promised, how the late pedophile attended Trump’s wedding to Marla Maples in 1993, and Trump telling reporters he cut ties with Epstein because the financier “stole” young workers from Mar-a-Lago. One of the women Trump alleged Epstein “stole” from him was Virginia Giuffre, a sex trafficking victim of Epstein’s who took her own life in April.

Cloobeck’s ad will also aim to capitalize on the latest update in the narrative engulfing Trump—that Maxwell has been moved to a minimum-security facility in Texas amid ongoing suggestions the president is considering pardoning her in exchange for her testimony. Trump has previously noted that, while no one has asked him to pardon Maxwell, he would be “allowed” to do so.

“Transferring Maxwell to ‘Club Fed’ shows once again that Trump has no sense of justice and no respect for the rule of law,” Cloobeck said, referring to the prison camp where she’s now held.

“Ghislaine Maxwell destroyed the lives of too many young women and girls, and they deserve better. Her crimes were so horrific that even a 20-year prison sentence feels light. So why did Team Trump hand her this big favor? And what’s next, a full pardon?”

Cloobeck, the founder of Diamond Resorts International, said he was running for California governor to go “toe-to-toe with Trump to fight against his corruption.”

The “Trump is for they/them” ad will air across California, as well as New York, Washington D.C., and the president’s adopted home state of Florida, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort is located.

Trump’s “Kamala is for they/them” was considered one of his most successful ads of the 2024 campaign, and its various forms aired more than 30,000 times, including in all seven swing states, reported NPR.

Analysis from Future Forward, Harris’ main super PAC, found that the ad shifted the race 2.7 percentage points in Trump’s favor after viewers watched it, according to The New York Times.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/stephen-cloobeck-hammers-trump-over-epstein-with-his-own-theythem-anti-woke-attack-line/?

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Trump Sends Maxwell to Club Fed with Puppies, Anti-Aging—and Easy Escapes

The convicted sex trafficker is now enjoying a lax life in lockup, but her fellow inmates reportedly hate her.

Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell is enjoying cushy new digs at a prison camp that has no cell blocks or guard towers but does offer a full gym, yoga classes, and a “puppy program.”

Maxwell, 63, was quietly transferred last week from a prison in Florida to a minimum-security camp in Bryan, Texas. Oversight at her new facility is so lax, it partially relies on the honor system to keep inmates from—quite literally—walking off its wall-free campus, as three women did in 2017.

Federal Prison Camp, Bryan has been nicknamed “Club Fed,” as its inmates have access to an outdoor running track, music programs, intramural competitions, social and cultural events, and activities like table tennis, prison consultant Michael Santos says.

At the facility, Maxwell will be permitted to buy mascara ($13.10), eyeliner ($1.70), concealer ($7.75), powder ($17), lip gloss ($3.40), makeup wipes ($9.25), and, the priciest luxury available, L’Oréal Revita anti-aging cream ($26.00), according to a comissary list obtained by the Daily Beast. Inmates are allowed to spend $360 a month there.

If she wishes, Maxwell can also buy materials for hobbies like painting, crocheting, and sewing, all of which are offered for sale. If she is tight on cash, she is also free to enjoy the camp’s free classes for weightlifting, yoga, and even Pilates.

Julie Howell, a 44-year-old who self-surrendered to Federal Prison Camp, Bryan last month on a theft charge, told her loved ones she was accepted into a “puppy program” that allows her to spend her days training a “12-week-old yellow lab named Louise” to become a service dog, she posted to Facebook on July 22.

“The program is really fantastic, and they are very strict about adhering to the rules and training,” she posted. “This is my ‘job’ while I’m here, and it’s literally 24/7 as the puppies stay in the room with us. It’s me, my bunkie, and a puppy, and we have to supervise the puppy at all times.”

She added of her prison gig, “I absolutely love it.”

Convicted sex traffickers like Maxwell are not typically permitted in a minimum-security camp, and the family of one of her victims, Virginia Giuffre, slammed Trump for granting Maxwell such “luxury” accommodations. Maxwell’s transfer came shortly after she spoke with Justice Department officials about Epstein for two days.

It remains unclear exactly how Maxwell is spending her time in Texas. She now lives in dormitory-style housing on the same property as disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and reality TV star Jen Shah.

Maxwell is no ordinary inmate. However, a handbook obtained by the Daily Beast lays out what her day-to-day life would look like if she were treated as one at the Texas facility.

The handbook adds that Maxwell would be required to be awake by 6 a.m. for work each day, with breakfast beginning at 6:30 a.m. most days. Her work in the kitchen would not stop there. An early lunch is served between 10:30 and 11:30 a.m. on weekdays, followed by dinner that is served between 4:30 and 5:30 p.m.

According to the protocol outlined in the handbook, last updated in 2023, Maxwell would spend her first three months working in the prison camp’s kitchen, where she would be required to wear an all-khaki prison outfit and a lanyard identifying her by name.

Maxwell would earn between 12 cents and $1.15 an hour for her work and would be eligible to seek a new prison job—perhaps practicing carpentry or training service dogs—after 90 days.

FPC Bryan is often heralded as one of the most laid-back places to be a prisoner in the United States.

Prison Pink Lady Consultants writes on its website that, save for Maxwell, who is British, its population is made up of “non-violent female federal inmates” from the Southern United States, many of whom are serving time for financial crimes. It adds that inmates usually sleep in two-person bunk beds in a room of four in dormitories where guards have limited oversight. The property is 37 acres and is surrounded by residential neighborhoods. A public park and basketball court are just a half-mile away.

Inmate Aid, another prison consultant, writes that FPC Bryan offers “grounds with unsecured perimeters, generally unrestricted or open movement within those perimeters, and low inmate-to-staff ratios.”

It adds that inmates there can “expect relatively relaxed monitoring of mail, Corrlinks email, telephone calls, and visits, as well as fairly unsupervised and unmonitored recreational and leisure activities.”

