60% of Republicans think Trump is full of shit on the Epstein files. And since his own DOJ is now charged with releasing the files (assuming he signs the bill, which he says he will do) a good many people will assume it’s a shame — because Trump has spent the last few months covering it up. This is never going to fully go away — and Trump knows it.
He knew how this was going to go when they asked him if he’s release the JFK, MLK and Epstein files all in the same breath. Those conspiracy theories never go away.
I hope everyone doesn’t get too, too excited, though. The Trump era is a roller coaster. We’re on the upside today but it’s inevitable that we’ll be hurtling down the other side before long. I don’t know what it will be — war maybe. Rally ’round the flag? But something. We have three long years to go….
Online influencer Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist who has millions of young male followers, was facing allegations of sex trafficking women in three countries when he and his brother left their home in Romania to visit the United States.
“The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back,” Tate posted on X before the trip in February — one of many times he has sung the president’s praises to his fans.
But when the Tate brothers arrived by private plane in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, they immediately found themselves in the crosshairs of law enforcement once more, as Customs and Border Protection officials seized their electronic devices.
The Tates were released under pressure from the United States for reasons that were obscure. There is no doubt that they are the worst kind of violent misogynists. They videos their misdeed and put them on the internet. At the time, it was thought that maybe the U.S. would take over the investigation and deal with them in their own judicial system.
Nope:
This time, they had a powerful ally come to their aid. Behind the scenes, the White House intervened on their behalf.
Interviews and records reviewed by ProPublica show a White House official told senior Department of Homeland Security officials to return the devices to the brothers several days after they were seized. The official who delivered the message, Paul Ingrassia, is a lawyer who previously represented the Tate brothers before joining the White House, where he was working as its DHS liaison.
In his written request, a copy of which was reviewed by ProPublica, Ingrassia chided authorities for taking the action, saying the seizure of the Tates’ devices was not a good use of time or resources. The request to return the electronics to the Tates, he emphasized, was coming from the White House.
[…]
Ingrassia’s intervention on behalf of Tate and his brother, Tristan, caused alarm among DHS officials that they could be interfering with a federal investigation if they followed through with the instruction, according to interviews and screenshots of contemporaneous communications between officials.
One official who was involved and spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid facing retribution said they were disgusted by the request’s “brazenness and the high-handed expectation of complicity.”
— Nathan Livingstone (MilkBarTV) (@TheMilkBarTV) January 11, 2025
Yeah:
Trump had nominated Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel, but the 30-year-old lawyer’s chances for Senate confirmation imploded after Politico reported that he had sent a string of racist text messages to fellow Republicans and described himself as having “a Nazi streak.” Paltzik, his lawyer, raised doubts about the authenticity of the texts but said “even if the texts are authentic, they clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humor.”
In a post on X announcing he was withdrawing from his Senate confirmation hearing because not enough Republican lawmakers were supporting him, Ingrassia said he would “continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again.”
Last week, Ingrassia announced he was moving to a new role within the administration, after Trump called him into his office and asked him to serve as deputy general counsel at the General Services Administration.
From the man who personally, and with the help of his Vice President, dressed down the president of an allied country at war with an adversary in front of the whole world, comes this:
Reporter: Is it appropriate for your family to do business with Saudi Arabia while you’re president? The us intelligence concluded you orchestrated the murder of a journalist…
Trump: Who are you with?
Reporter: ABC News
Trump: ABC Fake news. I have nothing to do with the family business. You mentioned somebody extremely controversial—a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman. Whether you did or didn’t like him, things happen but he knew nothing about it. You don’t have to embarrass our guest.
Trump suggests Khashoggi had it coming: "You're mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it. You don't have to… pic.twitter.com/uhh8VjFy20
Speaking with reporters days after the emails’ release, Trump insisted. “I know nothing about that. They would have announced that a long time ago.”
“Jeffrey Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years,” he added.
When an off-camera female reporter — later identified as a Bloomberg reporter — began to ask if there was anything “incriminating” in the Epstein emails, Trump pointed a finger in her face.
“Quiet. Quiet, Piggy,” he said menacingly.
