Sienna Spiro - Die on This Hill

Pyramid Scheme

 

Trump Dementia Watch (cont.)

Convicted felon Donald Trump gave a rambling press conference last week, stepping in for propaganda princess Karoline Leavitt.  At one point in his incoherent rant, Trump launched into a reverie about reviving archaic "mental institutions" with "bars on the windows."  I'm not kidding.

“I grew up in Queens, we had a place called Creedmoor [Psychiatric Center],” Trump said, “Creedmoor. Did anybody know that? Creedmoor. It was a big … I said, ‘Mom, why are those bars on the building?’ I used to play little league baseball there at a place called Cunningham Park. I was quite the baseball player, you wouldn't believe. But I said to my mother, ‘Mom,’ she would be there, always there for me. She said, ‘Son, you could be a professional baseball player.’ I said, ‘Thanks, mom.’ I said, ‘Why are those bars on the windows?’”

He went on to blame Democrats for the deinstitutionalization of the 1970s and 1980s, saying it caused many people to become homeless.  The fact is the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, signed by former President Jimmy Carter, was designed to serve as a critical safety net for people who couldn’t obtain mental health services. The legislation was promptly defunded and effectively dismantled by former President Ronald Reagan. 

But after blaming Democrats for the end of an older, more barbaric era in mental health care, Trump circled back to his childhood memories.

“It wasn't normal, you know?” he said. “You're used to looking at, like, a window. But this one you're looking at all the steel—vicious steel, tiny windows, bars all over the place. Nobody was getting out. It's called the mental institution. That was an insane asylum.”  Huh?

 

Who's the Real Domestic Terrorist?

Trump Dementia Watch

Convicted felon Donald Trump's largely incoherent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is unlikely to quell the growing questions about his mental fitness after he continually flubbed the name of the arctic territory he wants to conquer.

Trump kept confusing Greenland with Iceland, a nearby country.  Trump blamed Tuesday’s stock market slide on “Iceland,” saying, "They're not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. I mean, our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland has already cost us a lot of money."

Trump was lying (once again)-- the fact is that the stock market dipped because investors were rightly concerned about Trump's rage-fueled tariff threat against our NATO allies (for standing with Denmark  against Trump's threats to take the country by force.)  Then Trump flubbed the name of Greenland once again: "Until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me daddy."  

The fact that Trump is confusing the name of the territory he has been bizarrely consumed with conquering gives fuel to Democrats’ argument that Trump's Cabinet officials need to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. The 25th Amendment allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to determine that the president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" and thus remove him from the role.

"The president of the United States is extremely mentally ill and it’s putting all of our lives at risk," Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona wrote in a post on X after Trump embarrassingly told the Norwegian prime minister that his demands to conquer Greenland were the result of him not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. "The 25th Amendment exists for a reason—we need to invoke it immediately."

"Donald Trump is unfit to lead and clearly out of control. Invoke the 25th Amendment," Democratic Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California wrote in a post on X.

Trump, for his part, has been defiant that there are no problems with his health or cognitive abilities, even though we all see with our own eyes that he can't stay awake at events, has bruising on his hands, and speaks like an incoherent fool.

The fact that he keeps confusing the territory he wants to take over will do nothing to assuage those concerns.  "Donald Trump is overseas embarrassing America on the world stage. Again," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a post on X.

 

Trumps Marks His First Year Back in Office with Cruelty and Lies

Convicted felon Donald Trump marked the one-year anniversary of his return to the presidency with a rambling and nearly incoherent press conference. However, instead of addressing the issues on which his administration is failing, Trump ranted about a host of other topics.

A considerable amount of Trump’s time was dedicated to justifying the killing of Minnesota mother Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.  “They’re going to make mistakes sometimes. ICE is going to be too rough with somebody—you know, they deal with rough people. Are they going to make a mistake? Sometimes it can happen,” Trump said.

Trump inaccurately claimed that Good’s father was “a tremendous Trump fan” and that “I hope he still feels that way.” This appears to actually be a reference to Good’s former father-in-law, whom conservative outlets like Fox News have touted because he said he doesn’t blame ICE for the killing.