Still, FPC Bryan is a prison, and it is safe to assume that the majority of its population does not want to be there. A former inmate described the camp to Fox Business as “close” to being the “hellhole” of the U.S. prison system.

Maxwell is sure to face challenges that most others do not have to face. While former FPC Bryan inmates note that inmates at the camp regularly rally behind each other and become friends, Maxwell carries significantly more baggage than someone convicted of wire fraud.

A report by The Telegraph claims that Maxwell is already an outcast in Texas.

“Every inmate I’ve heard from is upset she’s here,” Howell told the paper. “This facility is supposed to house non-violent offenders. Human trafficking is a violent crime.”

Howell expressed fear that the facility—which reportedly has no razor wire, watch towers, and has fewer guards per inmate than the majority of federal prisons—may not be equipped to protect Maxwell and other inmates from outside harm.

“This is a camp you can literally walk out of,” she told the Telegraph. “I don’t care how many people she turns in; it doesn’t take away from her actions. As a mother of a sex-trafficking victim, I’m absolutely disgusted she’s in this facility. Regardless of her reasoning, I don’t think she belongs here.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/an-inside-look-at-ghislaine-maxwells-new-life-at-club-fed-in-bryan-texas/?

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Unhinged Trump Demands Another Top-Level Firing at CBS

The president was upset that the anchor “lost her belief” in him.

Donald Trump has turned his TV kiss of death on a new target: CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King.

The president gloated over Stephen Colbert losing his late-night talk show hosting job last month, then claimed he had “strong word” that Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon would be next. Trump said they had “NO TALENT” and boasted, “It’s really good to see them go, and I hope I played a major part in it!”

On Monday, the president reposted a New York Post article that quoted a source claiming King was in danger of losing her job at CBS amid falling ratings for the morning show and internal fears over their “woke” coverage.

Trump ranted on his social media, “Gayle King’s career is over. She should have stayed with her belief in TRUMP. She never had the courage to do so. No talent, no ratings, no strength!!!”

His comments come after Colbert was fired soon after CBS paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview. The settlement cleared the way for federal approval of an $8 billion merger between CBS and Skydance.

The Post article quoted a source saying the CBS Mornings audience “doesn’t want woke,” referencing a recent interview with Bob the Drag Queen promoting a book about Black historical figure Harriet Tubman.

“It doesn’t like progressive and provocative bookings,” the anonymous source claimed. “The morning show audience wants optimism and cheer and joy and what they were producing is at odds with audience expectations.”

Last month, CBS Mornings had 1.8 million viewers, behind Good Morning America on 2.625 million viewers and Today on 2.297 million.

The Daily Beast has approached King’s representatives for comment.

Despite Trump claiming King had “belief” in him, the pair have taken jabs at each other for many years. During the 2020 election debates, King commented on Trump saying he was “the least racist person in the room.”

“I wondered, who else was in the room?” King said on CBS. “When you’re a little kid your mom tells you actions speak louder than words.” King then referenced Trump’s “dog whistling” to white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys.

In March last year, King told CNN she was insulted by Trump saying of his mugshot, “You know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population. You see Black people walking around with my mugshot, they do shirts.”

“I thought it was insulting to people of color, to paint the Black community with one brush,” King said. “It made me so angry and I was so insulted by his words, he is implying that Black people have criminal problems.”

Speaking at the Democratic National Convention in August last year, King said Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was “so uniquely qualified” to be president.

In January, King poked the bear again when she called out the lack of diversity during Trump’s inauguration ceremony.

“I do not see many people of color. Does anybody else besides me observe that?” King said. “I’m fascinated by why that is?”

When asked about Trump attending the Super Bowl in February, King said, “He’s a sitting president and as we’ve seen he does what he wants when he wants.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-declares-gayle-king-is-latest-tv-host-to-face-the-axe/?

ps:So is this now part of the job description of the president? To meddle in everybody's business??

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MAGA’s Obsession With Sydney Sweeney Takes Cringe Turn

The Trump administration is leaning into its new cause célèbre, hard.

MAGA’s newfound obsession with Sydney Sweeney took a turn for the deeply cringe in the form of a fawning tweet from the Department of Defense’s Rapid Response team.

On Monday afternoon, the @DODResponse account on X posted a photo of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth disembarking from a plane in a sunglasses, a blue blazer, and blue jeans, with the caption, “@secdef has great jeans”.

The post comes after days of discourse surrounding a controversial American Eagle ad starring Sydney Sweeney that touted the actress’s ”good genes,” and which critics interpreted as endorsing eugenics.

Criticism from the left led MAGA to defend Sydney Sweeney—whose filmography includes programs like Euphoria and The Handmaid’s Tale that many conservatives would likely dismiss as ‘woke‘—particularly when it was revealed that she was a registered Republican.

President Donald Trump weighed in on Sunday, telling reporters, “If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic!”

In a later Truth Social post, Trump misspelled her name, but told his followers that she had the “HOTTEST ad out there,” adding that the jeans she was advertising are “flying off the shelves.” ”Go get ‘em Sidney,” he declared.

Trump’s son, Don Jr., showed his support last week by sharing an AI-generated image of Trump in Sweeney’s place in the ad with the caption, “That Hanse…. Um, Donald is so hot right now!!!,” being a reference to Zoolander.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), meanwhile, wrote in a post on X, “Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women. I’m sure that will poll well….”

In the same vein, Vice President JD Vance criticized the left’s response to the ad during his appearance on the Ruthless podcast, telling the hosts, “My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi.”

He continued, “That appears to be their actual strategy. I mean, it actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems though, which is that you have a normal all-American beautiful girl doing like a normal jeans ad. They’re trying to sell jeans to kids in America and they have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing. And it’s like, you guys, did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election?”

While Sydney Sweeney has not responded publicly to the backlash, American Eagle released a statement that stressed that the ad “is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story.”

”We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone,” the statement read.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/magas-obsession-with-sydney-sweeney-takes-cringe-turn/?

ps:It gets better and better everyday!!!!!

