I ran across this essay from 2021 through David Roberts on BlueSky. I’ve never heard of this concept but man does it ring true to our current circumstances:
In communist countries, psychology could be a dangerous profession. As with any role, if you didn’t use your expertise in service of state propaganda, you were in danger of falling foul of authorities. The Polish psychologist Andrzej Lobaczewski was persecuted especially harshly, since the focus of his research was political power, and how it can be misused…
After spending his early life suffering under the Nazis, and then under the Soviet rule of Stalin, Andrzej Lobaczewski recognised that ruthless and disturbed individuals were strongly drawn to political power, and often constitute the government of nations. He began to study the relationship between power and personality disorders – like psychopathy – and coined the term ‘pathocracy’ to describe the phenomenon.
As he put it, pathocracy is a system of government ‘wherein a small pathological minority takes control over a society of normal people’. Since he was living under a ‘pathocratic’ regime himself, Lobaczewski took great risks studying this topic. He was arrested and tortured by the Polish authorities, and unable to publish his life’s work, the book Political Ponerology, until he escaped to the United States during the 1980s.
According to Lobaczewski, the transition to pathocracy begins when a disordered individual emerges as a leader figure. While some members of the ruling class are appalled by the brutality and irresponsibility of the leader and his acolytes, his disordered personality appeals to some psychologically normal individuals. They find him charismatic. His impulsiveness is mistaken for decisiveness; his narcissism for confidence; his recklessness for fearlessness.
Soon other people with psychopathic traits emerge and attach themselves to the pathocracy, sensing the opportunity to gain power and influence. At the same time, responsible and moral people gradually leave the government, either resigning or being ruthlessly ejected. In an inevitable process, soon the entire government is filled with people with a pathological lack of empathy and conscience. It has been infiltrated by members of the minority of people with personality disorders, who assume power over the majority of psychologically normal people.
Soon the pathology of the government spreads amongst the general population. As Lobaczewski wrote, ‘If an individual in a position of political power is a psychopath, he or she can create an epidemic of psychopathology in people who are not, essentially, psychopathic’ (2006, p.25). The pathocratic government presents a compelling simplistic ideology, promoting notions of future greatness, with a need to defeat or eliminate alleged enemies who stand in the way of this great future.
The government uses propaganda to stoke hatred towards enemies, and to create a cult of personality around the leader. In the general population, there is an intoxicating sense of belonging to a mass movement, inspiring loyalty and self-sacrifice. Present sacrifices become immaterial in the movement towards a glorious future. In addition, the mass movement inspires acts of individual cruelty, including torture and mass murder.
Yep. But there is some good news:
Once they possess power, pathocrats usually devote themselves to entrenching, increasing and protecting their power, with scant regard for the welfare of others. However, Lobaczewski also noted that pathocracies never become permanent. At some point, they are destined to fail, because their brutality and lack of moral principles are not shared by the majority of the population, who possess empathy and conscience. This was certainly true of the two pathocracies that Lobaczewski himself experienced, Nazi Germany and the communist regime of Poland.
I actually think it’s likely to fail even more quickly in America than those two regimes. Our psychos are very shallow, ignorant people who come from the realm of entertainment rather than the military or politics. And we are traditionally a feisty people with plenty of resilience so I’m hopeful that this particular iteration of pathocracy will be relatively short-lived. However, the damage is already great and they aren’t done yet. What emerges out of this carnage is hard to predict.
The rest of the essay is well worth reading if you have the inclination. I don’t think there’s any doubt that this administration, with its depraved, criminal leadership, ethnic cleansing policies and now wars of choice is pathological. They flaunt their degeneracy and corruption and the bloodthirsty way in which they treat allies and enemies alike says everything. It’s not just Trump. It’s become the whole party and institutions clamoring for its favor.
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened on Saturday to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war with Iran, his latest move in a campaign to stomp out what he sees as liberal bias in broadcasts.