Trump also criticized a woman, apparently Good’s wife, Becca Good, who witnessed the killing.  “When [Good] was shot, there was another woman that was screaming ‘shame, shame, shame, shame,’ right? We saw it. So loud. Like a professional opera singer, she was so loud and so professional,” Trump said.  The right has repeatedly pushed the made-up conspiracy theory that people protesting against ICE actions in Minnesota are paid political agitators.

In another section of his bizaare speech, Trump held up mugshots of purported criminals who were also allegedly undocumented immigrants, using the photos to justify the brutality of ICE’s actions across the country.  As has often been the case during his time in the public eye, Trump made racist remarks. This time, it was his decision to call the majority-Black nation of Somalia “a backward country” where “they just have people running around, killing each other, and trying to pirate ships.”  Trump and other Republicans have recently attacked the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota for attacks and racist smears, most notably singling out Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.

In response to criticism of his deployment of armed federal troops to American cities with large minority populations, Trump said, “To me, a town, it looks better when you have military people. These are big, strong guys. The bad guys look at them and say, 'We're not gonna mess with them.'”  He argued that crime has fallen in the cities where federal forces were deployed, which is generally false.  In addition, crime rates were already going down under former President Joe Biden.  In a weird reference, Trump said, “Your lover’s not going to be killed anymore, so he can act like a real lover,”  “You can walk right through the middle of the town. And D.C. is beautiful again too.”  For the record, DC has always been beautiful-- especially before military personnel began prowling tourist areas of the city (instead of where actual crime occurs).

Trump also returned to a favorite topic of his—long-debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. He claimed the race was “rigged” and that “numbers are coming out that show it even more plainly.”  None of this is true. Trump lost to Biden because more people voted for Biden.

The cringeworthy event reinforced why, after a year back in the presidency, Trump faces numerous crises of his own making. Costs are generally up, people live in fear of being harassed and killed by their own government, and the United States has become an international pariah.  Even Trump’s longtime allies at Fox News have begun to admit his unpopularity is a drag on the party. But Trump’s press event makes it clear he has no intention of shutting up any time soon.

 

Not Even U.S. Citizens Are Safe from ICE!

This week, ICE agents broke into a family home without a warrant, and kidnapped an elderly U.S. citizen without allowing him to produce ID.  Chongly "Scott" Thao spoke of his terror after the agents broke through the door of his home while they were singing karaoke and hauled him out semi-naked into the snow at gunpoint in front of his grandchildren.

ChongLy “Scott” Thao said that his daughter-in-law woke him up from a nap and said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were banging at the door of his residence in St. Paul. Masked agents then forced their way in and pointed guns at the family, yelling at them, Thao recalled. “I was shaking,” he said. “They didn’t show any warrant; they just broke down the door.” Thao, who has been a U.S. citizen for decades, said that as he was being detained he asked his daughter-in-law to find his identification but the agents told him they didn’t want to see it.

The agents then dragged the 56-year-old U.S. citizen, who was wearing only boxer shorts and crocs, into the snowy street as temperatures hovered around 14 degrees, as he pleaded with them that he was an American.  Thao, an American born in Laos, came to the U.S. with his parents at the age of 4 and became a U.S. citizen in 1991. During the ICE raid, Thao told Reuters he used a blanket from his 4-year-old grandson's bed to cover his bare torso.  “I was praying. I was like, God, please help me, I didn’t do anything wrong. Why do they do this to me? Without my clothes on,” Thao later told a local news outlet as his friends tried to repair the broken door. 

Thao said agents drove him “to the middle of nowhere” and made him get out of the car in the frigid weather so they could photograph him. He said he feared they would beat him.  Only then was Thao asked for his ID, which agents earlier prevented him from retrieving.  Agents eventually realized that he was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, Thao said, and an hour or two later, they brought him back to his house. There they made him show his ID and then left without apologizing for detaining him or breaking his door, Thao said.  He described feeling “fear, shame, and desperation” over the incident. A statement from his family called the treatment “unnecessary, degrading, and deeply traumatizing.”

Thao’s experience has shattered the idea that citizenship would shield his family from such scenes. “We came here for a purpose, right? To have a bright future. To have a safe place to live… If this is going to turn out to be America, what are we doing here? Why are we here?” he added.

