One Right-Wing Battle After Another

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.  Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, defended Tucker Carlson after his softball interview with Nazi wannabe Nick Fuentes.

Zach Kessel at The Free Beacon:

Leaders of Advancing American Freedom (AAF), the nonprofit led by former vice president Mike Pence, said that their move to hire more than a dozen former Heritage Foundation employees represents a significant shift within the American right.

AAF president Tim Chapman described the organization’s addition of Heritage Foundation’s legal, data, and economics centers, a move that doubles its size, as a "reorganization of the conservative movement.

"People are voting with their feet as to where they feel they are best suited to be," Chapman said.

The mass defections from the Heritage Foundation are part of the continuing fallout from president Kevin Roberts’s release, in October, of a clumsy video taking aim at critics of the podcast host Tucker Carlson, who had recently conducted a friendly interview with the neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.

The new AAF hires include John Malcolm, who led the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and will lead the new Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law at AAF; Richard Stern, who directed Heritage’s economics center and will lead the Plymouth Center for Free Enterprise at AAF; and Kevin Dayaratna, who ran Heritage’s data analysis center and will build a similar program at his new institution.

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Since Roberts released the video in late October, three Heritage Foundation board members—Princeton University professor Robert George, Abby Moffat, and Shane McCullar—have resigned. McCullar said he took issue with the fact that the think tank "hesitates to condemn antisemitism and hatred" and "gives a platform to those who spread them." George expressed frustration that Roberts "could not offer a full retraction" of his video statement.

Michael Starr at The Jerusalem Post:

During her Saturday show, Political commentator Candace Owens urged her audience to read a 19th-century antisemitic book and accused Jews of orchestrating the Transatlantic Slave Trade and racial conflict between Caucasian and African Americans.

The YouTube show episode focused on Owens's grievances with conservative pundit and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, who had criticized her during his Thursday Turning Point USA AmericaFest conference speech.

AT WP, Jim Geraghty writes of Turning Point USA's year-end conference: 

The smiling faces of [Tucker] Carlson and [Megyn] Kelly were lined up on a poster for the conference alongside podcaster Ben Shapiro, longtime Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. (I realize this is a quaint and old-fashioned notion, but currently serving U.S. intelligence officials should not be speaking at a partisan pep rally.)

On Thursday, as the conference kicked off, Shapiro decided to address the elephant in the room.

“If Candace Owens decides to spend every day since the murder of Charlie Kirk casting aspersions at TPUSA and the people who work here, who worked with Charlie every single day, his best friends … and, yes, at Erica Kirk and to imply or outright claim complicity in a cover-up over Charlie’s murder, to spew absolutely baseless trash implicating everyone from French intelligence to Mossad to members of TPUSA in Charlie’s murder or a cover-up in that murder, then we as people with a microphone have a moral obligation to call that out by name.”

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On Thursday, as the conference kicked off, Shapiro decided to address the elephant in the room.

“If Candace Owens decides to spend every day since the murder of Charlie Kirk casting aspersions at TPUSA and the people who work here, who worked with Charlie every single day, his best friends … and, yes, at Erica Kirk and to imply or outright claim complicity in a cover-up over Charlie’s murder, to spew absolutely baseless trash implicating everyone from French intelligence to Mossad to members of TPUSA in Charlie’s murder or a cover-up in that murder, then we as people with a microphone have a moral obligation to call that out by name.”

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For his part, Bannon bellowed, “Ben Shapiro is like a cancer and that cancer spreads.”

More Ways to Buy Favor with Trump

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.

Karen Yourish, Kenneth P. Vogel, and Charlie Smart at NYT:

Since President Trump was elected a second time, he and his allies have raised nearly $2 billion for his favored political causes and passion projects. That total, which was confirmed by four people involved in the fund-raising, likely eclipses the amount raised to support his 2024 campaign.

The astounding haul hints at a level of transactionalism for which it is difficult to find obvious comparisons in modern American history. The identities of the donors behind much of the cash are not legally required to be, and have not been, publicly disclosed. In some cases, Mr. Trump’s team has offered donors anonymity.

To shed light on what has been a largely opaque fund-raising apparatus, The New York Times conducted a comprehensive investigation. It relied on previously unreported documents and public campaign finance filings, as well as interviews with dozens of people who are familiar with the solicitations or are involved in the fund-raising. It traced a large portion of the funds raised — more than half a billion dollars’ worth — back to 346 donors who each gave at least $250,000. It also found that more than half of them have benefited, or are involved in an industry that has benefited, from the actions or statements of Mr. Trump, the White House or federal agencies.

