Trail Notes
Trump's loyal subjects / ICE toll rises / Hormuz flip-flop / Kennedy Center rush job / Slush fund scam / Pentagon money pot / Trump on the money / Testosterone test
Trump’s loyal subjects
There’s usually a high level of theatrics at Capitol Hill hearings as members of Congress and witnesses try to score points and produce good video clips. Wednesday was no exception when Democratic senators took turns trying to trip up two critical White House nominees.
But acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and director of national intelligence nominee Jay Clayton put on a show of their own, albeit for a much smaller audience—namely Donald Trump. Their responses were public displays of fealty, particularly for Blanche. Whether asked about the president’s mass pardons of Capitol rioters, his use of the Justice Department to go after his enemies, or the arrangement by which Trump and his sons were exempted from Internal Revenue Service audits, Blanche invariably said all were within the president’s authority and that’s all that really mattered.
Blanche did stumble, however, when asked by Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana if he and Trump are friends. “I’m his attorney,” Blanche replied, then quickly scrambled, adding, “I was his attorney.” For his part, Clayton repeatedly avoided answering the simple question of who won the 2020 presidential election. The most he would acknowledge was that Joe Biden had been “certified” as the winner. Ultimately, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia asked Clayton, “Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president’s delusions?”
ICE toll rises
After fatal shootings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston last week and Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine on Monday, the Trump administration seemed to put a freeze on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents making arrests during traffic stops. On Tuesday, border czar Tom Homan described the decision as “a short pause just to make sure we’re doing the right thing,” But then, on Wednesday morning, the president posted on social media that ICE traffic stops will continue. Since Trump returned to the White House, federal immigration agents have fired on at least 22 people and have killed six. Nearly all of the shootings involved officers firing into vehicles.
Like they did with Salgado Araujo in Houston, agents fired at Sebastian Guerrero, a Colombian immigrant in Maine, when they felt he had “weaponized his vehicle.” And in both cases, none of the officers were wearing body cameras, and neither victim was the person the agents were seeking.
Hormuz flip-flop
What a difference a day makes, and with Donald Trump, it can make a big difference. On Monday, he was tough-talking Trump, saying he would have the United States levy a 20 percent fee on any ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. But his plan, to put it mildly, was not warmly received, particularly by Gulf state leaders or even Republican members of Congress who object to any country collecting tolls on shipping. So, on Tuesday, the president did a characteristic backpedal on Truth Social, saying that he’s dropping the whole toll idea because Gulf countries will be making “MASSIVE” investments in the United States.
But shipping company executives say it’s not that simple. Their business depends on long-term planning and consistency. They say flip-flops by the president are making that increasingly difficult and worry that now that he has cited tolls as an option, other countries will follow suit, which would raise shipping costs and ultimately the prices consumers pay.
Kennedy Center rush job
There’s more Trump messiness at the Kennedy Center. According to Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a whistleblower has provided photos and other evidence showing shoddy construction at the performing arts center. Whitehouse claims that the work was rushed before it was authorized by Congress because the president wanted it completed before he received the first peace prize awarded by FIFA, the international soccer organization, at a ceremony there.
In a letter Whitehouse sent to Matt Floca, who Trump named the center’s executive director, the senator alleged that the center, by signing no-bid contracts, didn’t follow required guidelines and that it wasted money replacing a bathroom floor because the president didn’t like the color of the tile.
Slush fund scam
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams didn’t think much of either Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service or the attempt to resolve it by creating a $1.8 billion slush fund for the president’s allies who feel they were wronged by the Biden administration. In a ruling she issued yesterday, Williams declared that not only was the lawsuit an attempt to “manipulate the judicial process” but she also ordered that Trump’s attorneys be sanctioned for pursuing it.
“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President,” Williams wrote, “and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law.”
Pentagon money pot
According to the latest Washington Post calculation, firms in which the Trump family has a financial interest have scored $3.2 billion in Pentagon contracts.
Trump on the money
If you think that the president has made a point of ensuring that the country’s 250th birthday celebration is as much about him as it is the Declaration of Independence, you would be right.
But wait, there’s more. By law, the image of a living president cannot be featured on U.S. paper currency. You know, one of those “no kings” things. But Donald Trump had to find some way to get on the nation’s money. So, he’s now the first president to put his signature on a bill. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent showed off a sheet of freshly printed, Trump-signed hundred-dollar bills to Fox host Jesse Watters, noting, “I think people are going to want to hold the president’s signature.”
Bessent also announced that the U.S. Mint will be rolling out a commemorative gold-colored coin featuring Trump’s face. The ban on a president’s image doesn’t apply to coins, so just like the new commemorative passport, Trump’s face will be displayed on the $1 coin, which Bessent promised will “celebrate the strength of American values.”
Testosterone test
You would think that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would have enough on his plate, given that he oversees a department of nearly 3 million people and there’s a “little excursion” going on in Iran. But a swagger boy’s gotta swagger, so the former Fox host took the time to produce a video in which he announced a new program in which service members 30 or older will have their testosterone levels screened every year. If it has fallen too low, the Pentagon will offer testosterone replacement therapy, all in the spirit of keeping troops on the “leading edge of lethality.”
In what must be a coincidence, Hegseth recently blocked the promotion of seven senior Navy officers, five of whom are women or people of color, to the rank of two-star admiral. As a result, for the first time in more than a decade, no female active-duty naval officers are likely to be promoted to admiral this year. As Hegseth warned in his book, “The War on Warriors,” published two years ago, “We will not stop until trans-lesbian Black females run everything!”
Trump arches on
Donald Trump’s proposed massive arch outside Arlington National Cemetery took another step forward last week when the National Capital Planning Commission, packed with Trump appointees, voted by an 8 to 1 margin to support the project. The only person voting against it was the commission member representing the city of Washington.
The vote came after a three-hour public hearing during which nearly all of the 30 speakers criticized the project. Some argued that the whole thing has been too rushed, that monuments erected in the nation’s capital have always undergone much more scrutiny than the arch has. Others made the point that the 250-foot-high structure would dwarf the Lincoln Memorial and obscure the visual connection between it and the national cemetery. A final vote won’t happen until September.
Crypto crash
As the recent disclosure of his financial documents showed, the president has cashed in big time on his official crypto memecoin ($TRUMP), which came out last year. He personally made $636 million. As for other folks who invested in $TRUMP, well, most of them got hammered. Through the end of June, nearly a million people who purchased Trump’s memecoin have collectively lost a total of $3.8 billion. The memecoin is currently trading at a value of $1.58, a 98 percent drop from its high.
Randy Rieland, Money Trail’s “Trail Notes” columnist, is a former columnist at Smithsonian magazine, website director at the Discovery Channel, and senior writer at Washingtonian magazine.
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