Tag: trump administration
Billionaire Trump Backer Bemoans Dollar 'Erosion' Amid Economic Chaos

Billionaire Trump Backer Bemoans Dollar 'Erosion' Amid Economic Chaos

One of the Republican Party's biggest billionaire benefactors is now lamenting the "damage" that President Donald Trump has already done just less than 100 days into his second term.

Semafor reported Wednesday that Ken Griffin, who is the founder and CEO of the investment firm Citadel, is now loudly condemning Trump's handling of the economy, and tarnishing the United States' "brand." He blasted the administration for "eroding" the power of the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasury securities.

"We put that brand at risk,” Griffin said. “It can be a lifetime to repair the damage that has been done.”

Griffin was particularly worried that institutional investors around the world were no longer viewing U.S. Treasury securities as a valuable investment, despite them typically being regarded as one of the safest ways to park money given that they're backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. He observed that, in comparison to the Euro, the United States "has become 20% poorer in four weeks." And he lamented that the United States' allies were now looking at it in a lesser light.

“There’s no great opportunity when the pie is rapidly shrinking,” he said. “All you’re trying to do is tread water and not drown.”

“How does Canada feel about our country today versus two months ago? How does Europe feel about the United States today versus two months ago?” He continued. “And some people scream, well, it just doesn’t matter. But you know what? It matters for a very profound reason. The entire Western world is engulfed in a debt crisis.”

Griffin's remarks are particularly noteworthy given that he was one of the top five donors to Republican causes in 2024. According to campaign finance data compiled by Open Secrets, Griffin gave more than $100 million to outside groups backing Republicans last year, and was only surpassed by banking heir Timothy Mellon, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Dallas Mavericks owner Miriam Adelson (the widow of GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson) and shipping industry titans Dick and Elizabeth Uihlein.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Pete Hegseth

Why The Hegseth Debacle Was Inevitable

President Donald Trump’s second administration hasn’t yet hit the 100-day mark, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is already being routinely described as “embattled.” On Friday, Hegseth fired three of the top aides he had brought with him to the Pentagon amid an investigation into unauthorized leaks. Sunday brought two new body blows: News that Hegseth had shared details about U.S. strikes in Yemen in a second unsecured Signal chat — this one including his wife, brother, and personal lawyer — and a scathing op-ed from a former top Pentagon spokesperson who accused Hegseth of creating “total chaos” at the department.

It’s unnerving to see the management of the world’s most powerful military described as “a run of chaos that is unmatched in the recent history of the Defense Department,” or to read reports about how the internal dysfunction is leading some officials “to wonder how the Pentagon would function in a national security crisis.” Trump, however, is standing by Hegseth — apparently the only reporting that can get high-level figures removed in this administration is that of conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.

Hegseth’s disastrous run at the Pentagon is entirely predictable, the natural result of elevating a co-host of Fox & Friends’ weekend edition to sixth in the line of succession because the president liked his Fox News hits.

Hegseth lacked anything resembling the traditional qualifications to lead the Defense Department. Other recent picks have leaned on their experience at the top levels of the military, the Pentagon bureaucracy, or congressional oversight of the department, but Hegseth had none of these — he led a platoon in the Army National Guard and oversaw small right-wing veterans organizations before joining Fox as a contributor in 2014. His elevation might nonetheless be explicable if he had unique personal virtues or strong outside-the-box ideas for how to manage the Pentagon, but he’s been dogged by reports of public drunkenness, sexual assault, and financial mismanagement, while his vision for the military seems to begin and end with the notion that it had become excessively “woke.”

What Hegseth had in spades was the one attribute Trump seems to value above all others — years of expressing sycophantic public support for the president on Fox. For Trump, a Fox obsessive who stocked both of his administrations with familiar faces from the network’s green rooms, that was enough.

Trump reportedly considered Hegseth to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs in his first term but ultimately retained him as an outside adviser — one whose counsel he took in offering clemency to several accused and convicted war criminals the Fox host boosted. But for his second time in the Oval Office, Trump tapped Hegseth to run the DOD.

Asking a Fox & Friends weekend host to oversee a massive bureaucracy with millions of military and civilian employees and a budget in the hundreds of billions is obviously stupid, and Hegseth’s nomination appeared to be in jeopardy amid a series of damning reports. But Trump’s MAGA media supporters decided to lay down a marker, threatening Republican senators with primary challenges if they did not support Hegseth’s confirmation, and he ultimately squeaked through as Vice President JD Vance voted to break the Senate’s 50-50 tie.

Hegseth’s actions in office quickly vindicated his critics and forced his defenders to scramble on his behalf. March’s revelation that Hegseth had shared detailed information about imminent U.S. military strikes over a commercial messaging app led to days of strained explanations from his former Fox colleagues and others in the MAGA media.

The response has been somewhat different following Sunday’s revelation of the second such set of messages. Some on Fox have offered defenses for Hegseth, while a Media Matters review found the network’s popular panel show The Five and evening hosts Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity have ignored the story on their programs. Other MAGA media figures have blamed the report on the “deep state,” with some suggesting that Hegseth has been targeted as part of a struggle within the Trump administration over Iran policy.