It is not possible to prove that any of the donations directly led to favorable treatment from the Trump administration. And the contributions do not personally enrich Mr. Trump, unlike some of his family’s cryptocurrency ventures.

But many of the deep-pocketed individuals and corporations who have given large sums have a lot riding on the administration’s actions, raising questions about conflicts of interest.

The Man Who Would Be King

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Peter Baker at NYT:

He no longer holds back, or is held back, as in the first term. Trump 2.0 is Trump 1.0 unleashed. The gold trim in the Oval Office, the demolition of the East Wing to be replaced by a massive ballroom, the plastering of his name and face on government buildings and now even the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the designation of his own birthday as a free-admission holiday at national parks — it all speaks to a personal aggrandizement and accumulation of power with meager resistance from Congress or the Supreme Court.

Nearly 250 years after American colonists threw off their king, this is arguably the closest the country has come during a time of general peace to the centralized authority of a monarch. Mr. Trump takes it upon himself to reinterpret a constitutional amendment and to eviscerate agencies and departments created by Congress. He dictates to private institutions how to run their affairs. He sends troops into American streets and wages an unauthorized war against nonmilitary boats in the Caribbean. He openly uses law enforcement for what his own chief of staff calls “score settling” against his enemies, he dispenses pardons to favored allies and he equates criticism to sedition punishable by death.

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He and his staff have posted images of him in monarchical regalia, including an A.I.-generated illustration of him wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet labeled “KING TRUMP” that dumps excrement on protesters. He delighted when the South Koreans gave him a replica of an ancient golden crown. “LONG LIVE THE KING!” he wrote about himself on social media.

Trump Family Gets Richer

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.

David Uberti, et al. at WSJ

When President Trump ran for re-election in 2024, he and his family already had vast business interests stretching from Manhattan office towers to a golf course in Ireland to hotel deals as far away as Vietnam.

The president’s second term has brought a major expansion of that empire, with forays into cryptocurrency, communications, financial products and now, a fusion-power deal. Ventures launched since Trump’s re-election generated at least $4 billion in proceeds and paper wealth for the family as of December, according to company statements and securities filings.

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The recent expansion has made the Trumps a major player in the crypto world. They have launched a host of new ventures and products, from memecoins to data centers. The president is also pushing to relax regulations on the industry. The biggest crypto venture is World Liberty Financial. It has sold about $1.4 billion worth of WLFI tokens, a digital asset it created, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The firm also has launched USD1, a “stablecoin” whose value is pegged to the dollar and which generates significant interest income. The Trumps have a major stake in this business which is ultimately controlled by Trump and his family members through a complex ownership structure. The president has about 70% ownership of the stake through his trust, disclosures show.iness. World Liberty’s site says it is 38% owned by an entity called DT Marks Defi LLC...

In addition to their ownership interests in these businesses, the Trumps are co-founders or operators of many of them. Trump and his sons co-founded World Liberty. The Trumps receive 75% of net proceeds when World Liberty sells tokens, plus a cut of stablecoin returns. That revenue share would translate into about $1 billion in proceeds so far for the Trumps. The Trumps’ unsold tokens were worth about $3 billion as of December

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Epstein Redactions

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

Joe Walsh at CBS:

The Justice Department released thousands of new records on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, but at least 550 pages in the documents are fully redacted, CBS News has found.

The newly released files included photos of several prominent people in Epstein's orbit, images from his homes and investigative records that detail disturbing allegations against the late sex offender. But the heavy redactions in many of the records have drawn criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, as the department defends its handling of the files.

One series of three consecutive documents — totaling 255 pages — is entirely redacted, with each page covered by a black box. A fourth 119-page document labeled "Grand Jury-NY" is also entirely redacted. It's unclear what proceedings it stemmed from, but the document listed immediately before it is a transcript in which a prosecutor asks a grand jury in 2020 to consider evidence for a superseding indictment of Epstein's convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Epstein Update Mid-December

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

Nicholas Confessore and Julie Tate at NYT:

But the two men’s relationship was both far closer and far more complex than the president now admits.

Beginning in the late 1980s, the two men forged a bond intense enough to leave others who knew them with the impression that they were each other’s closest friend, The Times found. Mr. Epstein was then a little-known financier who cultivated mystery around the scope and source of his self-made wealth. Mr. Trump, six years older, was a real estate scion who relished publicity and exaggerated his successes. Neither man drank or did drugs. They pursued women in a game of ego and dominance. Female bodies were currency.