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CBS Exec Who Fired Stephen Colbert to Take Over as ‘South Park’ Boss

George Cheeks has been named chair of TV Media in a shakeup at Paramount.

The CEO who oversaw the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will soon be taking the reins as overseer of all things South Park following the Paramount/Skydance merger.

George Cheeks, the co-CEO of Paramount Global and president and CEO of CBS, has also been named chair of TV Media at Paramount following the company’s merger with Skydance, Deadline reports.

While other scripted productions will be folded into Paramount TV Studios, South Park will be part of Cheeks’ portfolio, which also includes Paramount’s broadcast and cable properties like the CBS Network and CBS Studios, as well as Nickelodeon, BET, and Paramount Media Networks—which includes South Park’s longstanding home Comedy Central.

With Comedy Central in his portfolio, Cheeks will also be overseeing The Daily Show. Much like The Late Show, The Daily Show—particularly regular host (and former permanent host) Jon Stewart—is known for taking aim at the Trump administration.

Colbert’s criticisms of President Donald Trump, and Paramount’s decision to settle a lawsuit with Trump to the tune of $16 million, are what led many to allege that his axing was political, not financial. Colbert called the settlement a ”big fat bribe” mere weeks before his show’s cancellation was announced, while Cheeks argued that the settlement was made in order to avoid an expensive and protracted legal battle.

South Park has also been taking aim at Trump in its latest episodes, netting historic ratings following a Season 27 opener that featured Trump complaining about his micropenis while in bed with Satan.

Trump was clearly not thrilled with his depiction, with a White House spokesperson telling the Daily Beast, “This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”

South Park’s parent company didn’t escape the show’s mockery either, with the premiere episode featuring a parody of CBS’ 60 Minutes that featured the hosts nervously referring to “the president, who is a great man” who “is probably watching”.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cbs-exec-who-fired-stephen-colbert-to-takeover-as-south-park-boss/?

ps:So what's next??

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Fox News Guest Fact Checks Host With Network’s Own Polls on Trump

The White Dudes for Harris founder told Jesse Watters that Fox’s own polling showed Trump losing popularity.

A Democrat took aim at Republicans and Fox News in an interview with Fox host Jesse Watters, arguing that his network’s own polling numbers showed that people are unhappy with Trump’s presidency.

In a Monday evening appearance on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime, White Dudes for Harris founder Mike Nellis was asked if he still supported former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Nellis replied, “Listen, I prefer Kamala Harris for president right now, and honestly, I think a lot of Americans agree with me.”

He continued, “Fox News’ own polling has Donald Trump’s approval rating cratering. He’s negative 30 percent on the inflation. I think people are awfully frustrated with the leadership they’re getting right now. That doesn’t mean they like Democrats, but they’re not happy with what they’re getting.”

According to recent Fox News polling, just 46 percent of voters approve of Trump’s presidency, with that number dropping to 36 percent when asked about how Trump is handling inflation and tariffs in particular. Trump’s highest approval numbers are 56 percent on border security and 48 percent on immigration, while 58 percent of voters disapprove of his ‘One Big Beautiful Bill.‘

Watters attempted to defend the president, arguing, “OK, so, he just started off. You gotta give the guy a shot. But you guys were so bad, he won in a landslide.”

He then asked Nellis, “Is anyone in the Democratic Party thinking maybe we can do things differently?” Nellis disagreed with Watters’ use of the term landslide, arguing that Trump won by just 185,000 in three swing states, but conceded that “a lot of people are doing the work of talking about how we build a new Democratic Party.”

“I think Democrats should take a sobering look at what happened in the last election. We lost to Donald Trump again, which is embarrassing because I don’t think he’s qualified for the job. And I don’t think he’s doing a good job either,“ he continued.

“We gotta do a better job of winning people back, giving them a reason to care about us, giving them a reason to believe that we’re gonna fight for them, help lower grocery prices, help them buy a house and retire with dignity.”

White Dudes for Harris was established in 2024, growing to around 200,000 participants and raising more than $4 million for Harris’ presidential campaign. Supporters included Democratic politicians like Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, and Pete Buttigieg, as well as celebrity Democrats like Bradley Whitford, Mark Hamill, and Sean Astin.

The Fox appearance seemed to rile some MAGA stars, with Laura Loomer raging on X, “What is Rupert Murdoch doing?”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/guest-throws-foxs-cratering-trump-polling-on-its-own-host/?

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Trump administration debating releasing transcript of Ghislaine Maxwell interview with DOJ, sources say

The Justice Department has an audio recording of the interview it conducted with Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell last month, and the administration is considering releasing a transcript of the interview publicly, three senior administration officials told CNN.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/05/politics/trump-blanche-epstein-maxwell-interview-transcript?

Federal judge rules Trump administration cannot reallocate billions meant for disaster mitigation

BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from reallocating $4 billion meant to help communities protect against natural disasters.

https://apnews.com/article/fema-bric-grants-lawsuit-climate-disaster-b10c8d2783543f61c8e8562befdd8fa7?

Radical roots

The Trump administration presented a vision for the country’s future with a song and a video. Some were surprised that the Department of Homeland Security chose to embrace a socialist protest anthem.

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Trump Fuels MAGA Fever Dream of Running for Third Term

The president’s comments come as polls show his approval rating is falling.

President Donald Trump has once again opened the door to running for a third term, convinced that his poll numbers are soaring because Americans love his tariffs.

In a lengthy interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday, the president fueled MAGA’s dream of Trump remaining in the White House for another four years, as he defended his global trade wars and other controversial policies.

“I’d like to run, I have the best poll numbers I’ve ever had,” Trump said, even as his interviewers pointed out that his poll numbers were not that rosy.

“You know why? Because people love the tariffs, and they love that foreign countries aren’t ripping us off anymore. For years they ripped us off, friend and foe.”