The Department of Homeland Security insisted agents were at the property looking for two convicted sex offenders with deportation orders, and said a U.S. citizen at the address who “refused to be fingerprinted or facially identified” was detained because he matched their description.  Thao’s family said in a statement that it “categorically disputes” the DHS account and “strongly objects to DHS’s attempt to publicly justify this conduct with false and misleading claims.”

Thao told reporters that only he, his son and daughter-in-law and his grandson live at the rental home. Neither they nor the property’s owner are listed in the Minnesota sex offender registry. The nearest sex offender listed as living in the zip code is more than two blocks away. 

ChongLy Thao says he’s planning to file a civil rights lawsuit against DHS and no longer feels secure to sleep in his home.  “I don’t feel safe at all,” Thao said. “What did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything.”

 

Light of a Clear Blue Morning - Dolly Parton, Lainey Wilson, Miley Cyrus, Queen Latifah & Reba

Trump Now Having a Tantrum Over His "Board of Peace"

Convicted felon Donald Trump is now acting like a spoiled 8-year-old that no one wants to play with.  Trump has threatened to slap a hefty 200 percent tariff on French wine and champagne if France refuses his invitation to join the newly formed "Board of Peace." The board, ostensibly created to supervise the reconstruction of war-ravaged Gaza, seems to have a much wider remit of maintaining global order - with Trump at the head, according to its founding charter.

Trump's tariff threat is a response to French President Emmanuel Macron's apparent hesitation to participate in the initiative. "I'll put a 200 percent tariff on his wines and champagnes. And he'll join. But he doesn't have to join," Trump stated, referring to the French president.

The Orange man added, "No-one wants him because he's going to be out of office very soon." Macron's term ends in May 2027. A source close to Macron said that France "does not intend to answer favorably" to the invitation, pointing out that the board's charter "goes beyond the sole framework of Gaza." The board, which will cost $1 billion to join and is chaired by Trump, has been attacked by critics as an attempt by the US president to create a rival United Nations, with himself at the head. 

The threat of a French wine tariff is just one facet of a larger diplomatic disagreement revolving around Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly claimed the U.S. must control for strategic reasons.  Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 25% on eight European countries, including Denmark, France, Germany and the UK, unless Greenland is ceded to U.S. control. European leaders have firmly condemned Trump's tariff threats, with German and French finance ministers stating that Europe will not be intimidated by such measures. They described the actions as "unacceptable" and are preparing retaliatory responses.

Macron denounced the tariff threats as having "no place in this context", pledging that Europeans will respond "in a united and coordinated manner" to protect sovereignty and uphold legal standards. 

 

Meanwhile Back at the Office

Promises, Promises

In addition to being incredible ineffective, the Orangeman also typically fails to follow through.  In a January 14, 2024 social media post, Trump said: “For far too long, we have relied on taxing our Great People using the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ... We will begin charging those that make money off of us with Trade, and they will start paying, FINALLY, their fair share. January 20, 2025, will be the birth date of the External Revenue Service.”

In his inaugural address, Trump also said: “We are establishing the External Revenue Service to collect all tariffs, duties, and revenues. It will be massive amounts of money pouring into our Treasury, coming from foreign sources.”

The External Revenue Service has yet to be established. While administration officials continued to reiterate plans for launching the External Revenue Service during Trump's first months back in office, the entity does not yet exist-- and probably never will, especially as the possibly looms that the tariffs will be declared illegal.  

 

Happy MLK Day!

Bari's "Both Sides-sim" Proves to Be a Bust

CBS News finally released the “60 Minutes” segment “Inside CECOT,” last night-- one month after cosplaying editor-in-chief Bari Weiss abruptly stopped it from airing.  The delayed segment centered on the Trump administration sending Venezuelan migrants to CECOT, the infamous prison in El Salvador known for its cruel and inhumane conditions. Although Weiss halted it from airing in the U.S., a 13-minute version was temporarily released in Canada and widely shared online.