Apropos of nothing. here are some common symptoms of dementia
Social inappropriateness: Inhibitions are often lost, meaning a person may say or do things that are considered socially inappropriate, such as making offensive comments or touching someone inappropriately.
Poor judgment: The ability to judge a situation or what is appropriate is diminished, which can lead to impulsive actions or remarks.
Disregard for social norms: The brain areas that enforce social norms are impaired, so the person may not understand that their behavior is out of line.
Impulsivity: Dementia can lead to more impulsive behaviors, as the control mechanism for acting on an impulse is damaged.
One of the most dramatic moments in modern American political history came in the wee hours of July 28, 2017, when the country watched to see if the Senate would vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act — and send the country back to the days when premature death and bankruptcy were common due to lack of access to health insurance. Republicans had voted dozens of times to repeal the law they had hated, even calling it “Obamacare” as a kind of epithet, not realizing the program would become popular and forever be associated with the popular Democratic president who signed it.
That night, the vote on the floor was called the “skinny repeal,” a transparent gimmick intended to force GOP House members on the other side of the Capitol to come up with something better, even though their previous attempts had been failures. The Republican caucus was unified with three exceptions. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine were opposed. Only Arizona Sen. John McCain remained uncommitted. If he voted no, it would defeat the bill 51-49.
McCain was suffering from brain cancer and had dealt with a lifetime of health challenges due to his injuries as a POW in the Vietnam War. He understood the stakes, and he had a gift for drama. When he walked on to the floor that night, he knew his vote would be one of the defining moments of his career. When his name was called, McCain didn’t say anything. He simply walked up to the desk and gave a thumbs down, effectively ending the GOP’s relentless, years-long attempts to repeal Obamacare.
Eight years later, the GOP — the party that has spent decades trying to privatize Social Security and Medicare — is trying a different approach: Destroying the program by increments, one painful piece at a time. They ended the individual mandate, which would have made everyone participate — and kept premiums lower while covering people who don’t realize that bad things can happen to them too. They hobbled the Medicaid expansion from the beginning, and more recently they cut that program drastically under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is conveniently set to take place after the 2026 midterms, revealing that they know just how unpopular and cruel those cuts will be. They made it more difficult to enroll, forcing people to manually sign up every year instead of being automatically enrolled. And now they are allowing the ACA subsidies to expire, hiking premiums to unaffordable levels for millions of people.
The GOP’s philosophy was perhaps best captured by Medicare and Medicaid head Dr. Mehmet Oz, who said Sunday on Fox News, “If you really want to drop the cost of health care in America, get healthier.”
It took Democrats decades to pass universal health care legislation, which was famously the dream of President Harry Truman. In 1994, the Clinton administration’s attempt at health care reform failed, largely due to Republicans being unwilling to negotiate. There were subsequently some successes at the state level, most notably in Massachusetts under GOP Gov. Mitt Romney, who passed a program with some elements that appealed to Republicans. Democrats thought Romney’s template might offer a way to attract GOP support in Congress.
When Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, the country was in the midst of a severe economic crisis and a painful recession. Job losses exacerbated a health care crisis that had been growing for decades. A system dependent on employer-provided health insurance left tens of millions of Americans unable to afford it on their own — if they could qualify at all.
When Democrats stated their intentions to finally pass health care reform, Republicans refused to participate. But Democrats had been given a mandate by voters, along with large majorities in both houses of Congress. For months they held hearings, consulted experts, drafted policies and debated, trying to form a consensus as a party, and with the public. There were pro-life members who refused to allow abortion coverage, progressives who wanted a public option and conservative senators who wanted less coverage and regulation. Across the country, the newly-formed Tea Party was staging a tantrum, and giving the media the thrilling political theater they craved.
Still, largely due to the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Democrats managed to pass the Affordable Care Act with the understanding that it was only a “starter home,” as Obama referred to it — a framework on which to build over time. Important regulations such as requiring insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions, allowing kids to stay on their parents’ policies until they were 26 and requiring some basic kinds of coverage were the plan’s foundation.
