The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Waste, Fraud And Abuse In Musk's Department Of Gross Errors

Waste, Fraud And Abuse In Musk's Department Of Gross Errors

A deplorable level of waste, abuse and fraud persists in the federal government, as well as in local and state governments run by both parties and in major corporations, too. At the moment, however, America's most prolific source of fraud and waste appears to be the ironically named Department of Government Efficiency.

It wasn't supposed to be this way, of course. When Donald Trump returned to the presidency, he vowed — as he had done many times before — to crack down on all the loafers, crooks and spendthrifts on the government payroll. He would balance the budget, cut taxes, and protect Social Security and Medicare. With a flourish he appointed the obscenely rich Elon Musk, who needs no further introduction, to lead DOGE and its cost-cutting crusade.

Having promised initially to cut $2 trillion — or nearly a third of what the United States government spends annually — Musk quickly backed away from that inflated target. The host of engineers, lawyers and right-wing political hacks that he imposed on federal agencies under the aegis of DOGE soon alarmed everyone by demanding access to confidential data and classified information, at great jeopardy to national and personal security.

Leaving aside the dangers posed by DOGE's bumbling invasion, the sum total of its cost-cutting campaign falls far short of the extravagant claims promoted by Musk and Trump. Over the weekend, the DOGE list of budget-slashing achievements was revised sharply downward for the second time in less than a week.

Nearly every day, the billionaire and his aides have cited millions and even billions allegedly recovered by eliminating federal programs, agencies, services and research, often with seemingly ludicrous examples of wasteful spending. Trump echoed many of them in his State of the Union speech, including an alleged study of "transgender mice." That was one of many mistakes served up by Trump and Musk — in that instance, the valuable research they were mocking involved "transgenic" mice, used to assess cancer and chronic illness treatments.

Much of what DOGE has served up so far is misinformation and disinformation of equally dismal quality. Its name should be changed to the Department of Gross Errors. Debunking the howlers tossed out by Musk's arrogant yet plainly incompetent crew is now a regular beat for many news outlets, as the billions in supposed savings routinely shrink by factors of a thousand or more — to an infinitesimal fraction of what the grandiose Musk has asserted.

ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative reporting outlet, found that the cuts imposed on the IRS by DOGE are likely to cost the United States billions of dollars over the coming years. As every tax expert knows, the salaries of the auditors and experts dismissed by the DOGE geniuses are earned back many times over as they claw back taxes owed by wealthy miscreants. Firing these experienced auditors means squandering an investment that would have paid huge dividends for decades. Musk may not like what IRS auditors do — which billionaire does? — but that saves money for people like him, not the honest taxpayers.

And according to a front-page analysis published by the Wall Street Journal — an impeccably right-wing newspaper owned by Fox News boss Rupert Murdoch — DOGE's "wall of receipts" doesn't quite add up either. Musk has boasted about his outfit cutting $55 billion in waste so far, but the canceled contracts posted on its website only came to $9 billion. And the Journal's reporting shows that at least half of those cancellations saved no money at all — which means the real cuts represent less than 10 percent of the advertised amount.

On March 3, the New York Times confirmed confirmed that DOGE's computer geniuses don't know how to do high-school math: "From its start, the list has been full of errors: claims that confused billions with millions, triple-counted the same cancellation, or claimed credit for contracts that had ended years or even decades before."

Shall we call that "fraud," or is it qualify as "abuse"? Considering the time and money spent on DOGE, including its pointless distraction of federal employees who do real work with threats and demands that they draw up lists of their achievements, it is certainly an enormous waste.

Meanwhile, Musk's minions keep busy spreading faked figures about one federal agency after another, as does their billionaire boss.

Evidently, they all harbor deep hostility toward the nation's most popular government program, Social Security — which is why they have accused the Social Security Administration of paying out billions of dollars to people who have been dead for hundreds of years. Trump made a fool of himself with his dramatic repetition of that obviously false indictment before Congress, only to have Musk "apologize" and promise to do better.