The decision from "Both Sides Bari" made headlines and caused significant backlash.  She claimed that she wanted to include an on-camera interview with a member of the Trump administration despite the administration’s refusal to do so.  “We need to be able to make every effort to get the principals on the record and on camera,” Weiss reportedly said during an editorial meeting after pulling the package. 

In an internal note at the time, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi described Weiss’ move as “political” because the segment had already met internal reporting standards. It is not clear whether Bari (who doesn't have a reporting background) was familiar with CBS' reporting standards.  In a statement, Alfonsi said: “We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver destined to kill the story.  If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that Weiss, Alfonsi, CBS News President Tom Cibrowski and other “60 Minutes” leaders met in New York “in recent days.” Alfonsi and a film crew also traveled to Washington, D.C., in an attempt to land interviews with Trump officials for the segment. Weiss, who has ties to the current administration, also attempted to lock down an interview with a Trump official but failed, per The Washington Post.  So the end result from Bari's stunt resulted in no significant updates to the story-- just a delay in reporting that waters down its impact.

There were some changes to the piece, however.  Alfonsi included additional commentary which noted: “Since November,  '60 Minutes' has made several attempts to interview key Trump administration officials on camera about our story. They declined our requests.”  Because of the delay in airing the episode, the new version also featured information about Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was kidnapped two weeks ago with his wife, Cilia Flores by U.S. forces.

Bari's spokesperson tried to put a sheen of competence on her stunt: “CBS News leadership has always been committed to airing the 60 MINUTES CECOT piece as soon as it was ready.”   The fact remains that Alfonsi had already tried to get a Trump official to go on camera-- and they refused.  Bari obviously doesn't trust her reporters and cares more about her phony "both sides-ism" than real reporting.

 

Trump's Continued Weaponization of the Federal Government Against Blue States

Colorado was preparing to fly in as many as 15 gray wolves from Canada when a letter from the Trump administration arrived last fall, sternly ordering the state to “cease and desist.”  Then last month, the federal government upped the stakes, threatening to seize control of Colorado’s effort to reintroduce the predators to a state where their howls had nearly been silenced.

The intervention from Washington (which alleges Colorado violated an agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) has abruptly thrown a voter-approved wolf revival into disarray, essentially blocking the state’s ability to bolster a nascent population and raising doubts about the contentious program’s viability.  While welcomed by many ranchers and other critics, the takeover warning baffled former senior agency officials and environmental groups. They called it a misinterpretation of the agreement, as well as an impractical idea from a federal agency that has lost 20 percent of its workforce over the past year and has historically encouraged state-led wildlife conservation. 

Yet Colorado’s mostly Democratic leaders suspect a political motivation, one tied to President Donald Trump’s broad campaign to retaliate against their blue state and its governor, Jared Polis, over mail-in voting and the imprisonment of Tina Peters, an election-denying former county clerk and MAGA cause celebre. At stake, they say, are critical programs and state sovereignty. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser calls it a “revenge campaign.” Sen. Michael Bennet has deemed it a “coordinated attack,” while Sen. John Hickenlooper said Trump is “using a political squabble” over Peters as a “cudgel” against Colorado. “This is not a place where the federal government should be poking their nose,” Hickenlooper said of wolf reintroduction.

The state has been dealing with a flurry of hits ordered by the Trump administration. In September, Trump said Colorado’s mail-in ballots “played a big factor” in his decision to relocate the U.S. Space Command to Alabama. Three months later, he vetoed a long-planned pipeline to deliver clean water to conservative southeastern Colorado, and his administration announced it would dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a world-renowned institution in Boulder.  In recent weeks, officials have canceled millions of dollars in transportation and energy grants, denied emergency aid to communities ravaged by wildfires and flooding, and frozen hundreds of millions of dollars for child care, food aid and other assistance for poor Coloradans. 

Other blue states have also faced retributive wrath from the Trump administration, which asserts it has the right to consider partisan politics when considering federal funding cuts.  But the jabs at Colorado have been accompanied by a steady stream of vitriol from the president, who has labeled Polis a “sleazebag” for leaving Peters behind bars. “If she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures!!!” he posted on Truth Social in August. On New Year’s Eve, he said he wished the governor and the Republican district attorney who prosecuted her would “rot in hell.”