Trump’s comments come as the RealClearPolitics polling aggregator shows his average approval rating is 5 points underwater, with just 46 percent of Americans approving of his performance while 51 percent disapprove.

But his comments on Tuesday were not the first time that the president has flirted with the idea of a third term, something that is prohibited under the U.S. Constitution.

In May, for example, he told NBC News that “a lot of people want me to do it,” referring to his allies.

To do so would require overcoming the massive hurdle of a constitutional amendment, which involves a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress, as well as ratification by three-quarters of the states.

Nonetheless, Trump touted the idea again on Tuesday morning in a broad-ranging interview in which the president also claimed his weak jobs numbers were “rigged”; revived his lie that the 2020 election was stolen; and praised Attorney General Pam Bondi for opening up a grand jury probe into the so-called “Russia hoax.”

Bondi on Monday ordered a federal prosecutor to present evidence to a federal grand jury outlining the department’s claim that Obama officials engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy” to undermine Trump’s first-term agenda by linking him to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The probe could pave the way for a potential indictment against key officials who served under the former president, including former FBI director James Comey, former CIA director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Asked if he gave the order to Bondi to open the investigation, Trump insisted: “I have nothing to do with it.” He added: “I will tell you this. They deserve it.”

However, critics branded the administration’s claims as yet another attempt to divert attention from the firestorm Trump has faced over his links to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“The bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” Obama’s office said in a rare rebuke last month.

Trump also talked up his tariff policies, despite last week’s jobs data showing that the uncertainty surrounding them contributed to slower growth.

Under the administration’s latest tariff plan, the “universal” tariff for goods coming into the U.S will remain at 10% for countries in which the US has a trade surplus.

But dozens of other countries with trade deficits will now be subjected to tariffs ranging from 15% to about 40%.

When pressed about a third run, Trump eventually acknowledged that he “probably” wouldn’t go through with it.

“Probably not,” he laughed, before adding: “But I want to.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-fuels-maga-fever-dream-of-running-for-third-term/?

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Epstein Was Still a Member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Long After He Was Indicted

Trump claims he got rid of Epstein for “stealing” his staff. But club records raise new questions.

Jeffrey Epstein continued to be a member of Donald Trump’s luxury private members club for more than a year after the billionaire financier was indicted, according to Mar-a-Lago membership documents seen by the authors of a book.

The president told reporters that he cut ties with Epstein after the pedophile “stole” female workers from his exclusive Florida members club, but the revelation that Epstein was allegedly still a member of the club seven years after Epstein poached Virginia Giuffre from the spa at Mar-a-Lago in 2000 raises questions over Trump’s version of events.

Epstein was a member of the club until October 2007, more than a year after he was indicted and released on bail, according to The Grifter’s Club: Trump, Mar-a-Lago, and the Selling of the Presidency. In the footnotes of their book, the team of Miami Herald journalists Sarah Blaskey, Caitlin Ostroff, Nicholas Nehamas, and Jay Weaver reported: “The authors viewed a membership list showing that Epstein’s account had been closed.” The book reports that the “membership log shows his account at the club was closed in October 2007.”

A report in the New York Post in the same month quoted a source saying he had been banned. “He would use the spa to try to procure girls. But one of them, a masseuse about 18 years old, he tried to get her to do things,” a source told Page Six. “Her father found out about it and went absolutely ape-[bleep]. Epstein’s not allowed back.”

Guiffre’s attorney Bradley Edwards stated in a 2009 court filing that Epstein had been banned by Trump from Mar-a-Lago “because Epstein sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club,” although he did not specify when the assault was alleged to have happened. Edwards was approached for comment.

It is not known whether Epstein visited Mar-a-Lago while on bail. The New York Post said in the same article that Epstein denied he was banned even then and told them that he had “recently [been] invited to an event there,” although he did not name the event.

The banishment of Epstein came 15 months after he was indicted by a Florida grand jury and surrendered at the Palm Beach precinct to be charged in July 2006. Only one count of soliciting prostitution was filed against him at the time, but the case drew widespread media coverage, which disclosed allegations of his sexual contact with minors.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported on July 26, 2006, that Epstein had been accused of “fondling and—in one case—having sex with underage girls whom he paid for massages.”

It added that detectives had recommended he “be charged with four counts of committing an unlawful sex act on a minor and one count of lewd and lascivious molestation.”

Florida’s Palm Beach Post reported extensively on the case—at least 14 times, according to newspaper cuttings service Factiva—in the 15 months between his July 2006 charge and October 2007, when Epstein was reportedly culled from Mar-a-Lago.

In total, Factiva records 175 stories about Epstein in that same period. Many of the reports stated that Epstein had been released on a $3,000 bail bond. The New York Post and Fox News were among the outlets to report that girls as young as 14 had been targeted. Trump is known to be a voracious consumer of both outlets.

The Daily Beast asked the White House and Mar-a-Lago whether Trump and the club had been aware Epstein had been charged and been on bail in the 15 months prior to his being removed from its membership list. They were also asked whether Epstein had attended, or been invited to, Mar-a-Lago while on bail, as he had claimed. At the time of publication, neither had offered a comment on the record.

Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre—who took her own life earlier this year—said in a deposition for a lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell that she worked at Trump’s club in the summer of 2000 when she was 17.

It was later reported that Giuffre had been paid $1,866.50 by the resort that year, suggesting she was only employed briefly. The New York Daily News reported in 2015 that, a day after her first appointment with Epstein, she “quit her job to become a full-time ‘masseuse.’”

When she first made her complaint against Epstein, Giuffre was unsure if it was 1999 or 2000 when she had worked at Trump’s club. “When I got my records from Mar-a-Lago, I was able to find out that it was 2000,” she said.

Trump confirmed last week that Giuffre had been hired by Epstein after being approached at Mar-a-Lago.

“I don’t know. I think she worked at the spa, I think so, I think that was one of the people. Yeah, he stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, none whatsoever,” he said.