But he assuredly will not do better, because his true purpose is not to "reform" the government or conserve its assets. Musk and Trump are waging ideological warfare against the idea and practice of democratic government that is of, by and for the people. They are creating an autocratic administration that extends control by would-be tyrants — and, to judge from the Kremlin's admiring reviews, by tyrants who are already in power.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

State Of The Big Lie: Why Trump Repeated Musk's Myth About Social Security

State Of The Big Lie: Why Trump Repeated Musk's Myth About Social Security

Headlining the long, droning, and absurdly false address spouted by Donald Trump before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night was a litany of fantasy aimed at the Social Security system. A perennial target for Republicans since its creation, the nation’s most popular and effective government program has drawn malign attention from Elon Musk, world’s richest right-winger and the president’s designated hit man.

It was Musk who provided and inspired Trump with his latest fraudulent indictment of fraud – in this instance, the already-debunked claim that millions of Americans are still receiving Social Security payments long after death. Following a recitation of silly (and, knowing Musk, not necessarily accurate) federal spending items supposedly revealed by the billionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency, Trump first professed his usual warm concern for those who depend on those monthly checks.

“We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors, and that our seniors and people that we love rely on.

“Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don’t know any of them. I know some people who are rather elderly but not quite that elderly. 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we are searching right now….” He continued until, with a flourish, he cited “1,039 people between the ages of 220 and 229. One person between the age of 240 and 249 — and one person is listed at 360 years of age. More than 100 years — more than 100 years older than our country. But we’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty.”

The “discovery” of those moldering fraudsters appears to derive from a very basic and embarrassing error by Musk and his DOGEbags – namely their inability to correctly interpret the computer printouts of Social Security Administration records. AsWired magazine magazine and other outlets pointed out a few weeks ago, when Musk first promoted this enormous scandal, those anomalous entries actually represent “a weird quirk of the Social Security Administration’s benefits system, which was largely written in COBOL, a a 60 year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases as well as systems from other U.S. government programs.”

Out of routine use for decades, COBOL is likely unfamiliar to Musk and his gang of adolescent engineers. It has a strange dating reference system that commonly uses a reference point of May 20, 1875 -- which can produce some strange and suspicious results for anyone who doesn’t understand the data they’re perusing.

But the “shock” talking points Trump so dramatically enumerated were disproved and debunked weeks ago. Yet he nevertheless featured them in his speech, plainly aiming to undermine confidence in the system that he has promised to protect on many occasions over the past ten years.

Trump didn’t disparage Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme,” the cliché slur that Musk and so many other far-right critics use when denouncing the program. But the president has allowed his billionaire wingman to begin dismantling it, by firing thousands of its staff, from the top down, which experts say will soon result in denials and delays of benefits.

Musk has seized on his bogus investigation of Social Security payments to declare that the system is insolvent, as Republicans invariably do when they are preparing to slash at its provisions. And it is true that unless Congress acts, payments going out will exceed revenue from Social Security taxes by 2035 – and by law, benefits then will have to be cut.

But what neither Musk nor Trump ever mention is the obvious and equitable solution to this looming crisis. They never mention that solution because Republicans so strongly prefer to resolve the problem on the backs of the elderly and disabled, so many of whom languished in poverty until Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the program during the New Deal.

Few economists have studied Social Security with as much rigor or dedication as Stephanie Kelton, who recently published a powerful response to Musk in DCReport, the excellent publication edited by Trump biographer and critic David Cay Johnston. In its headline and text, Kelton explains why Musk himself, as a symbol of grotesque inequality, represents the real reason that Social Security is “running out of money.”

As national income has increasingly skewed to the top of the scale, less and less has been subject to the Social Security tax – which in 2024 exempted all income above $168,500! In other words, the astronomical levels of annual income enjoyed by Musk himself, Trump, and all their billionaire pals, go untaxed by the system. And they’d like to keep it that way forever.

But we have known for more than 20 years – according to one commission study after another – that the simplest and fairest way to eliminate the Social Security deficit for all time is to raise or eliminate the cap on taxable income. Conservatives would much rather reduce or eliminate benefits, even though their MAGA supporters would suffer terribly. The real fraud isn’t Social Security, but the promise by Trump and his Republican allies to protect those families.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. He is the author of several books, including The Raw Deal: How The Bush Republicans Plan To Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

Trump's Ukraine Betrayal Puts Him First -- And America Last

Trump's Ukraine Betrayal Puts Him First -- And America Last

When Donald Trump and JD Vance roughed up Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, their back-alley bullying was ... unpresidential, to put it politely. Tony Soprano would have displayed more diplomatic finesse than Trump, and the mobster's henchmen always had more dignity than Vance.

