You’ve no doubt seen the Wall Street Journal story on Trump’s lewd and innuendo-rich 2003 birthday card to Jeff Epstein. That speaks for itself. To me what speaks more loudly is what appears to have been an all-out war from the White House to get the Journal to kill the story. Just after 8:30 p.m. ET the President posted a jangling rant attacking Rupert Murdoch and Journal editor Emma Tucker, insisting he’ll sue, blaming Hillary and Obama. An hour and a half later, he posted a more succinct version of the same post, again claiming the letter was “FAKE”, threatening to sue, yada. In between those two posts he did yet another post clearly intended to appear to be Trump finally losing his patience and insisting that all information be made public. Only it wasn’t that at all. Trump said he was asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval. This SCAM, perpetrated by the Democrats, should end, right now!”
We’re on our fourth day of this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive and we have half a chance to getting to 50% of the way toward our goal today. We’re at $231,827. So just $18,000 short of the $250,000 mark. Needless to say, the second 50% always takes longer than the first. But this is a great start. And we really appreciate it. If you’ve been planning on making a contribution but haven’t gotten around to it, why not make today the day? Help us close out the week strong? Just click right here.
I try to keep these updates light. But don’t let the lightness fool you. These drives are critical to the livelihood of the whole organization. We’re able to keep it light because TPM readers have always been there for us. And for that we’re endlessly appreciative.
Covering MAGA and Trump is a bit like an old-time, hard-boiled detective novel. Everyone’s bad. Or at least shady. The challenge is distinguishing between the merely shady sorta bad and bad bad. And apart from the bad and those who were merely drawn that way, sometimes you have two really bad people and one of them is victimizing the other, making the latter person a victim while also being bad. Which brings us to this quote from an article in the Washington Post about Eric Schnabel, the Chief Operating Officer of the National Institute of Health (NIH) who, as I noted earlier this week, was fired and marched off the premises Monday, allegedly for directing a contract to a company which employed his wife. This is a text he sent to a WaPo reporter after the Post tried numerous times to contact him and his wife.
“I need your help. I didn’t do what they said I did,” he texted. “This was a political hit job. Please call me.” Schnabel didn’t reply to numerous further attempts to contact him. (The quote was added after I originally linked to the piece.)
Some time early this morning we made it past the $200,000 threshold in this TPM Journalism Fund drive. And that’s just slightly more than two days in — or I guess slightly less if we time from the first post. That’s fantastic. Obviously, the pace slows. That’s natural. But it positions us well to eventually meet our goal. So thank you for being there for us. The drive is our big organizational trust fall each year. And TPM Readers have never let us down. If you wanna power us forward, just click here.
We have an outside shot at getting to $200,000 raised tonight, the second day of the drive. We’re currently at $186,200. That would be 40% of the way there. If you’re considering contributing please consider doing it this evening. I know drives are kind of a necessary evil from a reader’s point of view. We get it. So we want to hit our goal of $500,000, which is really important, as soon as possible and get back to reporting the news 100% of the time. If you’re game, click right here.
I must admit to being a bit perplexed at what Donald Trump is doing with the Epstein story. He went on Truth Social, the family’s vanity social network and corruption vehicle, today and again went off about how his own supporters are fools for not moving on from the Epstein story and how they should just — goshdarnit! — forget about it and move the F on! Trump seems to be demanding, for any of us who thought there was no there there in the Epstein material, that we realize there must be — that we believe there must be. He’s not asking my consent or yours. He’s just doing it. And this is what I mean: When Donald Trump is guilty as sin on something he insists that whatever is out there that you might have thought was incriminating is actually the work of Obama, Hillary and James Comey. And that is literally what he is doing. Here’s today update from Truth Social.
There may or may not be a stretch of pavement in the Everglades that exposes an alleged lie about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” detention camp.
Congressional Republicans just rubber-stamped the rescissions package the White House sent over to pretend like they’re playing by separation-of-powers rules. What’s next on the legislative (aka Trump-loyalty-test) agenda? Funding the government. More on that.
White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought unveiled his movie-villain persona this week in remarks during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, during which he pontificated on his plans to further expand the executive branch’s power.
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