The president said he had fallen out with Epstein, who formerly described the president as his best friend, after learning that the financier was poaching people from Mar-a-Lago.

“When I heard about it, I told him, I said: ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people—whether it was spa or not spa—I don’t want you to take our people. And he was fine, and then not too long after that, he did it again. And I said: ‘Out of here!’”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/epstein-stayed-a-member-of-trumps-mar-a-lago-long-after-he-was-indicted/?

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A Trump-World Talisman

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One of Donald Trump’s tells is his talk of the “Russia hoax.” When that phrase passes his lips, it’s a sign that the president is agitated about something.

In the past two weeks, for example, as questions about the administration’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein have dominated headlines, Trump has been talking often about “the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, and many other hoaxes too,” as he put it in an interview with Newsmax on Friday. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, also released documents last week that her office said shed new light on this “Russia hoax.” Attorney General Pam Bondi has reportedly ordered a grand-jury investigation into claims that Obama-administration officials broke laws while investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The DNI’s office doesn’t explain exactly what the “Russia hoax” is, and for good reason. First, although the phrase has achieved talismanic status in Trump world, it has no set definition, because Trump keeps changing the meaning. Second, and more important, it’s not a hoax.

Here’s what is not in dispute: The United States intelligence community concluded that Russia sought to meddle in the 2016 election and, according to a GOP-led Senate investigation, wanted to help Trump. As Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrote in a report summarizing his findings, “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his campaign chair Paul Manafort met at Trump Tower in June 2016 with Russians who they believed would hand over “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. (Steve Bannon—Steve Bannon!—called the meeting “treasonous.”) A Trump 2016-campaign aide boasted to an Australian diplomat that Russia was trying to help the Trump campaign, and then lied about his Russian contacts to FBI agents. Trump publicly called on Russia to hack Clinton’s emails in July 2016—jokingly, he has since said—and Russian agents attempted to do so that very day, according to the Justice Department. Hackers who the U.S. government believes were connected to Russia obtained emails from a number of Democratic Party officials and leaked them publicly, and Trump pal Roger Stone was apparently forewarned about some. Major tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter (now X), also confirmed that they had detected dubious Russian activity.

In spite of all of this evidence, or perhaps because of it, Trump has loudly insisted that it’s all a hoax. He’s used the phrase off and on since spring 2017, though he’s changed what he means. For a time, he made the claim—without evidence then, and without any since—that the federal government under Barack Obama had wiretapped or improperly surveilled him. At other times, he has claimed that the whole thing is a “witch hunt.” Often, he generically used the term hoax to refer to any allegations about Russian involvement in the 2016 election. He even sued the Pulitzer Prize Board over a statement honoring reporting on connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. (The case is ongoing.)

His attempts to instill doubt have been assisted by the fact that some of the wilder rumors and reports concerning his campaign didn’t turn out to be true. Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser, was a bit of an eccentric character but not a traitor, as some suggested, much less the key to unraveling any grand conspiracy. Trump was probably not communicating with a Russian bank via a mysterious server. He was almost certainly not a longtime Russian-intelligence asset. The so-called Steele dossier was full of falsehoods. I argued at the time that BuzzFeed’s decision to publish it was a grievous error, and it warped conversation about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

Mueller’s highly anticipated investigation also landed with a big thud. First, expectations for his report had been inflated by an overeager circle of Trump critics who had expected shocking new revelations; the revelations were indeed shocking, but by the time Mueller published them, most had already filtered out in press accounts. Second, debate over Trump’s ties to Russia had focused on “collusion,” which is not a specific crime. This produced a semantic sideshow argument in which Trump insisted that he couldn’t have colluded, because he wasn’t charged with it. Third, Attorney General Bill Barr misrepresented Mueller’s findings. Fourth, Mueller did not recommend charges against Trump, thanks to Justice Department guidance against charging a sitting president, which meant that although the special counsel produced an unmistakable implicit accusation, Trump claimed vindication.

Trump’s use of pardons may have induced some of his confederates—including Stone and Manafort—to not cooperate with prosecutors, or to only partly cooperate, thus depriving the public of a chance at receiving a full accounting. This was a kind of legalized obstruction of justice.

Plenty of authorities have pointed out that Trump’s claim of a hoax is nonsense. In 2017, PolitiFact named that its lie of the year. In 2018, The Washington Post reported: “Trump’s Russia ‘Hoax’ Turns Out to Be Real.” In 2019, a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded that, as my colleague Adam Serwer put it, “the ‘Russia hoax’ defense is itself a hoax, and a highly successful one, aimed at reassuring Trump supporters who might otherwise be troubled by the president’s behavior.” Still, the idea that the whole thing was a chimera has taken hold even within some precincts of the mainstream press, where the whole thing is treated as a weird passing obsession. The journalist Ben Smith, who made the decision to publish the Steele dossier, now contends, vaguely and in passive voice, that “Trump was in retrospect treated unfairly.”

Meanwhile, Trump world continues to cook up new iterations of the hoax claim. The most recent ones are driven by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who has a history of weaponizing intelligence, to use a term he’s a fan of, and Gabbard, who has for years repeated Kremlin talking points. Last month, Ratcliffe alleged that in 2016, three of the nation’s top intelligence officials “manipulated intelligence and silenced career professionals—all to get Trump,” but as my colleague Shane Harris reported, he didn’t have evidence to back that up. Gabbard has released a dribble of documents intended to bolster it, but still nothing that matches the claims.

In recent days, MAGA allies have pushed a new and shocking allegation: that emails show Clinton actually approved a plan to smear Trump by claiming he was colluding with Russia. The problem is that, once again, investigations have debunked it. A special counsel appointed by Barr during Trump’s first term, with the goal of ferreting out political skulduggery in the Russia investigation, found that messages about Clinton being treated as a smoking gun were, in fact, likely concocted by the Russians. As The New York Times reported, “The special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise.”