Trump claimed in December to have issued a “full pardon” of Peters.  But Polis and Weiser have pointed out what most educated observers already know-- presidential pardons are meaningless when it comes to state convictions.  The White House declined to comment on how far it would go to ensure Peters’ release and whether its actions on the wolf program are related to her case.  But we already know they are-- Trump is as obvious as dogs' balls.

 

Bruno Mars - I Just Might

America's Groyper Problem

The notion that American anti-Semitism is an outside influence operation rather than a homegrown menace is a comforting story. Unfortunately, it’s not true. Followers of Nick Fuentes punch above their weight in American discourse because they are young and disproportionately online; some foreigners no doubt found this far-right niche useful for generating engagement and revenue. 

But the rise of American anti-Semitism is not a foreign phenomenon, and it is not an online illusion (as outlined in Yair Rosenberg's  piece in The Atlantic). In 2024, David Shor, a data scientist who did polling for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, surveyed nearly 130,000 voters and found that a quarter of young people had an “unfavorable opinion” of Jews—not Israel, Jews—far more than their elders. 

Today, some of the top podcasts in the country regularly feature overtly anti-Semitic conspiracy content, whether it’s Tucker Carlson rehabilitating Hitler, Candace Owens claiming that Israel had a hand in the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Charlie Kirk, or Joe Rogan hosting a conspiracy theorist who fulminated about how a “giant group of Jewish billionaires is running a sex-trafficking operation targeting American politicians and business people.” 

And it’s not just words. When far-right activists, including a college student named Nick Fuentes, marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and chanted “Jews will not replace us,” that wasn’t a foreign psyop. When a white supremacist animated by that same fear—that conniving Jews were replacing the white race through mass migration—massacred worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, he wasn’t taking cues from abroad. Neither were the Black nationalists who shot up a Jersey City kosher supermarket in 2019, nor the anti-Israel assassins this past year who attempted to incinerate Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and murdered three people, including a young Jewish woman allegedly shot in the back in Washington, D.C., and an 82-year-old burned to death in Boulder, Colorado.

The reasons for this anti-Jewish eruption are many. Outrage over Israel’s war in Gaza has led some self-styled Palestinian partisans to perpetrate or justify attacks on Jews thousands of miles away. Social-media platforms lowered the barriers to spreading anti-Semitic invective, allowing bigots to find and amplify one another more easily. Algorithms often privilege novel inflammatory content (including conspiracy theories) over careful, factual reporting. Sites such as X no longer pretend to moderate this material, not that they ever did much to impede it in the first place. 

The upshot is this: Whether anti-Semitic content comes from America or abroad, the supply is simply rising to meet demand. Viral Groyper content only goes viral in the first place because it appeals to Americans who share the sentiment. Outside spending and propaganda cannot manufacture what isn’t already there.

 

Musk Makes an Ass Out of Himself on Social Media

Tech bozo Elon Musk was publicly shamed on his own social media platform after he attacked Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and she dismantled his laughable allegation against her for everyone to see.

Musk shared a graphic on X suggesting Democrats support illegal immigration in order to recruit non-citizens into their party as loyal voters. Musk accused Somalian-born Omar of benefiting from this supposed scheme.  Musk wrote, “This has been happening for years. Ilhan Omar is the most obvious example. A large number of relatively recently arrived Somalis will elect only a Somali to Congress in that Minnesota district. This is much more subtle, but just as bad, in many other parts of America.”

Musk, who helped elect Trump last year with a quarter-billion-dollar campaign infusion, appeared not to have done his homework — as Omar easily debunked his theory with one simple fact about her congressional district in Minnesota.  “You are one of the dumbest people on earth, my district is literally a majority white district,” Omar wrote in response while resharing Musk’s post. “Your conspiracy theories are laughable and should have no place in a society that cares about facts.”

Musk’s own AI chatbot Grok backed her up: When a user asked about Omar’s constituency, it cited census data from 2023 to 2024 to note the 5th Congressional District she represents is approximately 60% white. Even though Musk fans tried to argue that Omar didn’t debunk his claim (as she could still ostensibly benefit from the supposed influx of undocumented workers) it’s illegal for undocumented workers to vote in state elections and criminal voting by non-citizens is almost nonexistent.

