Speaking of bog standard corruption; Trump found a way to cut out the messy step of making people who want to buy access to the President rent a bunch of hotel rooms. The scheme, which is remarkably crass, involves promising the top holders of Trump's meme coin a dinner with the president to talk about cyrpto; with the top 25 holders getting a more intimate dinner, presumably at which point they will be able to talk with Trump directly. If that sounds like price support for Trump's stupid meme coin and selling access to the president to the highest bidder to you, it's because the scheme is designed to accomplish precisely that.

https://archive.ph/jqyQo

Trump's meme coin, which had fizzled in value, surges after offer of dinner with the president

"President Trump's meme coin, which had slumped 88% from its most recent high, got a boost Wednesday after its website invited the top 220 holders of the digital token to an "intimate private dinner" with the president.

After the dinner offer was posted on the $TRUMP meme coin website and X account, the value of the meme coin surged as much as $5.32, or 58%, to $14.32 on Wednesday afternoon. That gain only partially erased the meme coin's decline in value, which hit a peak of $75.35 on January 19 the day before Mr. Trump's inauguration.

The dinner offer promises $TRUMP coin investors the opportunity to "Hear close-up, from President Trump, about the future of Crypto!" Mr. Trump, who has vowed to turn the U.S. into the cryptocurrency capital of the world, has also pushed his own ventures into the realm of digital products, issuing everything from NFTs billed as "Trump digital trading cards" to a cryptocurrency platform called World Liberty Financial."

I mean on some level you almost have to hand it to the Klepto Kaiser here; he finally found a rock solid use case for an essentially worthless crypto product - facilitating open political corruption! Given the semi-clandestine nature of crypto-currency markets, it's hard to get a clear picture of precisely how much money Downmarket Mussolini has made from his crypto scams since taking office, but most experts in the field peg it as in the order of "hundreds of millions of dollars." I'm under no illusions about financial ties to billionaires among the "corrupt Democrats" Trump defeated last fall to return to the White House, but I'm willing to bet Joe Biden never ran a scam that let him stack up nine figure piles of cheddar.

Of course in the grand scheme of things, I think it's a lot more important to focus on the Trump regime's fascism, than its corruption. But given that these guys ran to power and claim to be acting on a platform of fighting corruption, as seemingly all modern fascist movements do, it's probably noteworthy that they're inventing new ways to do bribery in real time, only a few months into Trump's second term.

#Fascism #Corruption #Crypto #MemeCoins #Trump #Bribery #USPol

So at this point in the Keltpo Kaiser's funhouse mirror presidency, is anyone surprised to learn the regime is using ongoing trade negotiations under Trump's tariff framework to pressure other countries to greenlight Elon Musk's Starlink satellite company in their nations? I'd guess it's not, but given how terrible everything about Trump's scheme to leverage tariffs for trade concessions have been for the American people, it's worth pointing out that at least part of why the regime is conducting a global trade war is to make Elon richer and more powerful, with no real benefit to the United States at all.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/elon-musk-starlink

'The Corruption Is Staggering': Trump Officials Push Tariffed Nations to Approve Musk's Starlink

"Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the U.S.-based consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in response to the Post's reporting that "the glaring conflict of interest inherent in this pressure to preference a Musk-owned company is disgusting."

"The bottom line here is that tools of trade and government should be utilized for the benefit of the American public, not abused for personal tech bro profiteering," Gilbert added.

Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called the revelations "a huge new scandal."

"Trump and Musk are using tariffs as leverage to get other countries to buy from Musk's companies. Working families pay $4,000+ more a year so Musk gets new deals," Casar wrote on social media. "They get richer. Everyone else gets screwed."

There's something strange about the way the the fascist activities of the Trump regime, and the anti-human apocalyptic futurism of Musk himself, render stories about mere obscene levels of corruption between the regime and the world's richest nazi something of a side note. The fact is however that cratering the entire American economy so Elon Musk can get Starlkink deals around the world is a grotesque level of corruption and criminality that would, under other circumstances, sink entire US administrations. As American storeshelves start to empty over the next month, folks have a right to know that they can't buy everyday goods at normal prices because Elon needs more toys and international influence, and Trump owes him his seat in the White House.