Durham’s finding of a Russian forgery is ironic: Someone has finally turned up a real Russia hoax. Rather than working to fight it, however, Trump’s aides are once more colluding with Russia to mislead the American people and further Trump’s political fortunes.

Related:

• The “Russia hoax,” revisited
• The Russia hoax is still not a hoax. (From 2024)

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Weather Service

Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, the National Weather Service has lost more than 550 workers due to Department of Government Efficiency-related terminations and early retirement incentives. With so much institutional knowledge gone, experts worried that the nation’s forecasting agency would be unable to provide accurate reports and timely life-saving warnings. For months, the remaining employees at NWS have been working additional hours and taking on more responsibilities in an effort to maintain 24/7 coverage. But now, the NWS has received permission to hire 450 meteorologists, hydrologists and radar technicians.

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Trump Ridiculed for Claiming He Didn’t Know About Ghislaine Maxwell’s Jail Move

The president’s latest comments have left some experts baffled.

A curious answer by Donald Trump about Ghislaine Maxwell’s unusual jail move has been singled out for questioning by both experts and political foes.

On Tuesday, CNN host Kaitlan Collins directly asked President Trump if he was aware of Maxwell’s prison transfer to a lower-security facility and if he “personally approved” it.

“I didn‘t know about it at all, no,” Trump claimed. “I read about it just like you did.” He added of the jail switch, “It is not a very uncommon thing.”

Collins followed up by asking if Maxwell is “credible,” which prompted Trump to praise his former personal lawyer Todd Blanche, now the deputy attorney general, who interviewed Maxwell in jail twice last month.

“He’s a very talented man,” Trump said of Blanche. “I didn’t talk to him about it but I will tell you that whatever he asked would be totally appropriate.”

Trump repeated, “It’s not an uncommon thing to do that.”

He added—cryptically—that Blanche “probably wants to make sure that, you know, people that should not be involved or aren’t involved are not hurt by something that would be very, very unfortunate, very unfair to a lot of people.”

Trump continued, “I know this. I didn‘t discuss it with him, but anything he talked about with her or the fact that he did that, not unusual, number one, and most importantly, is something that would be totally above board.”

However, not all were so convinced by Trump’s assertions that Maxwell’s prison transfer is nothing out of the ordinary.

After years in a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, Maxwell was moved to a minimum-security federal prison in Bryan, Texas, days after meeting with Blanche. The prison camp, dubbed “Club Fed,” includes a full gym, yoga classes, and a “puppy program.”

Elie Honig, CNN’s senior legal analyst, told Collins he was doubtful about Trump not knowing the details of Maxwell’s prison transfer. Honig added the transfer would have required a special waiver due to the severity of the 63-year-old’s crimes.

“It’s almost impossible that Ghislaine Maxwell just happened, by coincidence, to be moved to a better facility a week or so after she met with Todd Blanche,” Honig said.

“You would need specific authorization, you would need a waiver, because Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence, because she is a convicted child sex offender. And the suggestion the president seemed to be making, that it just happens in the usual course of business—no, it does not.”

Rep. Jasmine Crockett also told Collins on CNN’s The Source she did not believe Trump had no knowledge of Maxwell’s prison upgrade.

“I don‘t think that there‘s a lot that the president is personally aware of, so him being clueless is on brand,” the Texas Democrat said. “But in this particular set of circumstances where he is personally looking out for himself, I absolutely believe that he was knowledgeable about this.”

Crockett added, “I‘m sure that this didn‘t happen behind his back. And clearly he is not complaining about it. That’s one thing that he didn’t do. He didn‘t say, ‘I’m the commander in chief and somehow they did this and they did not notify me.’ He did not seem like he was upset. So in my opinion, he probably did know about it.”

She continued: “He is concerned about himself. We know for a fact that he is in the Epstein files, and personally, I don’t think that it’s a big secret that’s the reason they wanted to cover up.”

Robert Hood, a former Bureau of Prisons chief of internal affairs, labeled Maxwell’s transfer to NBC News a “travesty of justice.”

“To relocate a sex offender serving 20 years to a country club setting is offensive to victims and others serving similar crimes,” he said.

Vito Maraviglia, a retired federal prison special investigative agent, told the network, “The logic to me is not there. It doesn’t pass the smell test.”

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

On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance will host senior Trump administration officials at his house to discuss Blanche’s interview with Maxwell, according to reports. Among the attendees will be FBI Director Kash Patel, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, along with Blanche.

The deputy attorney general’s two-day interview of Maxwell, spanning nine hours, was recorded, with the White House reportedly discussing releasing the tapes.

CNN reports that one aim of Wednesday’s meeting is to craft a “unified response” to the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and the interview of his accomplice Maxwell, which may include Blanche holding a press conference or even appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-ghislaine-maxwell-answer-is-raising-eyebrows/?

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Trump’s War on Big Law Means It’s Harder to Challenge the Administration

Two weeks into President Donald Trump’s second presidency, and just days after he pardoned hundreds of Capitol rioters, officials Trump had placed in charge of the Justice Department made a sweeping demand. They wanted the names of the thousands of FBI employees who had played a role in investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-law-firms-accountability-environment-police-lgbtq?

Apple is investing another $100 billion in the US, Trump set to announce

Apple is investing another $100 billion to expand its operations in the United States, President Donald Trump will announce later Wednesday, a White House official said.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/06/tech/apple-investment-us-trump

Trump to put additional 25% import taxes on India, bringing combined tariffs to 50%

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to place an additional 25% tariff on India for its purchases of Russian oil, bringing the combined tariffs imposed by the United States on its ally to 50%.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-india-russia-oil-tariffs-2db9dc22d7b56624bdceb2e15c134d60?

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Vance Interferes Directly With DOJ in Trump’s Epstein Crisis

The vice president had also previously called for the release of the Epstein files.

Vice President J.D. Vance is hosting a strategy meeting with top Trump officials to coordinate a plan to deal with the ongoing firestorm over the Epstein files.

