Trail Notes
More TACO Trump / Ballroom BS / Unintelligible intelligence / Kash's cash bonuses / Kash leaks again / UFC smacks taxpayers / Trump crypto boost / Going after Gavin
More TACO Trump
In the end, Epic Fury is feeling more like Epic Furry. It barked like a dog, but morphed into a kitten. Aside from the hundreds of billions of dollars the U.S.-Iran agreement will make accessible to the latter, it also grants Iran influence over the Strait of Hormuz that it didn’t have before the war.
Early on, Donald Trump insisted that regime change in Iran “would be the best thing that could happen.” On Tuesday, he said “I never cared about regime change.” He promised to eliminate Iran’s ballistic missile program. On Wednesday he said, “I’m saying that if other countries have them, it’s a little unfair for them not to have some.” As for Iran’s supply of “highly enriched uranium”—or “nuclear dust,” as the president puts it—Trump has flipped from demanding that Iran surrender or destroy the material immediately to landing at “it has very little material value.” Meow.
Ballroom BS
With Donald Trump, there’s always a catch. Or a lie. Or a catch within a lie. Take the matter of who’s paying the bill for his precious ballroom. We all remember how the president assured us time and time again that his ballroom—now accessorized with a massive bunker and drone port—would cost $200 million, then $400 million. But not to worry, private donors and companies would cover everything. The whole thing, he said, like a car salesman throwing in undercoating at no extra cost, would be “taxpayer-free.”
Not quite. According to The Washington Post, a detailed project summary estimated the cost at $600 million, with half to be covered by taxpayers. In fact, at the same time Trump was hyping his ballroom “gift” to America, more than a dozen payments of public funds had already been made to the contractor.
Unintelligible intelligence
We have yet another bit of Trump bullying of congressional Republicans to report. The Senate Intelligence Committee was supposed to hold a confirmation hearing Wednesday for Jay Clayton, the president’s nominee to replace Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. But Trump, calling the hearing “a rush job by Democrats”—although Republicans control the committee—told Clayton not to show. The president said the Senate first had to approve Jamie McDonald as Clayton’s replacement as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. While he was at it, Trump also demanded that the Senate pass new voting restrictions through the Save America Act, which would require voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship.
The upshot? Republicans on the committee got the message, they canceled the hearing, and Trump hitman Bill Pulte, a man with no intelligence experience, will continue to oversee U.S. intelligence as the agency’s acting director.
Kash’s cash bonuses
Petty Kash Patel may need another drink. The FBI director is again under fire, this time from Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Raskin wants Patel to address reports that he authorized as much as “hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlawful bonus payments” to loyalists on his staff and agents on his security detail.
“In some cases,” Raskin wrote in a letter to Patel obtained by MS NOW, “nearly $8,000 payments have been made to multiple individuals every two-week pay period despite many of the beneficiaries of your selective generosity already maxing out on a federal employee’s salary.”
Kash leaks again
Matt Quinn, Secret Service deputy director, clearly wasn’t happy with Kash Patel jumping the gun on the alleged plot to stage a drone attack on the Ultimate Fighting Championship event at the White House on June 14. The Secret Service and FBI worked together to nail down who should be taken into custody, and their plan was to make a joint announcement Tuesday afternoon. But Patel couldn’t wait. He posted a social media announcement before some of the suspects had been arrested. Quinn’s reaction: “I’ll tell you the Secret Service led that investigation from the beginning. I’ll tell you that the case is ongoing. In order to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security plan, we chose not to leak it.”
UFC smacks taxpayers
Yes, the Ultimate Fighting Championship spent $60 million to stage the series of cage fights last Sunday on the White House lawn. But, no surprise, the federal government won’t get off scot-free. For starters, the District of Columbia is going to charge somewhere between $10 million to $12 million for providing supplemental security.
Trump crypto boost
Another bonus for a big Trump family moneymaker. Sometime soon, World Liberty Financial, the Trump Organization’s lucrative cryptocurrency venture, will likely receive a national bank trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. That credential would allow the company to get a cut of financial transactions similar to Venmo and issue cryptocurrency without having to go through another institution.
Going after Gavin
It looks like Gavin Newsom is moving to the top of Donald Trump’s enemies list. California’s governor said federal agents in recent weeks have been interviewing friends and associates of both him and his wife, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The feds are apparently looking into his wife’s financial ties with several of the nonprofits with which she’s been involved. Newsom, who Trump cleverly calls “Newscum,” said the Justice Department “is trying to find a crime.”
Another blow to wind
The Trump administration is paying another energy developer to abandon plans to erect wind turbines off U.S. coasts. The Interior Department announced yesterday that Invenergy will receive $765 million in taxpayer dollars when it surrenders the leases for four wind farms it was starting to build off the coasts of New York, Maine and California. It’s the third deal the federal government has made to stop offshore wind turbine projects, a personal crusade for Trump, who derides wind power whenever the subject comes up. That’s now $2.5 billion his administration has committed to killing offshore turbines.
Trump brand boom
According to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s latest count, the Trump Organization and its foreign business partners are planning, building or opening as many as 25 Trump-branded real-estate projects in other countries, more than tripling the number of Trump properties abroad. In nearly half of those countries, developers will use contractors or seek permits from foreign governments, which creates plenty of potential conflicts of interest.
No vote, no problem!
Women in America have had the right to vote for a little more than 100 years. That apparently is long enough, according to a number of women interviewed at the recent Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit in San Antonio.
“My perspective as a Christian woman is that my husband and I are one flesh,” Alexus DeGraaf said. “I vote the same way he does, so honestly, I would be okay with giving up my right to vote, because I know that he would represent me well.” Another summit attendee, Brooke Foxworthy, agreed. “If my husband’s the head of the household, I am the neck, and we work very cohesively together,” she said. “So, I would imagine if he was voting on behalf of our household, I would be fine with that.”
Law and disorder
As the Trump administration was ramping up Dark Lord Stephen Miller’s deportation campaign last year, it considered suspending the right of habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants. That would have enabled law enforcement authorities to imprison people without having to prove to a judge why they should be jailed and deny them the right to challenge their detention in court. According to The New York Times, only a secret memo from a conservative lawyer on the White House staff to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles prevented an action the Constitution permits only in cases of rebellion or invasion.
Screwworm screwup
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins keeps insisting that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency ‘s elimination of a USAID pest monitoring program has nothing to do with the first appearance of the New World screwworm in the United States since the 1960s. But her department now says it will spend $1 billion on an emergency response and prevention plan to avoid a potential disaster for the Texas beef industry.
Gilded Age 2.0
According to Americans for Tax Fairness, billionaires in America now own a record $9.2 trillion, 32 percent more than last year. Meanwhile, the nation’s Gross Domestic Product increased only 6 percent over the same time period.
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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