To vilify an American ally so publicly while spewing Russian propaganda points was a stunningly coarse betrayal.

But make no mistake in understanding what lies behind that contemptible episode, which represents the abandonment of American values and commitments under the banner of "America First." At this moment of national peril, let's not forget where the Trump gang found their foreign-policy slogan.

An organization purporting to represent the national interests of this country in the years before the Second World War, "America First" in fact served as a front for a hostile foreign power that sought to impose an authoritarian order on Europe and the world, with tactics designed to divide and deceive the American people.

In many ways, "America First" resembled the MAGA movement that undermines democratic institutions at home and promotes autocratic regimes abroad. And just as "America First" was subsidized and sometimes directed by agents of Hitler's Germany, MAGA now appears to be the Western front for Russia's ongoing subversion of democracies around the world.

Does that mean Trump himself has adopted the authoritarian outlook of the Kremlin's pet political philosophers? He doesn't seem capable of geopolitical thought beyond the most superficial. But it doesn't have to be complicated to work for Trump. Russia constantly offers big inducements to him, such as the secret election assistance its agents flashed at his campaign in 2016 (an invitation eagerly embraced by Donald Trump Jr. and later by campaign manager Paul Manafort).

Whatever his motive, Trump's subservience to Vladimir Putin is now beyond dispute, as he openly lies about the Russian dictator's invasion of Ukraine, while threatening and undermining Zelensky. He may well believe that a "peace deal" would bring his long-coveted plans for Trump Tower Moscow to fruition, not to mention all the other corrupt emoluments that Putin's oligarchs could lay before him. (Russians have already "invested" in his Truth Social money pit and must be snapping up pricey Don and Melania cryptocurrency meme coins by the thousand.)

And let's not forget the perpetually insecure Trump's insatiable need for flattery. In his sordid way, he has repeatedly nominated himself for the Nobel Peace Prize, proclaiming on many occasions that he "deserves" the Norwegian honor more than others who received it, and obliging his sycophants to utter the same nonsense. Watching the prize slip away as Zelensky insisted on security guarantees surely frustrated him — and led to that juvenile outburst in the Oval Office.

His relentless pursuit of financial and personal gain doesn't serve American interests in any way. Trump's campaign to wreck NATO and alienate our military allies in Europe and Canada only renders us less secure in an extremely dangerous world. Those reliable allies had our back after 9/11, the only instance when NATO's mutual defense pact has ever been activated. Trump and his idiot advisers have yet to explain how they will replace the defense and intelligence assets that help to protect us and our allies together, not only in NATO but across the Pacific as well.

Should Trump withdraw military and intelligence support from Kiev, as he menacingly warned Zelenskyy he would, he will shift the massive power of the United States into a de facto alliance with our longtime adversaries — not only Russia, whose media and government organs constantly declare their anti-American hostility, but China and North Korea, both of which have joined the Kremlin's assault on Ukraine.

It will be fascinating to hear how Trump's Republican supporters in Congress, who often complain about the growing military and economic power of China, try to justify what their dear leader is doing in Europe. Whatever excuses they may present, we already know that they know that he is putting himself first — and America last.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

In White House Opposition To Congestion Toll, A Glaring Conflict Of Interest

In White House Opposition To Congestion Toll, A Glaring Conflict Of Interest

Congestion pricing in New York City – the program that tolls cars entering Manhattan’s central business district to raise money for mass transit – appears already to be an enormous success. During its first month the plan has raised nearly $50 million for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which operates the system. The city’s nightmarish gridlock has begun to come untangled, with increased traffic speeds, far fewer automobile accidents, and reduced commuting times for those who continue to drive.

So why is the Trump administration hellbent on killing the program? After Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy informed New York Gov. Kathy Hochul that his department had withdrawn its approval for the plan, the president himself issued a gloating victory proclamation on his social media app.

"CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!"

While the program is not quite dead – and continues to operate while both the MTA and the DOT prepare for a court battle – there can be little doubt about Trump’s furious opposition, which appears to be rooted in the same anti-environmental animus as his hatred of wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles, and his worship of coal and oil.