As the war entered its third week, Mr. Carr accused broadcasters of “running hoaxes and news distortions” in a social media post and warned them to “correct course before their license renewals come up.”
“Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not,” he said.
Mr. Carr shared a Truth Social post by President Trump that criticized the news media for its coverage of the war with Iran. Mr. Trump referred to a story published by The Wall Street Journal that reported five American refueling planes had been struck in Saudi Arabia, claiming its headline was “intentionally misleading.” He accused the news media of wanting the United States to lose the war.
Dow Jones & Company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a similar vein, delivered a lengthy complaint about CNN’s coverage of the war in the Middle East during a news conference Friday, saying that he looked forward to the news network being controlled by the billionaire David Ellison.
Mr. Ellison, who has a friendly relationship with Mr. Trump, is the owner of Paramount Skydance, which is seeking to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery for $111 billion. That deal, if it closes, will bring CNN under Mr. Ellison’s purview. He is best known in the journalism world for shaking up leadership at CBS News, where he has installed more conservative journalists.
Even Putin had to be more subtle about his media takeover.
Gallup gathered polling data in December that show 45 percent of Americans now identify as political independents. That poses two questions: What do independents do with that information and what do Democrats do with it?
“[I]ndependents’ passive, uncoordinated approach is self-defeating,” writes Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic. The essayist, himself a right-leaning independent, considers what it means to be, as the Bible suggests, in the political world but not of the political world. Basically, unfocused and powerless:
And with younger cohorts identifying as independent at much higher rates than older cohorts do—more than half of Gen Z identify as independent—the problem is going to only get worse with time. Indeed, a CNN poll from September suggests that the variability in views among people who self-describe as independent is increasing rather than decreasing.
They want more than a binary choice but cannot say what. Independents are nonbinary themselves, some leaning liberal or conservative, others progressive and libertarian. What to do?
First, independents are most structurally disadvantaged when Republicans and Democrats each carve up congressional districts for their own benefit. Independents can mitigate this by pushing for nonpartisan redistricting commissions that aim to encourage competitive general elections.
Second, independents should push for open primaries. Starting this year, New Mexico will allow voters with no party affiliation to vote in primary elections. But in 2024, voters rejected ballot measures in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and South Dakota (a combination of red, blue, and purple states) that would have enabled ranked-choice voting, open primaries, or a combination of both.
[…]
Third, independents should champion a Congress where all members are empowered to represent their constituents. When voting for elected leaders, we should recall the critique of former Representative Justin Amash, who has pointed out that the speaker of the House was not meant to function like the leader of only the majority party, manipulating House rules to advantage the partisan agenda of leadership. Speakers as conservative as the Republican Paul Ryan and as progressive as the Democrat Nancy Pelosi have done the job that way, but the role should be that of an official working on behalf of the entire House to ensure smooth, equitable procedures. One measure of whether Congress is functioning as it should––and one matter that independents as a group should track––is whether all House members, regardless of seniority or party affiliation, are empowered to bring bills or amendments to the House floor for an up or down vote.
That’s not likely to happen anytime soon, but independents should resist the temptation to check out, and “instead focus on what unites most independents: frustration with the two-party system’s long-standing failure to deliver results that are good for the country, and a desire to end the duopoly on power that persists because Republicans and Democrats have skewed the rules of the game.”
Except that “increasing rather than decreasing” variability of views among independents means that they are unlikely to find enough common ground to focus more on changing the duopoly than blaming it. Many younger Americans are not “joiners.” They see themselves as fiercely independent. The problem this independent faced in the wake of Bush’s Iraq invasion was needing allies to fight back. I went to where I knew I could find them in bulk, even if the local Democrats could be cliquish, wary of newcomers, and no more uniformly aligned with my views than Friedersdorf would find among younger independents.
But Democrats should be paying closer attention to that 45 figure, not just the percent part but the age part. It suggests that a lot of younger Americans are not buying what they’re selling, are never hearing about it, or perhaps believe that Democrats will never show rather than tell them that they’ve got their backs.