Over nearly two decades, as Mr. Trump cut a swath through the party circuits of New York and Florida, Mr. Epstein was perhaps his most reliable wingman. During the 1990s and early 2000s, they prowled Mr. Epstein’s Manhattan mansion and Mr. Trump’s Plaza Hotel, at least one of Mr. Trump’s Atlantic City casinos and both their Palm Beach homes. They visited each other’s offices and spoke often by phone, according to other former Epstein employees and women who spent time in his homes.

With other men, Mr. Epstein might discuss tax shelters, international affairs or neuroscience. With Mr. Trump, he talked about sex.

“I just think it was trophy hunting,” Stacey Williams, who rose to fame as a star of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions during the 1990s, said in an interview with The Times. In social media posts and interviews with news outlets in recent years, Ms. Williams has described how Mr. Trump groped her in 1993 at Trump Tower while Mr. Epstein — whom she was then dating — watched. “I think Jeffrey liked that he had this Sports Illustrated model who had this name, and that Trump was pursuing me,” she said. Mr. Trump has denied her account.

To shed light on their friendship, The Times interviewed more than 30 former Epstein employees, victims of his abuse and others who crossed paths with the two men over the years. The Times also obtained new documents that illuminate their relationship and scoured court documents and other public records.

Many of the people interviewed by The Times asked to share their stories anonymously, saying they feared for their safety at the hands of supporters of Mr. Trump, a president who has deployed the might of the federal government to target and punish his political opponents. Some Epstein victims have already received death threats for demanding a full accounting of the government’s investigations, according to a statement released by more than two dozen of them last month.

Ranting and Lying

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Trump is showing his age.  Sometimes, it's amusing, but sometimes it's disturbing. Cognitive decline is no joke when it involves someone who can wipe out all life on Earth.

David Sanger at NYT:

President Trump gave an 18-minute speech intended to defend his accomplishments in the first year, and argue that the “Golden Age” he promised in his presidential campaign last year was building steam.

The speech was, in typical form, largely strung together from familiar lines he uses at White House events, rallies and speeches. And, in Trumpian style, there were a long list of exaggerations and misleading statements.

But notably absent from the president’s remarks was his argument from recent weeks that “affordability” was nothing but a “hoax” and a “con job” by Democrats — a line that made his own advisers cringe.

Mr. Trump, always more comfortable with what he calls his “weave” of free association rather than reading from a teleprompter, raced through his talk as if he was late to an important dinner. There were no digressions, unlike his speech in Pennsylvania a week ago when he repeatedly veered from the topic. At times he seemed to be yelling — almost as if he didn’t believe he had to take the time to convince his audience of how well his first 11 months had gone.

As usual, Trump lied.  Daniel Dale at CNN:

Inflation under Trump: Near the end of the speech, Trump falsely claimed, “Inflation is stopped.” Inflation hasn’t stopped; the year-over-year inflation rate in September, 3.0%, was the same as the rate when Trump returned to office in January – in fact, if you go to multiple decimal places, the September rate was a tiny bit higher – and September was the fifth consecutive month the year-over-year rate had increased.

 

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After noting that the price of eggs has plummeted since March, Trump added, “And everything else is falling rapidly.” That is not true even if he was talking specifically about grocery prices, which are up this year. Consumer Price Index data shows that a far greater number of grocery items have increased in price since he returned to office than have decreased. The most recent available CPI figures at the time he spoke on Wednesday, for September, showed that average grocery prices were up about 2.7% from September 2024; about 1.4% from January 2025, the month Trump returned to office; and about 0.3% from August to September.

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Prescription drug prices: Trump repeated his false claim that an executive order he issued on prescription drug prices will cut those prices by “as much as 400, 500, and even 600%.” These figures are mathematically impossible; if the president magically got the companies to reduce the prices of all of their drugs to $0, that would be a 100% cut. You can read a longer fact check here.

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Investment in the US this year: Trump repeated his false claim that there has been “$18 trillion” in investment in the US during his second presidency, saying Wednesday, “I’ve secured a record-breaking $18 trillion of investment into the United States.” This figure is fiction. At the time he spoke on Wednesday, the White House’s own website said the figure was “$9.6 trillion,” and even that is a major exaggeration; a detailed CNN review in October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges, pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US, or vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges. You can read more here.

 

I was wondering how Trump found his troop pay money without a congressional authorization/appropriation. He found it by taking it away from troop housing money. Always a con artist. https://t.co/voaRTB8e5F

— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 18, 2025