Musk has regularly shared lies and misrepresentations on X.  Last year, Musk amplified the false claim that millions of new voters had registered in swing states without proof of citizenship and reshared a fake “affidavit” from a supposed “whistleblower” claiming ABC News had rigged the presidential debate it hosted against Trump.  Musk has also amplified the “replacement theory” accusing Democratic elites of “importing” undocumented workers to replace white people, and recently reshared a post warning white men in the U.S. “will be slaughtered” if they ever become a minority.

Meanwhile, Omar's slam dunk against Musk did not go unnoticed by his critics on social media. 

 

The Real Threat to America?

Another Dose of Bullshit

In a Cabinet meeting on July 8, 2025, Trump said: “We’ll be announcing something very soon on pharmaceuticals. We’re going to give people about a year, a year and a half, to come in. And after that, they’re going to be tariffed ... They’re going to be tariffed at a very, very high rate, like 200 percent.”

Trump prattled some more on the topic in a Sept. 25 social media post: “Starting October 1st, 2025, we will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any branded or patented Pharmaceutical Product, unless a Company IS BUILDING their Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plant in America.”

You guessed it--the president did not sign an executive order imposing a 100% tariff on pharma products on October 1 and, so far, no levy has been put into place. But Trump previously suggested that steep levies on pharmaceutical drugs could arrive further down the road, telling CNBC in August that he would start by charging a “small tariff” and potentially raise the rate as high as 250%. Meanwhile, trade agreements with specific countries set their own rates or exemptions — with the U.K., for example, securing a 0% tariff on all British medicine exported to the U.S. for three years. The administration also announced deals with specific companies with promises of lower drug prices. 

 

CBS Is Embarrassing Itself

Network staffers and insiders are so far unimpressed with Tony Dokoupil’s “embarrassing” debut as the new CBS Evening News anchor, raging about the program’s “MAGA” pivot and all agreeing that Dokoupil is practicing “journalism malpractice” by spouting pro-Trump propaganda. “It’s state TV,” one network staffer declared.

 Dokoupil embarrassed himself further this week by sucking up to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and regurgitating right-wing propaganda about the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Discussing Rubio’s role in the abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and the administration’s widely criticized rhetoric about taking over Greenland, Dokoupil's use of AI-generated memes lionizing Rubio generating considerable mocking by most observers.  “Marco Rubio, we salute you,” Dokoupil said in one of his most pathetic exchanges. “You’re the ultimate Florida man.”

On the same edition of the program, Dokoupil reported on the fifth anniversary of Trump supporter’s January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. But instead of accurately stating the facts of the story, he portrayed the Trump administration’s revisionist history of the riot as merely the other side of the story. “President Trump today accused Democrats of failing to prevent the attack on the Capitol, while House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the president of ‘whitewashing it,’” Dokoupil said.  "High-profile CBS News staffers were aghast when Dokoupil's brief mention of the Jan. 6 anniversary was a both-sides mess,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported on Wednesday,

The perennially third-place show is already racked by internal chaos, which included last-minute changes by Weiss and the optics of Dokoupil using a private plane to bounce from city-to-city on a “Live From America” tour.  The network’s initial debut plans had to be scrapped due to the invasion of Venezuela and capture of deposed leader Nicolás Maduro. 

Dokoupil’s pro-administration propaganda is part of CBS News’ right-wing restructuring under new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, a conservative activist.  Late last year, CBS recently came under widespread criticism after it abruptly shelved a “60 Minutes” report on the Trump administration’s use of a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Weiss has also worked to purge the networks standards department.

Democrats have warned CBS’ parent company, Paramount, that it will likely become the subject of investigations under a Democratic House majority after Paramount chose to pay Trump a multimillion-dollar bribe near the beginning of his new term. The network settled a frivolous lawsuit brought by Trump, and soon after, the administration approved a merger between Paramount and Skydance.

CBS also chose to cancel “The Late Show,” hosted by longtime Trump critic Stephen Colbert.

With the recently installed Dokoupil leading the network’s key news show, the content already sounds more like the right-wing rantings of Fox News than the historic journalism the outlet was known for.  Walter Cronkite must be rolling over in his grave.