Many younger Americans under 45 feel disconnected from the political process. They see it as a game played for the benefit of an older, donor class and not for them. So they vote less. But it’s because younger people vote less that party poo-bahs pay less attention to their concerns. And so the young vote less. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle. If younger voters suddenly began voting at the rate of their elders, they’d find both major parties are all suddenly ears. Just don’t expect the Democratic Party to change first.
Democrats as a national party sometimes seem to be in a groove so deep that they cannot see over the top of it. They need to step outside their political comfort zone and innovate, experiment, take risks.
Not content to wait for that, Sign Guy is on street corners and overpasses here five days per week, strutting and posing like Mick Jagger to dance music for those independents. He’s become a local character, a roadside attraction, a friend, and hopefully a trusted messenger. If 45 percent of Americans identify as independents, nearly half of the 12,000+ commuters who see Sign Guy each week are potential voters Democrats need to win in the fall.
Except using the same old micro-targeting and voter contact methods Democratic campaigns employ each and every election, too few independents will be asked to vote or be offered any reasons to. After Labor Day (when most normies begin paying attention), their friendly neighborhood Sign Guy will ask them to vote. Not for his party, his candidates, or his issues, but for their own empowerment. Working solo, Sign Guy avoids the usual issue-barking of thickets of protest signs: impeach, oppose, defend, support, abolish, etc. Instead, controlled messages are about commuters’ lives. Independents want and need to be seen, not barked at. I don’t knock a few hundred doors. The “doors” come to me by the tens of thousands.
What’s war got to do with the price of eggs gas? SNL’s Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) and Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost ) check in.
“You might remember me from such campaign promises as lower gas prices and no more wars. We love to make promises because a promise is just a lie that hasn’t happened yet,” SNL’s fake Trump reminds viewers.
I felt it apropos on this Oscar Eve to honor Hollywood’s annual declaration of its deep and abiding love for itself with my picks for the top 15 movies about…the movies. Action!
Cinema Paradiso– Writer-director Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1988 love letter to the cinema may be too sappy for some, but for those of us who (to quote Pauline Kael) “lost it at the movies” it’s chicken soup for the soul. A film director (Jacques Perrin) returns to his home town in Sicily for a funeral, triggering flashbacks from his youth. He reassesses the relationships with two key people in his life: his first love, and the person who instilled his life-long love of the movies. Beautifully acted and directed; keep the Kleenex handy.
Day for Night– French film scholar and director Francois Truffaut was, first and foremost, a movie fan. And while one could argue that many of his own movies are rife with homage to the filmmakers who inspired him, this 1973 entry is his most heartfelt declaration of love for the medium (as well as his most-imitated work). Truffaut casts himself as (wait for it) a director in the midst of a production called Meet Pamela.
“Pamela” is a beautiful but unstable British actress (Jacqueline Bisset) who is gingerly stepping back into the spotlight after a highly publicized breakdown. The petulant, emotionally immature leading man (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is a fool for love, which constantly distracts him from his work. Truffaut also has to coddle an aging Italian movie queen (Valentia Cortese) who is showing up on set three sheets to the wind and flubbing scenes.
Truffaut cleverly mirrors the backstage travails of his cast and crew with those of the characters in the “film-within-the-film”. Somehow, it all manages to fall together…but getting there is half the fun. Truffaut parlays a sense of what a director “does” (in case you were wondering) and how a good one can coax magic from seemingly inextricable chaos.
The Day of the Locust – Equal parts backstage drama, character study, and psychological horror, John Schlesinger’s 1975 drama (with a Waldo Salt screenplay adapted from the eponymous novel by Nathaneal West) is the most unsettling Hollywood dream-turned nightmare this side of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.
Set in 1930s Los Angeles, the story revolves around a Hollywood newbie (William Atherton) who works in the art department of a major movie studio. He rents a cheap apartment housed in a complex chockablock with eccentric tenants, including an aspiring starlet (Karen Black) who lives with her ailing father (Burgess Meredith), a former vaudevillian who wheezes his way up and down hilly streets eking out a living as a door-to-door snake oil salesman.