In an extraordinary intervention, Vance is expected to meet on Wednesday night with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI director Kash Patel as they weigh up how to respond to the fallout surrounding the deceased sex offender.

One of the issues the administration is grappling with is whether to publish an audio recording and transcript of Blanche’s recent conversation with Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted to 20 years for her role in recruiting and abusing young girls as Epstein’s accomplice.

Officials will also reportedly discuss the prospect of Blanche, who was previously Trump’s personal attorney, holding a press conference or conducting a high-profile interview to give the increasingly skeptical public more information about the case.

The dinner meeting, first reported by CNN, comes one month after Bondi’s Justice Department and the FBI put out a memo concluding that no further disclosures were needed regarding Epstein’s crimes and networks.

After weeks of trying to kill the story and branding it a Democratic hoax, some administration officials are now acknowledging they need to take a more proactive approach as the public demands answers.

But the issue is highly sensitive for the administration, given that, since the Watergate scandal of Richard Nixon, the DOJ has traditionally operated at arm’s length from the White House in criminal investigation matters to avoid the perception of political interference.

Conservatives were outraged, for instance, when former president Bill Clinton and then attorney general Loretta Lynch met on the tarmac in Phoenix in 2016 while Hillary Clinton was being investigated for using a private email server as Secretary of State.

Amid the politics, Epstein’s victims and their families are also demanding to be heard. Among them are the siblings of Virginia Giuffre, who Maxwell recruited for Epstein from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort when she was a teenage spa worker.

In a statement, Giuffre’s family said: “We understand that Vice President JD Vance will hold a strategy session this evening at his residence with administration officials. Missing from this group is, of course, any survivor of the vicious crimes of convicted perjurer and sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.”

The meeting at Vance’s Observatory Circle residence in Northwest Washington is emblematic of the ongoing headache Trump faces after promising - and then failing to deliver - transparency on the Epstein files.

The issue has been red meat for Trump’s MAGA base for years, underpinned by the theory that “Deep State” elites were trying to cover up the crimes of rich and powerful people who may have been part of Epstein’s networks.

Last October, weeks before election day, Vance himself appeared on Theo Von’s popular podcast and told listeners: “Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list. That is an important thing.”

Now, some fear that the administration is complicit in the cover-up, and many, including Trump’s traditional allies, are demanding more disclosures.

“Yeah, what changed?” Von asked on X last month, with a clip of his interview with Vance.

Asked about the Wednesday dinner meeting, Vance’s communications director William Martin said in a statement: “The CNN story is pure fiction. There was never a supposed meeting scheduled at the Vice President’s residence to discuss Epstein strategy.”

Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 as he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges involving underage girls.

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy.

However, since meeting with Blanche last month, the 63-year-old has been given a sweetheart deal to move from her Florida prison to a lower security jail near her family in Texas.

The president has also refused to rule out giving her a pardon or commutation in exchange for her help, something that could further inflame his base, given her role in abusing young girls.

Amid ongoing fears of a cover-up, Trump has remained tight-lipped about Blanche’s meeting with Maxwell last month, in which the Deputy Attorney General quizzed her about 100 people connected to Epstein, according to her lawyer.

Trump told reporters on Tuesday night: “I didn’t talk to him about it, but will tell you whatever he asked would be totally appropriate.”

“I think he probably wants to make sure that, you know, people that should not be involved or aren’t involved are not hurt by something that would be very, very unfortunate and very unfair for a lot of people,” he added.

The White House declined to comment on the strategy meeting, and the Justice Department has yet to answer questions from the Daily Beast about it.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/vance-interferes-directly-with-doj-in-trumps-epstein-crisis/?

ps:I can't wait to see the bull manure that comes out of this!!

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Trump Pockets More Medals He Didn’t Earn: ‘Can I Say I Won Them Athletically?’

Trump’s actual role in landing the 2028 Olympic Games was minor and mostly ceremonial.

President Donald Trump has added a shiny new set of sports medals to his collection—without breaking a sweat.

At a White House event Tuesday to announce a new task force for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, which he will conveniently chair, Trump was gifted a complete set of official Olympic medals by Casey Wasserman, chairman of the Games’ organizing committee.

“Can I say I won them athletically? That would be an honor,” Trump asked, moments before launching into a multi-post celebration on Truth Social showing off his latest hardware.

Wasserman explained the medals were a throwback to L.A.’s 1984 Olympic Games. “As you know, in 1984 we hosted the Olympics in Los Angeles and someone we admire, President Reagan—both of us—presided over those, and you’ll preside over our games,” he said.

Trump muttered approvingly “Ooh!” and “Wow!” as he accepted the box.

Though Trump’s actual role in landing the 2028 Games was minor and mostly ceremonial, the 79-year-old made sure to take a bow.

“In my first term, we were instrumental in helping the city of Los Angeles win the bid,” he declared, before announcing that he would now chair the newly minted Olympic task force.

The Olympic fanfare follows another recent display of sports showboating from the president. Last month, Trump somehow walked away with the FIFA Club World Cup trophy—despite not being on the field, or technically involved at all.

After Chelsea FC defeated Paris Saint-Germain in the final in New Jersey, FIFA President Gianni Infantino gifted Trump the original trophy and even stashed a winner’s medal for him.

Trump, in turn, hijacked the medal ceremony, awkwardly inserting himself next to Chelsea captain Reece James, who was clearly confused at his presence.

“They told me that he was going to present the trophy and then exit the stage, and I thought that he was going to exit the stage, but he wanted to stay,” James said after the surreal photo op.

Back home, Trump’s gold haul continues—especially on the golf course. He’s claimed victory in numerous tournaments at his own clubs, and somehow never seems to lose.

That track record has raised eyebrows, especially after footage surfaced of a caddy suspiciously dropping a ball on the green for him during a recent golf-cum-business trip to Scotland.

Yet despite a trophy case that could rival a sports hall of fame, one accolade continues to haunt him: the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump has raged for years that he deserves one, and in June, he posted a full self-nomination.

