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.

Thanks so much for getting us off to a very solid start with these year’s annual TPM Journalism Fund drive. If you haven’t had a chance to yet, please take a moment to join us this year. As I said yesterday, this is a critical part of our system to keep TPM thriving, resilient and expanding. Any amount is deeply appreciated. We have an outside chance of getting to 40% of the way to our goal on the second day of the drive. That’s $200,000 and we’re currently at $174,737. Thank you so much and as I said, if you haven’t already, please join us in this year’s drive. Just click right here.

Today’s the day we kick off our big ask for the year, the TPM Journalism Fund annual drive. I just called it our “big ask.” But I want to be clear that if you’re a member, you shouldn’t feel any obligation. You’ve done your part to support our work. More than 35,000 of you make TPM possible. But the TPM Journalism Fund plays a critical role in keeping TPM vital, prepared for the unexpected and able to expand our capacity to meet the public crisis of the moment. We truly need your support. What we’re doing today at TPM, responding as we are to public crisis of the second Trump Presidency would not be possible without it. If you’ve heard enough and are able to contribute in any amount, please click right here.

A bit of professional disappointment since we were also tipped about this and were hoping to get on it tomorrow. (D’oh!) But the Washington Post beat us to it. The gist is what’s important. Eric Schnabel, the chief operating office of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — ground-zero of the Trump war on science research -— was fired and literally escorted off the premises yesterday apparently directing a hefty sole-source contract to a company which employs his wife. It seems Trish Duffy Schnabel often goes by her maiden name and he may have thought that was strong enough OpSec to get away with it.

Schnabel, a 25 year Army vet, had always raised concern and harrumphs within the non-toady echelon at NIH because he apparently had no scientific or biomedical background, despite science and biomedicine playing a rather large role in the NIH brief.