The young artist becomes hopelessly infatuated with the starlet, but it quickly becomes apparent that, while she’s friendly toward him, it’s strictly a one-sided romance. Nonetheless, he continues to get drawn into her orbit-a scenario that becomes increasingly twisted, especially once she impulsively marries a well-to-do but socially inept and sexually repressed accountant (Donald Sutherland). It all culminates in a Grand Guignol finale you may find hard to shake off.
A gauzy, sun-bleached vision of a city (shot by ace cinematographer Conrad Hall) that attracts those yearning to connect with someone, something, or anything that assures a non-corporeal form of immortality; a city that teases endless possibilities, yet so often pays out with little more than broken dreams.
Ed Wood– Director Tim Burton and leading man Johnny Depp have worked together on so many films over the last 30 years that they must be joined at the hip. For my money, this affectionate 1994 biopic about the man who directed “the worst film of all time” remains their best collaboration. It’s also unique in Burton’s canon in that it is somewhat grounded in reality (while I wish his legion of loyal fans all the best, Burton’s predilection for overly-precious phantasmagorical and macabre fare is an acquired taste that I’ve yet to acquire).
Depp gives a brilliant performance as Edward D. Wood, Jr., who unleashed the infamously inept yet 100% certified camp classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space on an unsuspecting movie-going public back in the late 1950s. While there are lots of belly laughs, none of them are at the expense of the off-beat characters. There’s no mean-spiritedness here; that’s what makes the film so endearing. Martin Landau delivers a droll Oscar-winning turn as Bela Lugosi. Bill Murray, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette and Jeffrey Jones also shine.
8 1/2– Where does creative inspiration come from? A simple question, difficult to answer. Federico Fellini’s semi-autobiographical 1963 classic probably comes closest to “showing” us…in his inimitable fashion. Marcello Mastroianni is fabulous as a successful director who wrestles with a creative block and existential crisis whilst being hounded by the press and various hangers-on. Like many Fellini films (all Fellini films?), the deeper you go, the less you comprehend. Yet (almost perversely), you can’t take your eyes off the screen; with Fellini, there is an implied contract between the director and the viewer that, no matter what ensues, if you’ve bought the ticket, you have to take the ride.
Hearts of the West– In Howard Zeiff’s 1975 dramedy, Jeff Bridges stars as a Depression-era wannabe pulp western writer (a scene where he asks the barber to cut his hair to make him look “just like Zane Grey” is priceless.) He gets fleeced by a mail-order scam promising enrollment in what turns out to be a bogus university “out West”. Serendipity lands him a job as a Hollywood stuntman. Bridges gets able support from Blythe Danner, Andy Griffith (one of his best performances), Donald Pleasence, Richard B. Shull, and veteran scene-stealer Alan Arkin (he’s a riot as a perpetually apoplectic director). Rob Thompson’s witty script gives the wonderful cast plenty to chew on.
The Kid Stays in the Picture– Look up “raconteur” in the dictionary and you might see a picture of the subject of this winning 2002 documentary, directed by Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen. While essentially a 90-minute monologue by legendary producer Robert Evans (The Godfather, Rosemary’s Baby, Love Story, Chinatown, etc.) recounting his life and career, it’s an intimate and fascinating “insider” purview of the Hollywood machine. Evans spins quite the tale of a mogul’s rise and fall; by turns heartbreaking and hilarious. He’s so charming and entertaining that you won’t stop to ponder whether he’s making half this shit up. Inventive, engaging, and required viewing for movie buffs.
Living in Oblivion– This under-appreciated 1995 sleeper from writer-director Tom DiCillo is the Day for Night of indie cinema. A NYC-based filmmaker (Steve Buscemi) is directing a no-budget feature. Much to his chagrin, the harried director seems to be stuck in a hellish loop as he chases an ever-elusive “perfect take” for a couple of crucial scenes.