Finally, while I honestly break out in hives every time I hear the words "national security," I'm absolutely baffled that foreign governments would even consider giving Elon Musk control over their communications apparatus through Starlink, to any degree, at all. I mean we're talking about an unhinged Nazi who thinks we're in a race war for the future of human civilization and our destiny as a species is to create an AI god and/or colonize Mars; no matter how many bodies it takes. Even setting aside that he's a comic book villain, he's also working directly with a fascist Trump regime that's openly talking about bombing Mexico, annexing Canada, and occupying Greenland; these are not the kinda people you want to trust with critical communications in a crisis or heaven forbid, a war. Welcoming Musk into your most sensitive operations, at this point in human history, might be one of the dumbest ideas ever proposed.

#Fascism #Corruption #Trump #ElonMusk #Starlink #Tariffs #TradeWar #Bribery #QuidProQuo #ForeignRelations #MarcoRubio #StateDepartment

Although keeping up with the overt nazi police state shit the Trump regime is engaging in takes up so much of my time that I don't get to write about Elon Musk, and DOGE as much as I should, the truth is that the Klepto Kaiser's second administration has benefited Musk, his companies, and his vast network of influence more than any other person in America. It's easy to write this kind of corruption off as being "only money", but as a recent report by watchdog group Public Citizen points out, there's a clear pattern to Musk's elimination of the administrative state that protects and entrenches his businesses deeper into the American power structure as well.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/elon-musk-conflict-of-interest-doge

Scale of Musk's DOGE Conflicts of Interest 'Should Alarm Every American'

"Elon Musk, the world's richest person and de facto head of the Trump administration's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, "has had a direct business interest in over 70% of the agencies and departments targeted by DOGE since its inception," according to an analysis published Thursday by a leading U.S. consumer advocacy group."

I don't have a lot to add here that isn't covered by the very short article; Musk is absolutely targeting any agency that oversees or has contracts with his companies, and his position as Trump's quasi-official exchequer (a position that does not exist in American government) makes it extremely unlikely any regulatory agency in government is going to try to regulate him or his companies in any way - after all, he could just order them defunded in response. The scope of Musk's efforts to subvert oversight while simultaneously embedding his companies into critical US systems is some wild supervillain shit, and while I don't think it's a secret that this was going on, I do think most Americans would be surprised to learn the staggering degree to which DOGE is all about enriching and empowering Elon Musk.

#Fascism #Trump #Corruption #USPol #ElonMusk #Billionaires #DOGE #SpaceX #ConflictOfInterest #Capitalism

So what level of "draining the swamp" are we on when the fascist President of the United States accepts a $400M airplane from the government of Qatar through legally dubious means, and Trump's lawyers, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense shout "this is totally legal, nothing to see here" despite the fact that any rando paying attention can see this is blatantly illegal and openly corrupt?

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-air-force-one

Critics Condemn Trump Plan to Accept Lux Plane From Qatar as 'Comically Corrupt'

"Ahead of Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, sources told ABC that the administration "is preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar—a gift that is to be available for use by... Trump as the new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation."

The unnamed sources also explained that "lawyers for the White House counsel's office and the Department of Justice drafted an analysis for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth concluding that is legal for the Department of Defense to accept the aircraft as a gift and later turn it over to the Trump library, and that it does not violate laws against bribery or the Constitution's prohibition (the emoluments clause) of any U.S. government official accepting gifts 'from any king, prince, or foreign state.'"