To enforce his edict against congestion pricing, a plan that has worked successfully in cities around the world for more than two decades, Trump has dispatched Alina Habba, his former personal defense attorney who now serves as a counselor to the president. Habba has appeared frequently on right-wing media to trash the program. She also showed up at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, where she said:

“Congestion pricing in New York is ruining tourism, it’s stopping people that work there from driving to work, their subways are not safe. These people [referring to New York political leaders like Gov. Kathy Hochul] are caring more about their next election, they’re caring more about their face on TV than they do the people they’re supposed to represent, the constituents that sent them to do the work…Unfortunately, they’ve taken us to court. We’ve seen it, we’ve won, we always win and keep winning…”

As always, Habba’s MAGA rhetoric was heavy with falsehood and bluster. She didn’t explain why the White House has cast aside the conservative values of home rule and states’ rights to intervene in local affairs.

Far from ruining tourism, congestion pricing seems to have increased the number of visitors and the amount of revenue since the program took effect. (It’s hard to spend money when you’re waiting for hours in a car, waiting to cross into Manhattan by bridge or tunnel.) Broadway ticket sales – a reliable measure of the tourist sector’s prosperity – were much higher this past January than a year ago.

The Broadway League, a trade group for the theatre industry, reported over $32 million in sales for the week ending January 12 this year, eight days after congestion pricing took effect – an increase of nearly $5 million over the same week last year. The following week, ending January 19, saw well over $33 million in sales, up from about $23 million during the same week in 2024. And during the last week of January, ticket sales were still up almost exactly $5 million over last year. Someone might say those are HUGE numbers – and certainly no sign of “ruined tourism.”

Although many more people have left cars at home, there’s no sign that New Yorkers (or commuters from New Jersey) have stopped going to work. Subway crime, contrary to Habba’s claims, is lower than it was a year ago and much lower than before the pandemic. Chances of becoming a crime victim, especially of homicide, are far lower in the subway than above ground.

A recent Morning Consult poll showed strong majorities in favor of the new system among both city and suburban voters, as well as broad agreement among commuters that it is working as advertised. They want the federal government to leave it alone.

The dispute between Trump and Hochul will ultimately be decided in federal court, as Habba indicated. But her assertion that “we always win” is comical. Anyone familiar with her own dismal record as Trump’s attorney – replete with embarrassing errors, dismissals, fines and yes, losses to E. Jean Harris and the New York Times, among others – will regard her boast with due skepticism.

Yet there is something to be learned from Habba’s passionate public attack on congestion pricing – namely that in this Trump White House, as legal experts have warned, there are again no ethical boundaries. She has a direct financial interest in canceling the Manhattan tolls that goes well beyond her status as a New Jersey resident.

Habba’s husband Gregg Reuben is chief executive of Centerpark, a parking garage company that owns 28 garages in New York City, most of which are in Manhattan’s congestion pricing zone, according to Streetsblog. Reuben has a long career in parking that dates back to 1991. He is former vice president of ABM Industries, one of the largest parking management companies in the United States. Habba formerly served as Centerpark’s general counsel -- and doesn’t appear to have fully relinquished that commitment in her new position.

Their family wealth is sure to be affected by congestion pricing, which has reduced the number of cars entering that zone so far by over a million every month. There are and will be far fewer customers (suckers?) for her husband’s exorbitantly priced spaces: Centerpark charges $45 per day or more, a far more daunting deterrent to tourism than the $9 congestion toll.

If Habba is worried about the entertainment and restaurant industries, maybe she should urge him to drop those absurd prices.

And maybe the next time she pops up on television to whine about the congestion toll, someone should ask her about her husband’s business – which she somehow never remembers to mention. As John Kaehny, a nonpartisan ethics expert in Albany, told Streetsblog, “It’s an absolute and complete conflict of interest. If she was a New York official, we’d be calling on the Conflict of Interest Board to investigate.”

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

There's One Word To Describe What Trump Is Doing

There's One Word To Describe What Trump Is Doing

As Americans struggle to grasp President Donald Trump's reversal of American foreign policy, which abruptly overturned decades of cooperation with other democracies to contain authoritarian aggression, many observers have faltered.