Many Democrats hoped they could eventually provide a public option, which would essentially allow people to opt-in to Medicare. The party also wanted to raise the subsidies that helped people pay for the insurance on the exchanges, as most agreed the original formula would not be sufficient over time to cover all the program’s eventual recipients. In 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic precipitated yet another economic crisis, leaving many out of work and needing to buy into the program, Democrats were finally able to increase those subsidies for millions of people through the American Rescue Plan.
Now, after these hard-fought gains, Republicans are at it again. They are recycling their absurd health care “alternatives” at a time when the government has completely lost touch with anything resembling reality or responsibility. This time, they might just get them passed.
President Donald Trump has apparently decided that he can take one of his faux-populist stances by promoting the idea of sending subsidies directly to Americans instead of the “big bad insurance companies,” allowing Americans to negotiate with the corporations on their own. Setting aside the notion that individuals can negotiate the cost of their health care, this daft idea offers no explanation as to how it’s supposed to save people money. They would still have to kick in their own share of higher premiums.
It’s clear that Trump doesn’t understand anything about insurance — but then some Republican senator doctors apparently don’t either. In a speech on the Senate floor, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall complained that 40% of people insured under Obamacare don’t file any claims, which means they shouldn’t be on the program. Then there is a more serious proposal by Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who wants to send Trump’s subsidies to a mandatory Health Savings Account, which experts warn would end up collapsing the ACA Marketplaces.
But not to worry. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., says he’s writing the legislation and that he’s an expert. He once ran HCA, the country’s largest for-profit health care company — until he resigned in 1997 during a federal investigation. In 2003, the company was found to have defrauded Medicare and had to pay $1.7 billion, then the largest fine in U.S. history.
Republicans openly admit they want people to pay high deductibles and have terrible coverage because they think it will make them more “responsible.” During a presidential debate in 2011, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas., a medical doctor, was asked if society should just let people who don’t have insurance die, and his fans in the audience yelled “yeah!” He suggested that charity could pick up the tab but that really, people just need to be responsible for themselves.
Paul’s response was honest, what most Republicans are unwilling to admit they believe: If you aren’t rich enough to afford high premiums, or to pay for your own health care if you get sick and insurance refuses to cover you, then you have failed to adequately care for yourself and you should just have to suffer the consequences. All of Trump’s phony paeans to populism can’t hide his real intentions.
A video from Charlotte shows Border Patrol agents pointing an assault rifle at a woman’s head before breaking her car window and arresting her and a passenger, both American citizens. CBP chased them down and accused them of “honking their horn to alert others that troops were in the area” (WCNC Charlotte):
Dramatic video captured the moment agents took the two women into custody following a chase down Central Avenue. The women were later released with citations after spending several hours at an FBI facility.
Neighbor Shea Watts began recording after hearing a commotion outside his window.
In the video, an agent can be seen breaking a car window while pointing an assault rifle at one of the women.
“He’s breaking the window— He’s got an assault rifle pointed at her,” Watts said in the recording.
Watts described his reaction as “somewhere between disbelief and just being really upset that this is our reality now.”
A Charlotte attorney tells WCNC that, yes, CBP can make an arrest for interfering in their operations:
“You get in the way of an officer making an arrest, like meaningfully get in the way, then you can count on getting arrested yourself,” Mauney said. “If you’re standing 25 or 50 yards away where you’re not in any way interfering with the law enforcement activity that’s taking place, you have a right to videotape that.”
And what about all those whistles?
The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the citations or potential charges.
“I was already close to despair and feeling helpless and hopeless,” Watts said. “But I think just the reminder that if we see something, to document it. I tried to be respectful and ask questions and knowing my own rights, and I was told to back up a couple times, which, that’s fine, but at the end of the day, this all feels a little heavy handed.”
A little heavy handed?
Watch:
This is bullshit! What are the charges?
📌 Border Patrol arrested two women for allegedly honking their car horn to alert others of the agents’ presence pic.twitter.com/Y13kxKm4iM
By Zarn02 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23240069
Here’s a lengthy report about DHS plans to make America’s holidays brighter. The unconfirmed reporting (take it advisedly) comes via local This Week in Worcester and three Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys cited anonymously (for obvious reasons):
Agencies within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) intend to implement a comprehensive plan to target Spanish-speaking churches across the country during the upcoming holiday season between Thanksgiving, Nov. 27, and Christmas, Dec. 25.