 

Trump Targeting More Historic Buildings in DC

After demolishing the White House’s East Wing, convicted felon Donald Trump is now eying four federal buildings for the same treatment and is circumventing a key government agency with his plans, according to a historic preservationist raising the alarm.

Mydelle “Mina” Wright, a former senior official at the General Services Administration, wrote in a sworn court declaration this week that the White House is “acting on its own and not through the GSA,” which oversees government property, to solicit bids “to analyze and recommend for demolition four historic federal buildings in DC.” The administration, though, asserted in a court filing that the government was contemplating transferring ownership of the buildings, not destroying them.

The buildings in question — many of which feature architectural styles that don’t fit Trump’s stated preferences — include the Robert C. Weaver Building, which serves as headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; the New Deal-era Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building; the GSA Regional Office Building; and the Liberty Loan Building, although the GSA announced plans to dispose of that building last year, which could include transferring control to a new owner.

Since returning to the White House this year, Trump has leaned into his background as a real estate developer and has taken major steps to apply his vision to Washington: paving over the White House Rose Garden and decorating it to mirror his Mar-a-Lago patio; adorning the Oval Office, Cabinet Room and West Colonnade with gilded features; and launching construction of a $300 million ballroom that he says is privately funded.

But his new plans, Wright said in her declaration, present an “untenable situation” for GSA leadership attempting to navigate the president’s hands-on involvement.  “For the first time of which I am aware, a President is personally involved in facilitating end-runs around the agency’s obligations to the buildings that are our national heritage, and who in the agency is going to tell him ‘No?’” said Wright, who added that she first learned of the effort Friday and that it only recently came to the attention of key GSA officials, who usually have to work within strict legal guidelines and historic preservation and environmental policy.

As he attempts to put his mark on the nation’s capital — from Kennedy Center renovations to plans for a new triumphal arch and stadium — Trump is taking aim at buildings with historical significance, preservationists warn.  The Weaver building follows former President John F. Kennedy’s “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture” and is on the National Register of Historic Places. But its precast concrete is an example of the brutalist architecture of the 1960s — for which Trump has made his distaste known.

Earlier this year, the president signed an executive order mandating that all federal buildings “embrace classical architecture,” specifically targeting modernist and brutalist buildings.  The Cohen building features New Deal murals and sculpture and is an example of Egyptian Revival and Stripped Classicism architecture, according to the GSA. Historian Michael Austin has warned that Liberty Loan, an example of “tempo” federal buildings that popped up in the 20th century, is an “irreplaceable piece of Washington history.” The GSA Regional Office Building is another New Deal-era building.

Wright’s declaration comes amid a broader court battle over Trump’s efforts to paint the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a sprawling and ornate federal building next door to the White House. In an interview last month, Trump told Fox News he was exploring painting the distinctive building a bright white, adding, “Gray is for funerals.”  A group of preservationists sued Trump to halt any changes to the building unless a standard review process is followed, warning the structure could be “irreversibly damaged.”  The Trump administration argued that the EEOB was exempt from that review process, but agreed to refrain from any painting until March amid the ongoing the legal process.

Meanwhile, Trump’s renovation and construction projects continue at the White House. He has hired a new architect for the ballroom amid disputes with the project’s original architect over its size and scope.  The project has drawn outcry from preservationists for the administration’s failure to seek approval from the commission overseeing construction on federal buildings before demolition. The White House has said it will submit plans for the ballroom construction to the National Capital Planning Commission, but it insisted the body doesn’t have purview over the East Wing. 

 

Paul Kelly - The Body Keeps the Score

The Check Is in the Mail

In a November 9, 2024  social media post, Trump promised: “People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS! ... A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”

Don't hold your breath waiting! Details about how, when and if a tariff dividend will reach Americans are still scarce. Budget experts have said that the math doesn't add up. And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that it might not mean checks from the government. Instead, Bessent told ABC in November, the rebate might take the form of tax cuts. White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett also told CBS News that it's up to Congress. 

 

Chips With a Double-Dip of Cheese

On August 6, 2024, Trump promised: “We’ll be putting a tariff of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors ... But if you’re building in the United States of America, there’s no charge.”