Describing what Trump has done strains the usual vocabulary of analysts, who are still not fully prepared to confront this administration's insidious purposes

Yet there is a word familiar from Trump's first term that now defines precisely what he and Russian President Vladimir Putin are up to. That word is "collusion."

For most of the past decade, nothing provoked more anger in Trump and his associate than that word, which evoked a sinister and secretive connection dating back to his first presidential campaign or in some versions much earlier. Rumors circulated widely about his alleged status as a longtime asset of Russian security services, beginning in the Soviet era, or his supposed vulnerability to gamy blackmail by those same agencies, or his desire, eventually well documented, to build a "Trump Tower" in Moscow.

And during that 2016 campaign, copious evidence emerged that not only had the Kremlin wanted Trump to defeat its nemesis Hillary Clinton, but its leadership had enacted a whole series of "active measures" to ensure that result.

Under Putin's direct orders, Russian agencies pursued a broad strategy of online hacking and disinformation. Based in Putin's hometown of Saint Petersburg, the Internet Research Agency launched a barrage of social media designed to promote Trump and denigrate Clinton, influencing millions of Americans during the election cycle with fabricated stories. Hackers working for Russian military intelligence invaded the databases of the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, releasing reams of stolen files and emails through WikiLeaks and other outlets to create embarrassment and distraction.

It could not have been more obvious that the Trump campaign welcomed and encouraged Putin's election interference. Donald Trump Jr., then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and numerous other campaign aides met or contacted the Russians on as many as 200 occasions to pursue their shared objective. Even the sycophantic campaign chair Steve Bannon blurted that this pattern of behavior struck him as "treasonous."

Whether all this activity amounted to treason or not, the FBI and congressional investigating committees found enough evidence of espionage and other crimes to justify the appointment in May 2017 of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to investigate "Russiagate."

In addition to firing former FBI Director James Comey, Trump did everything in his power to thwart the Mueller probe, including the abuse of his pardon power to silence Manafort, former adviser Roger Stone and others. As Mueller reported in 2019, Trump's manipulations helped forestall indictments charging conspiracy between the Trump campaign and its friends from Russia, although Mueller indicted three Russian organizations and 26 individual Russians.

The inability to charge Trump or his associates for conspiring with the Russians to influence the election in no way mitigated Mueller's finding that the Trump campaign had welcomed the Kremlin efforts and expected to benefit from them — a finding corroborated by the Republican-led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's five-volume report on the same matter, released in July 2019.

Nevertheless, Trump and his minions in the Republican propaganda machine obscured all the damning details to proclaim full exoneration — and Trump himself constantly repeated the phrase "no collusion," usually in all capital letters and punctuated as an exclamation, to insist that "Russia, Russia, Russia" was nothing more than "a hoax." Ever since then, he and his apologists have frequently and ludicrously declared that he was in fact history's toughest negotiator with the Kremlin, without a blush.

But now, behind the thin scrim of "peacemaking" in Ukraine, we see the noxious flowering of collusion in its fullest form.

From the Pentagon to the State Department to the White House, the direction of U.S. policy is unmistakable: to deprive the Ukrainians of sovereignty and freedom while bringing them under the Russian heel as quickly as possible. Among those advancing Russia's interests is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who boobishly capitulated in advance of the so-called negotiations.

Hegseth was surpassed only by Trump himself, who consulted secretly with his pal Putin while excluding Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from the process, then insulted and threatened the Ukraine leader publicly.

This nefarious initiative has expanded in many directions, from Vice President JD Vance's threats against our European allies and his promotion of neo-Nazism in the German election to Elon Musk's use of his Starlink satellite system as an instrument of blackmail against Ukraine. Where it will go is terrifying to contemplate, but we can at least give it an accurate name.

It is nothing less than collusion between an American president and a hostile foreign dictator — and it is the most brazen betrayal in our history.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Elon Musk

'Maximum Transparency': Musk Demands IRS Data, But His Finances Still Secret

Elon Musk, required by federal law to file financial disclosures as he rampages across government, doesn't want anybody else looking at this tax returns. Neither does Donald Trump, the first president or presidential candidate in decades who refused to reveal his tax returns.

But they don't feel the same way about your tax returns, or mine, or the private financial and banking information of hundreds of millions of other Americans. The billionaire and his president are now demanding that the Internal Revenue Service provide access to its highly confidential data systems for Musk's unvetted aides in the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, according to reports in the Washington Post and the New York Times. The DOGE bros supposedly require this unprecedented capacity to invade Americans' privacy in order to curb IRS "waste."