Liberal observers still reeling from the 2016 election will no doubt find it bitterly ironic that Trump at points campaigned on sketchy donations to the Clinton Foundation from Qatar during that race, but the bigger issue here is that American law forbids the President accepting bribes from foreign governments for a reason. The idea that this isn't the Qatari government gifting Trump a $400M airplane to curry favor ahead of diplomatic negotiations stretches credulity, and is in no way obscured by the legal fuckery the regime is trying to accomplish here through the use of Trump's presidential library foundation. This is a bribe, and it's a direct violation of everyone's favorite meaningless law from the first Trump president, the emoluments clause.

Of course, given that Trump spent his first four years in office using his real estate and hotel empire to repeatedly violate the emoluments clause, and he's already inventing new ways to openly receive bribes through cryptocurrency scams that nobody has made any effort to punish him for, I think it's a pretty safe bet he'll get away with this one too. The reality is that the American political and legal systems aren't actually built to stop a corrupt president, or hold rich men accountable for their criminal activities in any way; nor is a US society that worships at the altar of capital and proclaims a billionaire ruling class "masters of the universe" with a *right* to commodify every aspect of our daily existence to further capitalist extraction. In a better society, one that hasn't already contorted every aspect of the law to favor wealth and power, it's entirely possible that crass corruption like this would ultimately topple the Trump regime, but we're talking about a guy who has skated by largely unaffected by dozens and dozens of demonstrable crimes he's committed. If Trump's open fraud, slander, corruption, sexual violence, violations of the Espionage Act, and literal attempts to overturn the 2020 election through an elaborate coup plot didn't cost him anything on his way to a second presidency, why would a little thing like accepting a $400M bribe while shouting "how's my ass taste" from the tarmac stop him now?

#Fascism #Trump #Corruption #Qatar #AirForceOne #Bribery #USPol #EmolumentsClause #DoJ #DoD #ForeignAffairs

While obviously I don't know what's going on in the grizzled piece of hamburger Trump calls his brain, I think the other shoe just dropped after Trump's bizarrely timed firing of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden last Thursday. Why? Because Trump just also fired one of Hayden's key appointees, Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, mere days after her office released a report considered unfavorable to Broligarch fascist-owned AI companies.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fires-director-of-u-s-copyright-office-shira-perlmutter-sources/

Trump fires director of U.S. Copyright Office, sources say

"Democratic Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, said in a statement that Perlmutter's firing was "a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis."

Morelle speculated that there was "surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk's efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models," in reference to the report released by the Copyright Office this week.

Last month, Musk took to his social media platform X to seemingly express support for the abolition of intellectual property laws. Musk also owns AI startup xAI, with which in February he submitted a failed bid to purchase OpenAI, the company that operates ChatGPT."

I think most observers in the media simply presumed Trump's firing of now former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden was absurd fascist culture war stuff; as highlighted by the fact that numerous pro-Trump propagandists took to the media to justify her removal by implying Hayden was putting "bad, woke books" into the hands of children somehow - a hilariously false accusation because the Library of Congress is a reference archive of published books in America, and does not loan books out to children (or anyone else either.) As I've pointed out numerous times before however, these nazis use the whole cow, and it's now clear that removing Hayden was a set up play to clear the path for Trump to then fire Perlmutter on behalf of the billionaire tech bro fascists who paid to put Trump in the White House; not the least of whom is Trump's "first buddy" Elon Musk.

I suspect that folks who haven't been following the AI bubble closely have no idea how much money all the same fascist tech billionaires who literally think sacrificing humanity to get AI-created "gods" is an acceptable tradeoff, and a wealthy investor class that controls much of American politics, ultimately have invested in this scam. We're talking billions, if not trillions of dollars here, and a Trump administration report indicating that there are problems with just letting these companies steal every creative work in human history to further this business model, threatens those investments. Trump has fired a lot of people, for far less lucrative reasons; I see no valid excuse for Trump's behavior here aside from bog standard corruption. This is a lawless president engaging in a retaliatory firing on behalf of his billionaire cult of AI donors. Given that context, I think we can safely assume that Trump's next pick for Librarian of Congress will pick a pro-AI Register of Copyrights and as Musk desires, all US intellectual property law is now in danger.