Three U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys, including one assigned to the U.S. Attorney’s office in the district of Massachusetts, one to the district of Rhode Island office, and the third posted at an office in New York told This Week in Worcester they received briefings on the plan.
The attorney in the Massachusetts office said that they attend a Baptist church in Massachusetts and is a registered Republican. He said that he does not see how this plan is in line with either American values or Biblical doctrine.
The attorney in the Rhode Island office confirmed both the briefing and internal discussions about the legal issues surrounding arrests at churches over the past three months.
The attorney in the New York office spoke in depth about the plan being recently updated to include mosques and liberal synagogues in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s recent win in the New York City mayor’s race.
The attorneys spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. All three said the plan is not regional to New England, but a nationwide strategy.
Lost in legitimately major news this weekend is just how inhumane and aggressive ICE's first operations in Charlotte were. Raiding a church, sending folks fleeing into a forest, and leaving kids crying??https://t.co/2nXDFgff9Cpic.twitter.com/93pEHGNyUf
Black Friday? Meet Brown Friday. That’s right. Secretary Kristi Noem’s thugs plan to raid churches over the holidays so DHS can “take ’em out, take ’em down,” as Jeff Goldblum once said about alien aliens. They’ve already done that in Charlotte, sending “some worshippers fleeing into the woods while children sobbed inside.”
DHS is coming to town
They’re making their lists, checking them twice, This Week in Worcester continues:
A Hispanic pastor who leads a Pentecostal denomination in New England told This Week in Worcester that ICE agents visited his church several times and another visit came from an individual who identified themselves as an FBI agent. In all three conversations, agents asked questions about the names of specific congregation members, their home addresses, and the frequency they attended church services.
Does DHS think the public cannot see a pattern of subterfuge and meritless accusations here?
Both Southern Baptist pastors told This Week in Worcester that they fear scenes similar to the arrest of Rosanne Ferreira de Oliveira on Eureka Street in Worcester on May 8 unfolding inside their churches. On that day, DHS, CBP, ICE and other federal agents held de Oliveira’s children in custody to get her outside her home and to the scene, so they could conduct an arrest without a warrant.
After de Oliveira’s arrest, ICE released a statement saying she is in the country illegally and a violent criminal who attacked a pregnant woman.
The court dropped criminal charges against de Oliveira at her next court appearance. As multiple outlets later reported, de Oliveira had authorization for legal presence in the United States with a pending application for asylum. While in custody after her arrest, a judge approved de Oliveira’s application for asylum.
The federal government did not appeal that decision, despite having the right to. Instead, they released de Oliveira.
Surprise! Latinos “despise, hate Donald Trump” on immigration. Overall? Trump is down 34 points, a shift of 32 points from February.
🚨 CRATERING HISPANIC SUPPORT FOR GOP PUTS HOUSE SEATS IN PLAY.
-GOP support with Hispanics has collapsed.
-Dems over performing 2024 in hispanic districts.
If this continues: New gerrymandered Texas maps could put TX34, TX15, TX23, TX28 & 12-18 GOP seats nationally in play pic.twitter.com/HwZgylnTJB
To make your holidays brighter still in what Trump calls “the greatest economy,” Fox News now advises that you not spend anything: “Adults don’t need gifts…. Now is not the time to spend.”
Trump’s America is so great, Fox News guests are now telling people not to buy Christmas gifts for grandma to save money.
But I thought this was even more interesting because it goes all the way back to the original investigation:
On the original issues that Comey raised as a basis for accessing the grand jury material, the judge ruled in his favor to the maximum extent possible, arguably going even further than Comey had in finding flaws with the how the government handled some of the evidence in the case.
At issue were four search warrants executed by DOJ in the earlier and separate Arctic Haze investigation during the Trump I presidency. The subject of the search warrants was Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, a friend of Comey’s who would also end up representing him in a lawyer-client relationship. That made some of the materials covered by the search warrant potentially privileged, creating a whole constellation of issues that are not uncommon in criminal investigations but which the judge found the Justice Department botched in nine different ways.