Both newspapers also report that the specific DOGE employee assigned to the IRS is an engineer named Gavin Kliger, who recently gained a measure of infamy when a Reuters article revealed his social media posts endorsing racist and antisemite Nick Fuentes and misogynist and accused rapist Andrew Tate. His Substack account is full of rants about "bureaucracy," COVID-19 restrictions and his heroic decision to join DOGE to "fix" the government. (When the media first revealed his identity as a DOGE employee, Kliger immediately attempted to raise his Substack's subscription price to $1000.)

Naturally IRS officials and independent experts have expressed profound alarm at the notion that Kliger, his boss Musk and others of their ilk would have free-ranging access to innocent citizens' IRS accounts and all the data stored in them -- which is supposed to be kept safe from such malign actors. Those same experts fear that the personal data of millions of Americans may have been compromised already by DOGE employees who gained access to Treasury Department systems that disburse federal funds.

Nina Olson, who served as the IRS internal consumer watchdog for 18 years, offered this warning to the Post: “The information that the IRS has is incredibly personal. Someone with access to it could use it and make it public in a way, or do something with it, or share it with someone else who shares it with someone else, and your rights get violated."

The reckless Musk has already demonstrated on X, the social media platform he owns and controls, that he will misuse personal information for his own vindictive purposes. Last fall, he identified an employee of the US International Development Finance Corporation who works on climate issues, naming her and questioning whether she deserved a federal job. “So many fake jobs,” he wrote, insulting her and provoking an avalanche of abuse after 33 million views. In January, as wildfires raged in Los Angeles, Musk blamed minority and female firefighters for the failure to stop them, posting their names and photographs.

There was no law requiring Trump to disclose his taxes, although some returns were revealed against his will (and showed how he escaped paying his share). At the moment, Musk and the Trump White House are relying on an apparent loophole in federal ethics law that may exempt a "special government employee" like him from its disclosure requirements.

If so, that loophole needs to be closed. Public interest groups and state attorneys general should file litigation to force Musk -- who constantly barks about "maximum transparency" in government -- to disgorge his data. Whatever is good for the ordinary taxpayer should be good for the tax-dodging billionaires too.

Vance In Munich: Like A German Urging Americans To Embrace The Klan

Vance In Munich: Like A German Urging Americans To Embrace The Klan

Few Americans would welcome an elected leader from Germany or France who gave a speech on our soil, urging politicians here to stop shunning the Ku Klux Klan. Yet that isn't so far from the message delivered to European officials by Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference on February 14 — which understandably provoked outrage among our allies, just as Vance and his boss, President Donald Trump, must have intended.

Instead of addressing Europe's security concerns, such as Trump's impending abandonment of Ukraine to Russian aggression, Vance lectured his audience on domestic issues such as "free speech," immigration, and the rejection of ultra-right extremism.

Nobody familiar with Vance, a man known for spreading false stories about migrants eating pets in his home state, could have been surprised to learn that he uttered numerous falsehoods in Munich. Warning against infringements on religious speech, for instance, he claimed that Scotland had intimidated its citizens from privately praying in their own homes. Scottish officials instantly rebutted that absurd lie, which referred to a carefully drafted law creating small "buffer zones" for protesters at abortion clinics.

But the thrust of Vance's remarks represented a brazen attempt to interfere in the German national elections that will occur next week, signaling Trump administration support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (or AfD) party.

"Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters," Vance intoned. "There's no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don't." Although he didn't mention the AfD by name, his inference couldn't have been clearer. Every mainstream political party in Germany has quarantined that party's antisemites and Nazi apologists behind a political firewall for decades, symbolizing their nation's commitment to prevent any resurgence of fascism before it can occur.

And immediately after his appearance, greeted with stony silence from the Munich conference delegates, Vance met with AfD leader Alice Weidel. A banker who has defended her party's worst racists and bigots, while pretending that the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was "a communist," Weidel praised Vance's speech as "excellent."