#Trump #ElonMusk #AI #Corruption #CopyrightLaw #DigitalFascism #Capitalism #CarlaHayden #ShiraPerlmutter #IPLaw #LLM #LibraryOfCongress #USPol

I know that some readers think I'm too hard on the American media in the second Trump presidency, or at least that I attribute what might be simply institutional incompetence, as willful collaboration with a fascist regime. In my experience, people who've communicated this idea to me tend to be exposed to a wider variety of media and particular more progressive leaning outlets, and thus have less exposure to what I would call mainstream corporate media in America; a spectrum that would include Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, and CNN, the LA Times, most large newspapers attached to a major urban center, and with say Reuters and the AP sitting together just outside that circle. Given the nature of my writing, I *have* had the misfortune of consuming a lot of Trump regime coverage in corporate media and let me tell you, things are not going well in our beloved "free press" establishment.

None of which is to imply that every story is covered poorly, in a way that helps the fascist Trump regime far too often to be accidental, every time. But overall there has been a consistent pattern of minimization, a refusal to call fascist things fascist, and a bizarre desire to "translate Trump" even when he's saying blatantly clear and obvious nazi shit, into something that makes sense within a more traditional American political framework; a great example occurred just today when many US corporate media outlets immediately connected Trump's unhinged white nationalist conspiracy bullshit about white South African "refugees" to sporadic reports of farm violence in that country, even though Der Leader expressly mentioned white "genocide" to promote a nazi conspiracy theory as justifying facts.

Sometimes this minimization and Trump translating is subtle, sometimes it's so blatant it makes you want to put your fist through your monitor; or maybe I have anger management problems, who can really say? For an example of the later kind of story, let's turn to this short blog-style post on The Defector for the most easy to agree with piece of media criticism you will ever read:

https://archive.ph/qR6tf

NYT Reporter: It’s Not Corruption Unless The Envelope Says “Bribe” On It

"Ah. OK. It's not corruption until one of the parties says to the other, on record, "Hey, how about doing some corruption together, illegally?" and the other one says, "Ah yes, the famous explicit quid pro quo, forbidden by law! Let's do one of those," and the first guy says, "I would like one official act, please, in direct exchange for the money in this burlap sack with a dollar sign on it," and the second guy draws him up an itemized receipt listing the official acts corruptly obtained and their individual prices plus sales tax. Got it."

Forgive me for spoiling the payoff, but the post is so concise you should probably just read it for yourself. In case you refuse however, the author points out that both Trump's memecoin bribery scheme, and his plan to accept the "donation" of a $400M jet from the government of Qatar are clear and obvious examples of corruption. As you can see in the thread above, which is about corruption, I wrote up both scandals so obviously I agree. Furthermore both Albert Burneko and I know *you* agree because Trump is making no effort to hide the obvious corruption.

You know who doesn't agree? New York Times Reporter Eric Lipton, who argues on Bluesky that this is merely "potential corruption" because we have no idea if Trump is going to give memecoin buyers or the Qatari government anything back in exchange for these clear bribes. No, really; this is a guy who has been a professional mainstream media minion for thirty plus fucking years, and he's online chiding people for calling Trump obviously corrupt, while Trump engages in obvious corruption. *This* my friends, is the mainstream media that covers Downmarket Mussolini every single day, and this is a pretty good (albeit hilariously pathetic) example of how much of that coverage goes.

I've been producing mainstream media criticism for a very long time, and I'm sympathetic to the idea that I don't give these folks enough credit when they periodically stop spewing propaganda for wealth and power, and actually engage in sporadic acts of journalism. But this media? In this political moment? Is so full of soulless hack bootlickers, that it almost doesn't seem worth the bother to criticize them for not doing a job they clearly never set out to do; namely journalism.

#Fascism #Trump #Media #MediaCriticism #NewYorkTimes #Corruption #MemeCoin #Qatar #Jet #EricLipton #Collaboration #Journalism #CorporateMedia #Apologia