The government may have violated the 4th Amendment in how it executed the search warrants in the first place way back in 2019-2020, including taking insufficient steps to protect potentially privileged information and never engaging Comey in the process of how privileged information would be handled, the judge concluded. The judge found nothing in the record to show that the government made any attempt to ascertain what of the materials they seized from Richman was evidence of the crimes for which he was being investigated.
The government may have violated the 4th Amendment by exceeding the scope of the original search warrants.
The government may have violated the 4th Amendment by holding the seized materials for so long after the Arctic Haze investigation was closed in 2021 and then searching them anew in 2025 in Comey’s separate case without a new warrant.
The government may have violated the 4th Amendment by seizing the materials anew in 2025 thus exceeding the scope of the original warrants since Comey was being investigated for different crimes arising from different facts.
“The government’s potential violations of the 4th Amendment and court orders establish a reasonable basis to question whether the government’s conduct was willful or in reckless disregard of the law,” the judge concluded in opening the door wide to Comey’s already pending vindictive prosecution claim.
The government’s conduct gives Comey a “reasonable basis” to show he was prejudiced by the use of the seized materials in the grand jury since they were central to the case prosecutors presented.
Comey may also challenge whether the government took sufficient steps to protect his privileged information, “including the reasons why Mr. Comey was never afforded the opportunity to assert a privilege over his communications until after the indictment was obtained.”
The government’s sole witness — a FBI agent — was exposed to privileged information shortly before he testified, which gives a “reasonable basis” for Comey to challenge whether the government used privileged information, directly or indirectly, for preparing its grand jury presentation.
Comey has a “reasonable basis” to question whether the government’s disclosure of potentially privileged information “was willful or in reckless disregard of the law,” especially since the FBI agent who was the sole witness “chose to testify before the grand jury rather than separate himself from the investigation.”
I should note here that the judge hasn’t reached a conclusion on each of these issues yet, but having reviewed the search warrants, the grand jury materials in chambers, and the record before him decided the questions they raised were serious enough to give multiple separate grounds for Comey to seek dismissal of the indictment and to give him access to the grand jury materials as a result.
The U.S. Justice Department is falling apart at the seams. And with every day that passes it gets worse as they fire people for failing to show fealty to Donald Trump and the rest of the competent people get out while the getting’s good.
Did they not know that James Comey had been the head of the SDNY? The Director of the FBI? He’s one of America’s top lawyers and his own attorney now, Patrick Fitzgerald, is likewise one of the top lawyers in America and former US Attorney. They just completely ignored the 4th Amendment at the beginning of the case and then put a beauty queen insurance lawyer in charge of this case when the real prosecutors refused to file the case? Crazy.
Q: Your voice sounds rough. Are you feeling alright?
TRUMP: I was shouting at people because they were stupid about something having to do with trade and a country. I blew my stack at these people
Q: Well it sounds like there’s a follow up there–
TRUMP: What? I thought you said there was a polyp. I don’t want to hear that!
That’s the kind of thing you would hear from a lot of 80 year olds. “What?? Polyp? You think I have a polyp???”
He looks like crap today too. His eyes appear to almost be swollen shut the bags underneath are so prominent. He looks reptilian.
Meanwhile:
Trump: "I believe that some of the people we have mentioned are being looked at very seriously for their relationship to Jeffrey Epstein. But they were with him all the time. I wasn't. I wasn't at all." pic.twitter.com/iG7rqZDhJ0
Trump: "What I just don't want Epstein to do is detract from the great success of the Republican Party … don't talk about it too much, because honestly I don't want it taking away from us. It's really a Democrat problem. The whole thing is a hoax." pic.twitter.com/uXvqGwMf9b
Trump on if he'll sign an Epstein files release bill: "We have nothing to do with Epstein. The Democrats do. All of his friends were Democrats. You look at this Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers, Bill Clinton … all I want is I want for people to recognize the great job I've done on… pic.twitter.com/f1UnfwQ83d