The comparison between the KKK and the AfD is all too appropriate, and not only because the German party echoes the racist rhetoric of thugs in white hoods. Back when Nazi spies in this country spent millions to subvert the United States during the years before World War II, their "German American Bund" forged a firm alliance with the Klan. It was a time when many American politicians, especially in the South, openly described the KKK as a legitimate expression of "the voice of the people." No doubt Vance would have been among them.

Today, the AfD members elected to public office in Germany don't hesitate to exploit anti-immigrant hatred and racial bigotry against both Muslims and Jews. No less an authority than the U.S. State Department — during the first Trump administration — repeatedly reprimanded the vile racism of AfD figures in its annual reports on human rights in Germany.

"While senior [German] government leaders continued to condemn anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment," the State Department noted in 2018, "some members of the federal parliament and state assemblies from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party again made anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim statements."

So typical were the poisonous outbursts from AfD officials that they drew the attention of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, which has described the party as a "radicalized" entity "whose leaders have made antisemitic, anti-Muslim and anti-democratic" statements.

European leaders offended by Vance reiterated their determination to defend their continent against totalitarians of all varieties — as did Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose rebuke reminded everyone why most Germans will have nothing to do with the AfD. "Never again fascism, never again racism, never again aggressive war," he said. "That is why an overwhelming majority in our country opposes anyone who glorifies or justifies criminal National Socialism."

Glorifying Nazism doesn't seem to trouble Vance, Trump, or their designated hitman Elon Musk, who has publicly endorsed an AfD victory as "the only hope for Germany." But Vance's interference in German politics is more than a token of the Trump administration's fascist inclinations, as if any more were needed.

Like Trump's urge to back Russian aggression against Ukraine in his "peace" initiative, the White House embrace of German fascists again shows the American president promoting the interests of a foreign power hostile to the United States and the West. What Vance said and did enraged our longtime allies in Europe, but his words aligned perfectly with Russian President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin — whose regime's assistance to German fascism defiles the sacrifice of all the Russians and Americans who died to defeat Hitler.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.


Why Would A 'Christian' Destroy The World's Largest Relief Agency?

Why Would A 'Christian' Destroy The World's Largest Relief Agency?

For Christians here and across the world, the ongoing confrontation over the fate of USAID dramatically illustrates the moral degeneration of the politicians who most fervently profess their piety. While Donald Trump wraps himself in the mantle of the Almighty, his assault on the world’s largest relief agency is a modern passion play, with scheming malefactors of great wealth sadistically persecuting sincere people of faith who seek to serve the poor.

Not everyone who works for USAID, a government agency that employs hundreds of private contractors, is motivated by charity or religious conviction. While many are nonprofits, others are profitable companies. But the agency’s single largest contractor is Catholic Relief Services, which has provided billions of dollars in assistance to impoverished communities on every continent.

Nearly every denomination is represented among the recipients of USAID funding, including major evangelical and conservative organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse, the global charity operated by Franklin Graham -- who happens to be among Donald Trump’s most sycophantic admirers. Graham's reputation as a "humanitarian" has surely benefited from his organization's association with US relief efforts, not to mention $90 million in taxpayer support. And he knows that Musk and Trump are lying about USAID.

As Christianity Today reported on February 4:

Most of USAID’s budget goes to grants for specific development projects, including at Samaritan’s Purse, World Vision, World Relief, Catholic Relief Services, and many other faith-based groups. It supports local Christian health clinics in Malawi and groups providing orphan care.

In Kenya, PCEA Chogoria Hospital, a historic mission hospital now run by Kenyan churches, provides comprehensive health care to HIV patients through support from USAID. On January 24 the hospital received a stop-work order for that care and has had no indication of a return of funding despite [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio’s promises that life-saving HIV care could continue. The hospital has 3,162 HIV patients in that USAID-funded program, and 42 staff members caring for those patients…

“It is exceptionally painful to watch all this,” said Kent Hill, a former top official at USAID who also worked at World Vision and in Christian higher education as the president of Eastern Nazarene College. If USAID has specific problems, shutting the whole agency down instead of addressing the problems is a “tremendous overreaction” and “inhumane,” he said.

“Few American investments, if any, bring such a remarkable return,” Hill said. “To talk about shutting USAID down is callous and represents a tremendous a lapse in judgment which ought to call forth bipartisan condemnation.”