As you can guess, the sweeping 100% on computer chips has yet to go into effect. When announcing his plans to impose the levy back in August, Trump was not specific about the timing. And other details have remained scarce.

 

The True Legacy of January 6

Nearly a year into his second term, Trump has cleaned house at the Department of Justice and FBI, expelling many of those who investigated and prosecuted insurrectionists—and even those who accurately described the insurrection as a “mob of rioters.”

But with few, if any, deep-state Democrats left to blame, some of the most conspiracy-minded types aimed their anger at Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel for not proving that a vast conspiracy kept Trump from victory in 2020. The fact that not even Bondi and Patel, devout believers in the Big Lie, can get this done highlights that, in the words of Gertrude Stein, “There’s no there there.”

So, if the insurrectionists can’t have their alternate reality, what do they want instead? Money, of course.  They’d like reparations from the government, paid for by your tax dollars, all because they were duly investigated and prosecuted with the full panoply of due process. Helming this effort are Mark McCloskey—one half of the St. Louis couple who pulled guns on Black Lives Matter protesters—and Ed Martin, the current pardons attorney who formerly represented Jan. 6 defendants.

Trump has made noises about giving the rioters money in the past, but he has gone a bit quiet in favor of demanding the DOJ give him $230 million because he was briefly prosecuted before the Supreme Court granted him sweeping immunity.

Still, the family of Ashli Babbitt—the rioter killed by Capitol police when she charged in the direction of evacuating lawmakers—got a cool $5 million from the DOJ with no real effort, so when do the rest of these folks get theirs, huh?

Nevertheless, maybe escaping consequences for their criminal actions might inspire these folks to straighten up and fly right? Yeah, no. At least 33 of those pardoned have been arrested, charged, or sentenced for other crimes, including child sex crimes. One pardoned rioter, Christopher Moynihan, was recently charged with threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. 

Several rioters seem to think a presidential pardon covers everything they have ever done and will do, a thought no doubt bolstered by Trump re-pardoning an insurrectionist for an unrelated gun charge. And while Trump hasn’t re-pardoned the guy who plotted to assassinate multiple federal agents, give it time. 

The rioters also continue to promote the contradictory ideas that the Capitol siege was both a proud and patriotic stand against tyranny, and also nefariously manufactured by federal agents in the crowd. Logic is not a strong suit with this group.

A normal DOJ would not entertain any of this, but this is no normal DOJ, so we have the head of the Civil Rights Division screeching online about how the DOJ is “working to bring to justice those who weaponized” Jan. 6, and tenderly assuring the violent insurrectionists that “[n]o statute of limitations” will hinder her efforts. Great to have a high-level DOJ official saying they will disregard the law in order to best reward people who engaged in a treasonous assault on the seat of American democracy.

In the end, nothing that the Jan. 6 rioters are given will ever be enough—because nothing will ever be enough for Trump. They all want more money, more revenge, and more unfettered freedom to commit whatever crimes they want.

 

More Broken Promises from 2025

In a May 4, 2025 social media post, Trump complained: “The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death ... I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”

Several months later, in a September 29, 2025 social media post, Trump whined some more: “Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby’ ... I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States."

But that didn't happen.  Despite repeated threats, the U.S. has yet to impose a 100% tariff on foreign films. After his initial May promise to initiate the process, the White House said no final decision had been made. Also still unclear is how the U.S. would tax a movie made overseas. 

Trump's Whining Leads to Nothing

In a March 13 , 2024social media post, Trump complained: “The European Union, one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the World, which was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States, has just put a nasty 50% Tariff on Whisky. If this Tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER E.U. REPRESENTED COUNTRIES.” 

The EU's planned levy on American whiskey — which it unveiled as part of broader retaliation in response to Trump's new steel and aluminum tariffs — was postponed, with the latest delay reportedly running until at least February.  As many expected, Trump's 200% tariff threat on European alcohol never materialized. But spirits were not included in the EU-U.S. trade deal struck over the summer, which set a 15% rate on most European imports.

 

Indeed

JVKE & Forrest Frank - This is What a New Year Feels Like