DiCillo’s cleverly constructed screenplay is quite funny. Fabulous performances abound from a “Who’s Who” of indie film: Catherine Keener, Dermot Mulroney, Kevin Corrigan, James Le Gros and Peter Dinklage (in his first billed film role). Dinklage delivers a hilarious rant about the stereotypical casting of dwarves in dream sequences. It has been rumored that Le Gros’ character (an arrogant Hollywood hotshot who has deigned to grace the production with his presence) was based on the director’s experience working with Brad Pitt (who starred in DeCillo’s 1991 debut , Johnny Suede). If true, all I can say is…ouch!
Millennium Actress – I think some of the best sci-fi films of the past several decades have originated not from Hollywood, but rather from the masters of Japanese anime. Films like Akira and Ghost in the Shell displayed a quality of writing and visual imagination that few live action productions match (well, post-Blade Runner).
One of the most unique masters of the form was Satoshi Kon (sadly, he died of cancer in 2010 at 46). His films mix complex characterizations with a photo-realistic visual style; making me forget that I’m watching animation. Kon drew on genres not typically associated with anime, like adult drama (Tokyo Godfathers), film noir (Perfect Blue), psychological thriller (the limited series Paranoia Agent) and this 2001 character study.
A documentary filmmaker and his cameraman interview a long-reclusive actress. As she reminisces on key events of her life and career, the director and the cameraman are pulled right into the events themselves. The narrative becomes more surreal as the line blurs between the actresses’ life and the lives of her film characters. Mind-blowing and thought-provoking, it is ultimately a touching love letter to 20th Century Japanese cinema.
Mulholland Drive – David Lynch’s nightmarish, yet mordantly droll twist on the Hollywood dream makes TheDay of the Locust seem like an upbeat romp. Naomi Watts stars as a fresh-faced ingénue with high hopes who blows into Hollywood from Somewhere in Middle America to (wait for it) become a star. Those plans get, shall we say, put on hold…once she crosses paths with a voluptuous and mysterious amnesiac (Laura Harring).
What ensues is the usual Lynch mindfuck, and if you buy the ticket, you better be ready to take the ride, because this is one of his more fun ones (or as close as one gets to having “fun” watching a Lynch film). This one grew on me; by the third (or was it fourth?) time I’d seen it I decided that it’s one of the iconoclastic director’s finest efforts.
Nouvelle Vague – A heady and freewheeling backstage drama/fan fiction from Richard Linklater about the making of Breathless, the film that ushered in the French New Wave. Linklater not only offers a “fly on the wall” perspective with an uncanny recreation of the original production (right down to the camera work, film stock and screen ratio), but renews your faith in a medium that has become more about bombast, box office, and back end than characters, concept, and conflict. This fine 2025 release may have been snubbed by this year’s Academy voters (for various technicalities), but did earn 10 Cesar Awards nominations (winning Best Director for Linklater, making him the first American to win the category), as well as Golden Globe Awards and Independent Spirit Awards nominations. (Full review)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – “Surely (you’re thinking), a film involving the Manson Family and directed by Quentin Tarantino must feature a cathartic orgy of blood and viscera…amirite?” Sir or madam, all I can tell you is that I am unaware of any such activity or operation… nor would I be disposed to discuss such an operation if it did in fact exist, sir or madam.
What I am prepared to share is this: Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt have rarely been better, Margot Robbie is radiant and angelic as Sharon Tate, and 9-year-old moppet Julia Butters nearly steals the film. Los Angeles gives a fabulous and convincing performance as 1969 Los Angeles. Oh, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is now my favorite “grown-up” Quentin Tarantino film (after Jackie Brown). (Full review)
The Story of Film: An Odyssey is one long-ass movie. Consider the title. It literally is the story of film, from the 1890s through last Tuesday. At 15 hours, it is nearly as epic an undertaking for the viewer as it must have been for director-writer-narrator Mark Cousins. Originally aired as a TV series in the UK, it played on the festival circuit as a five-part presentation. While the usual suspects are well-represented, Cousins’ choices for in-depth analysis are atypical (e.g. African and Middle-Eastern cinema).