“I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between India and Pakistan... Serbia and Kosovo... Egypt and Ethiopia,” he wrote.

He concluded with his crowning achievement: “I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for doing the Abraham Accords... which will unify the Middle East for the first time in ‘The Ages!’”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-pockets-more-medals-he-didnt-earn-can-i-say-i-won-them-athletically/?

ps:What a total piece of work!!!!!

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Trump to put additional 25% import taxes on India, bringing combined tariffs to 50%

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to place an additional 25% tariff on India for its purchases of Russian oil, bringing the combined tariffs imposed by the United States on its ally to 50%. The tariffs would go into effect 21 days after the signing of the order, meaning that both India and Russia might have time to negotiate. Read More.

Homeland Security removes age limits for ICE recruits to boost hiring for Trump deportations

The Department of Homeland Security said Wednesday that it is removing age limits for new hires at the agency responsible for immigration enforcement, as it aims to expand hiring after a massive infusion of cash from Congress. Currently, ICE applicants must be 21 years old and no older than 37 or 40, depending on what position they are applying for. Read More.

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A Lock on the Headlines

View in browser

Donald Trump doesn’t want you to read this article.

Don’t let it go to your head, and I won’t let it go to mine; we’re not special. He doesn’t want anyone reading anything about Jeffrey Epstein, or his own relationship with the late sex offender. And yet his intensive efforts to change the subject to something—anything—else seem to bring only more scrutiny.

This evening, CNN reported, a group of top administration officials, including the vice president, attorney general, FBI director, and White House chief of staff, had been planning to gather to discuss whether to release the recording of an interview between Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker and an Epstein associate, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Then, this afternoon, Reuters reported the meeting had been canceled, with Vice President J. D. Vance’s spokesperson denying that it had ever even been planned. Yesterday, Republicans in the House subpoenaed the Justice Department for some records related to Epstein.

As the Epstein story’s lock on headlines enters its second month, the president has employed three main tactics to try to dislodge it. First, he has ordered his supporters to stop talking about Epstein. “Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker,” he wrote, part of a long and anguished Truth Social post on July 16. This has been somewhat effective in certain quarters: In the days after Trump’s pleas, Fox News aired less coverage of the story.

Trying to stifle coverage this way has flaws. Much of the interest in Epstein originated in MAGA media itself, so claiming that these supporters fell for a hoax is dodgy—especially when the attorney general and the FBI director were among the foremost merchants of innuendo. And it almost goes without saying that screaming at people not to pay attention to a topic will only make them suspect there’s something to see.

Some Trump-aligned outlets may be willing to take his lead, but other media organizations are not. A press that might have treated the Epstein story as either old news or somewhat prurient just a few months ago is now eager to find new information about it. Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who doggedly pursued the story, is the most desired guest on the podcast circuit. Just yesterday, The New York Times published photos of unclear provenance showing the inside of Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse.

Second, Trump has tried to change the subject, whether that’s attempting to breathe new life into his claims of a “Russia hoax,” threatening to federalize the District of Columbia, or taking a walk on the White House roof. Distraction has long been an effective tactic for Trump, but it’s also a familiar one. Trump’s efforts have produced an amusing dynamic where no matter what he does, many people treat it as an attempt to distract from Epstein, which only points back to Epstein. Trump also keeps stepping on his own ploys. When the president announced the return of the Presidential Fitness Test last week, he invited the Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor to join him. But Taylor is a sex offender, having pleaded guilty in connection with paying a 16-year-old to have sex with him. This was not only a strange invitation on its own; it was also a reminder about Trump’s former friend Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of girls.

Third, the Trump administration and its GOP allies have tried to provide at least some information to the public, in the hope that it will sate appetites. Frequently, these moves have just whetted them. The Justice Department released what it said was “raw” footage from the jail where Epstein died, only for Wired to report that the tape was, in fact, spliced. (Attorney General Pam Bondi attributed the missing footage to a quirk of the security-camera system, though government sources who spoke to CBS News disputed that explanation.) Blanche’s interview with Maxwell is at least ostensibly an attempt to find new information, though it lends itself to further conspiracy theories about backroom agreements. This is especially true given Maxwell’s unexplained move to a minimum-security prison shortly after the interview, as well as Trump’s refusal to rule out pardoning her. House Speaker Mike Johnson has called for “full transparency” about Epstein, yet he also adjourned the House rather than hold a vote on releasing files related to the case. The mystery of the reported planned meeting scheduled for tonight is more fuel for intrigue.

When Trump himself has spoken out recently, he has brought only more attention to the matter, to borrow his phrase. The president was evidently aware of Epstein’s sexual proclivities—“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” he told New York magazine in 2002—but has said that he didn’t know about Epstein’s criminal activity. For years, reports indicated that Trump had fallen out with Epstein, a longtime friend, over a real-estate matter. Last week, however, Trump suggested that their clash came after Epstein “stole” employees from Mar-a-Lago—possibly including Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Epstein accuser who died by suicide in April. This drew understandable outrage from Giuffre’s family but also raised questions about what Trump might have known about Epstein’s trafficking.

And when The Wall Street Journal reported on a letter the president had allegedly written to Epstein, Trump denied writing the letter but also insisted that he’d never made drawings—which elicited plenty of examples of past doodles, weakening his excuse. His splashy defamation lawsuit and demand to promptly depose the Journal’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, fanned the flames. (The paper says it stands by its reporting.)

Yesterday, I wrote about how Trump talks about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. In that case, Trump’s heated denials fed a belief among many of his critics that he must be hiding something. But the juiciest rumors did not prove true; the worst of the scandal had already been made public. Perhaps the same is true of Epstein: We already know that Trump was friends with him, and we already know that Trump was seemingly aware of his interest in young women. If Trump isn’t hiding anything, though, he’s not doing a good job of convincing the public of that.

Related:

• Trump’s Epstein denials are ever so slightly unconvincing.
• A MAGA attorney hired Epstein’s lawyer for his “valuable” experience.