The defense secretary, meanwhile, has responded to the string of damning reports by leaning into what got him the job in the first place: He has publicly lashed out at his critics and lavished praise on the president.

“They've come after me from day one, just like they've come after President Trump,” Hegseth said in a Tuesday appearance on Fox & Friends. “I've gotten a fraction of what President Trump got in that first term. What he has endured is superhuman.”

Hegseth isn’t the only right-wing media star turned top Trump appointee to struggle in the administration’s early days, and we should expect more such stories in the days to come. The president has prioritized hiring people who are adept at throwing red meat to the MAGA base. While that may help them weather scandals that would doom a member of a normal political movement, it is not a skill that translates to overseeing complicated bureaucracies.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Outrage Over 'Bribery' As Trump Does Favors For Firms That Funded Inaugural

Outrage Over 'Bribery' As Trump Does Favors For Firms That Funded Inaugural

An analysis released Monday in the wake of new Federal Election Commission filings shows that the Trump administration has dropped or paused federal enforcement cases against at least 17 corporations that donated to the president's inaugural fund, an indication that companies' attempts to buy favor with the White House are already paying off.

In the new analysis, the watchdog group Public Citizen cross-references FEC data released Sunday with its own Corporate Enforcement Tracker, which documents companies facing federal cases for alleged wrongdoing.

Public Citizen found that corporations facing federal investigations or enforcement lawsuits donated a combined $50 million to President Donald Trump's inaugural committee. Trump raised a record sum of $239 million for his second inauguration, the new FEC filings show.

"Corporations facing federal lawsuits and investigations aren't giving millions to Trump's inauguration out of the kindness of their hearts," said Public Citizen researcher Rick Claypool. "They are trying to buy good will. And when you're a corporation under investigation or facing prosecution, that means the government dropping enforcement actions against you. In some cases, it may even mean receiving pardons in cases in which guilty pleas have already been entered, or retractions of settlements already entered into."

Bank of America, Capital One, Coinbase, DuPont, and JPMorgan are among the corporations that donated to Trump's inauguration and subsequently had federal enforcement cases dismissed.

Public Citizen noted that Google, which donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee, could benefit from the Trump Justice Department's decision during an ongoing antitrust case to scrap part of a "proposed breakup plan requiring Google to sell off AI businesses."

Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google's parent company, was among a number of high-profile corporate executives who were given prominent spots at Trump's inauguration ceremony in January.

"They really never miss an opportunity for some good old-fashioned corporate bribery."

Other inauguration donors have benefited differently from the Trump administration's actions.

As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich noted on social media late Monday, the Trump administration is poised to end the Internal Revenue Services' free Direct File program after the private tax prep giant Intuit donated $1 million to the president's inauguration.

"Apple donated $1M. Trump exempted most of Apple's imports from tariffs," Reich added. "Coinbase donated $1M. Trump's SEC dropped a major lawsuit against them. See how this works?"

The appearance of pay-to-play corruption has been stark during the opening months of Trump's second term, with critics accusing the president of effectively placing a "for sale" sign on the White House.

CBS News reported that much of the White House's Easter Egg Roll on Monday was "sponsored by corporations, a change from the traditional sponsorship by the American Egg Board."

Amazon, Google's YouTube, and Facebook parent company Meta sponsored "various stations at the event," according to CBS.

"Nothing says Happy Easter in Trump 2.0 like having corporate sponsors at the White House Egg Roll," Public Citizen said Monday. "They really never miss an opportunity for some good old-fashioned corporate bribery."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg

Judge Threatens White House With Contempt Over Deportation Order

Citing a “willful disregard,” Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has found probable cause that the Trump administration could be held in criminal contempt of court after officials defied his order to not remove Venezuelan migrants from the country based on a centuries-old wartime law.

Boasberg, first appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, on Wednesday “said he would launch proceedings to determine whether to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt,” The Washington Post reported.

Pointing to the “broader showdown between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary,” the Post reported that Boasberg “[said] the Trump administration’s actions on March 15, as the removal flights proceeded despite his order to the contrary, ‘demonstrate a willful disregard … sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.'”

The judge wrote: “The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory.”

But Boasberg also offered the administration some options: essentially, file “a declaration explaining the steps they have taken and will take to do so,” or, file “declaration(s) identifying the individual(s) who, with knowledge of the Court’s classwide Temporary Restraining Order, made the decision not to halt the transfer of class members out of U.S. custody on March 15 and 16, 2025.”

Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick explains that Boasberg ordered “them either to fix their mistake, or identify who made those decisions (presumably for further sanctions).”

“The Constitution,” Boasberg also wrote, citing previous rulings, “does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it. To permit such officials to freely ‘annul the judgments of the courts of the United States’ would not just ‘destroy the rights acquired under those judgments’; it would make ‘a solemn mockery’ of ‘the constitution itself.’

Watch CNN’s report below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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