That quirkiness is what I found most appealing about this idiosyncratic opus; world cinema (rightfully) gets equal time with Hollywood. The film is not without tics. Cousins’ oddly cadenced Irish brogue takes acclimation, and he tends to over-use the word “masterpiece”. Of course, he “left out” many directors and films I would have included. Nits aside, this is obviously a labor of love by someone who is sincerely passionate about film.
The Stunt Man– “How tall was King Kong?” That’s the question posed by Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole), the larger-than-life director of the film-within-the-film in Richard Rush’s 1980 drama. Once you discover King Kong was but “3 foot, six inches tall”, it becomes clear that the fictional director’s query is actually code for a much bigger question: “What is reality?”
Ponder that as you take this wild ride through the Dream Factory. Because from the moment the protagonist, a fugitive on the run from the cops (Steve Railsback) tumbles ass over teakettle onto Mr. Cross’s set, where he is filming an arty WW I drama, his (and the audience’s) concept of what is real and what isn’t becomes hazy, to say the least.
O’Toole chews major scenery, ably supported by a cast that includes Barbara Hershey and Allen Garfield. Despite lukewarm reviews from critics upon original release, it has since gained status as a cult classic. This is a movie for people who love the movies.
Sunset Boulevard– Leave it to that great ironist Billy Wilder to direct a film that garnered a Best Picture nomination from the very Hollywood studio system it so mercilessly skewers (however, you’ll note that they didn’t let him win…did they?). Gloria Swanson’s turn as a fading, high-maintenance movie queen mesmerizes, William Holden embodies the quintessential noir sap, and veteran scene-stealer Erich von Stroheim redefines the meaning of “droll” in this tragicomic journey down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
Soon after President Trump joined Israel in launching a new war against Iran, an A.I. video featuring Secretary of State Marco Rubio circulated online.
Clad in a black turban and robe, he presides over an Iranian military parade, speaks at a mosque and gazes over the Tehran skyline. The caption: “Marco Rubio realizing he’s the new Supreme Leader of Iran.” Though intended as satire, the video crystallizes a pivotal moment for Mr. Rubio.
Throughout his long political career, Mr. Rubio has advocated toppling governments hostile to the United States. He was once considered so ideologically out of step with Mr. Trump that many officials and politicians doubted he would last a year in the administration. But today, Mr. Rubio is at the helm of Mr. Trump’s aggressive campaigns to reshape the governments of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and beyond.
The U.S. president, who promised to end American wars, is now embracing the policies backed by Mr. Rubio and the secretary’s ideological compatriots, dismaying supporters who thought Mr. Trump had ushered in a new era of military restraint.
But Mr. Rubio is not trying to convert Mr. Trump to George W. Bush-era neoconservatism, which sought to remold other nations’ political systems, sometimes with military force, American officials and analysts say. Instead, he seems to be pursuing a new approach built on power free of principle. It is a merger of neoconservatism with Mr. Trump’s transactionalism, and it amounts to using U.S. military and economic power to turn authoritarian countries into client states.
It is regime compliance rather than regime change, a doctrine of destroy and deal.
Traditional neoconservatives saw promoting democracy and doing nation-building in the world as a moral good, even if it was done at gunpoint. And they viewed those as a means of transforming adversaries wholesale and extending American influence by spreading ideas. The Trump administration’s approach, so far, leaves internal politics to the rival nations as long as they show obeisance.
As long as they show obeisance.
Yeah, this kind of thing has been done since time began. It’s nothing new. It’s uncivilized and monumentally dangerous for us — and the rest of the world.
After WWII it was understood that psychopaths like Trump and Rubio could not be in charge of any civilized country, the United States included. After all, we are not the only country with world destroying nuclear weapons although we have more of them than anyone else. And because Trump is tearing up the existing world order with nothing but chaos and violence to replace it, there will be many more before long. The way things are going, the catastrophic decision to launch one will be aimed at us.
I guess it could be worse. He could be reading entrails or something. But now that I think about it, the entrails would probably have better judgement.
Jared Kushner, one of the U.S. government’s chief negotiators in the Middle East, is trying to raise more money for his private equity firm from governments in the region. Mr. Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has spoken with potential investors in recent weeks about raising $5 billion or more for Affinity Partners, his investment firm, according to five people with knowledge of the talks who were not permitted to speak publicly about the discussions.
As part of the fund-raising effort, Affinity’s representatives have already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which invests the proceeds of the kingdom’s vast oil reserves, two of the people briefed on the discussions said. PIF is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has formed close ties with Mr. Kushner and the Trump administration.
PIF, which is already the largest and earliest investor in Affinity, invested $2 billion soon after the first Trump administration ended. As part of that deal, the Saudis must be given the first chance to invest during any subsequent attempts by Affinity to raise funds, the two people said. Other Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds that invested earlier in Affinity, including those in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, are also expected to be asked for more, the people said.
Mr. Kushner’s fund-raising is expected to stretch on for the better part of this year.
The chutzpah is overwhelming. We know how intimately involved he’s been with every foreign policy issue. And he’s been everywhere. One example:
In January, Mr. Kushner traveled to Davos, Switzerland, as part of the official U.S. delegation at the World Economic Forum, where he unveiled the Trump administration’s plan for a “New Gaza.”
While at Davos, Kushner also discussed his plans to raise billions in new investments for Affinity in private meetings with international business leaders, two people with knowledge of the conversations said.
As recently as December 2024, Mr. Kushner suggested that he would not seek more money for Affinity during Mr. Trump’s second term. That month, he told the podcaster Patrick O’Shaughnessy that he would “pre-emptively try to avoid any conflicts.”
“We don’t have to raise capital for the next four years,” Mr. Kushner added.
That appears to have changed. In materials provided to potential investors this year and reviewed by The New York Times, Affinity indicated that more than three-quarters of the roughly $5 billion it had raised since its founding had already been spent on investments in companies such as Phoenix Financial, an Israeli insurer, and Revolut, a financial technology start-up.
We’re spending 2 billion a day on this war. At the same time:
Egg prices aren’t bad so it’s all good. But with the gas prices going through the roof, I’d guess the eggs will go up too. That’s how this usually works, anyway.
Meanwhile, we have a medical research system in free fall. The good news is that RFK Jr and some wellness influencers are ready to help us with great advice about how to be healthy by drinking beef tallow and using cod liver oil to cure measles. We’re going to be so healthy that we won’t even need vaccines because we’ll be impervious to all disease. So that’s good.
Trump: "You know what else I thought about a long time before it happened? Osama bin Laden. I said, 'You have to go out and kill Osama bin Laden. He's big trouble. Kill him.' Nobody did anything. A year later he knocked down the World Trade Center. It was in a book. One of my many best sellers."
President Donald Trump likes to portray himself as a visionary, someone who sees important things before others. Trump has been claiming for the last decade that in a book he published the year before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he warned the authorities that they needed to deal with Osama bin Laden
Trump’s claim is false. His 2000 book contained no warning at all about bin Laden. His tale about the book’s nonexistent warning was conclusivelydebunked in 2015. CNN published another debunking when he revived the tale in 2019.
But the president repeated it once again on Sunday – to a crowd of sailors celebrating the 250th birthday of the US Navy.
This time, Trump delivered the phony narrative after saying history wouldn’t forget how it was Navy Seals who killed bin Laden (in 2011 under then-President Barack Obama, a frequent target of Trump criticism). Trump added, in an apparent ad-lib, “And please remember, I wrote about Osama bin Laden exactly one year ago,” then corrected himself and said, “One year before he blew up the World Trade Center. And I said, ‘You’ve got to watch Osama bin Laden.’ And the fake news would never let me get away with that statement unless it was true.”
How many people in our country think this is normal now? Or this?