What do Rev. Graham and other evangelical leaders on the right think when they hear Elon Musk accuse USAID of corruption, with zero evidence, and denounce it as a “criminal” organization that must “die"?” The foreign-born billionaire boasted about putting the agency “in the wood chipper,” as if the deprivation and suffering that would ensue among the ill and hungry is a funny fratboy joke.

What seems truly amusing, by contrast, is the notion of Donald Trump as a follower of Christ, specially anointed by the Lord. From the beginning of his political career, the former casino owner has cultivated the tawdriest characters in Christianity, from the pants-dropping Jerry Falwell Jr. to TV evangelists Paula White, Kenneth Copeland, and other exponents the “prosperity gospel.” Like Trump, these are individuals whose unbridled avarice leaves little space for good works of any kind. It isn't hard to imagine them mocking the actual Christians who minister to the poor instead of swindling them.

Perhaps to promote sales of Trump-branded Bibles, he played the devout Christian at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 6. “Well, we wanna bring religion back stronger, bigger, better than ever before. It’s very important,” the president declared. “We have to have religion and it suffered greatly over the last few years, but it’s coming back.”

As for Musk, once lionized by libertarians for his atheism, the world’s richest man has taken to proclaiming his belief in “the teachings of Jesus Christ,” notably to “love thy neighbor.” In a late 2022 tweet, he wrote: "Jesus taught love, kindness and forgiveness. I used to think that turning the other cheek was weak and foolish, but I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom." This alleged attraction to Christian principles accompanied Musk’s turn toward the far right, with its hostility toward racial minorities, immigrants, and all of the destitute and oppressed.

In short, Musk now qualifies as that most MAGA brand of Christian -- a hypocrite who exploits religion to amplify his own power and wealth, with a heavenly license to bully the weak. Somehow ruining the lives of people who depend on USAID for their very sustenance seems much more like the devil’s work.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

If You Get Ebola, Don't Forget To Thank Donald Trump

If You Get Ebola, Don't Forget To Thank Donald Trump

The last time Americans faced the possible spread of Ebola to U.S. territory, in 2014, Donald Trump irresponsibly stoked public fears and barked at Barack Obama while doing nothing useful to protect us. Now the same deadly virus has showed up in the crowded capital of Uganda — where a nurse has died — and is threatening to spread further, which means it could eventually arrive here.

And this time Trump has done something far worse, mindlessly ripping down the shield that has defended us from Ebola and similar menaces. If and when the hemorrhagic virus arrives here to kill Americans, he won't be able to point an accusing finger at Obama or anyone else.

Last August marked the 10th anniversary of the Ebola outbreak in Liberia that the Obama administration stopped through the work of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, overseen by White House officials, all working in cooperation with other countries and the World Health Organization.

It was a complex undertaking: Led by Ron Klain, who later became Joe Biden's chief of staff, veteran officials mounted what's known as a "whole of government" effort to confine the outbreak in West Africa and bolster the local response with advanced medicine, protective gear, burial teams and experienced clinicians.

The result they achieved was an enormous success that saved many lives and enhanced American prestige abroad. Hundreds of idiotic carping tweets from Trump, then just a celebrity conspiracy monger, were an ignoble footnote.

Flash forward to our current dark moment, when the Trump administration is abruptly eviscerating all kinds of vital government functions — including our once-unparalleled capacity to suppress a hazard like Ebola before it seriously imperiled our citizens.

Almost as soon as he returned to the Oval Office, the president misused his power to cripple all the agencies whose personnel and expertise are most needed at this moment to guard against the return of Ebola. On his orders, the United States withdrew from the WHO, while his minions took down USAID websites and shut down most CDC functions.

Mark Leon Goldberg, a journalist who superbly covers international organizations and America's "soft power" diplomacy, explained how the system is supposed to work in his Global Dispatches column on Substack:

"Under normal circumstances, there would be no need to panic. Since the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, local health officials in Africa and the international community have become skilled at containing outbreaks before they spread out of control. There have been at least eight separate outbreaks in the region, but all have been contained. None spread internationally, least of all to the United States.

"At the center of these efforts to stop the international spread of Ebola are the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United States Agency for International Development. These agencies work with local authorities and provide platforms for international cooperation that help develop and deploy vaccines, conduct disease surveillance, and work directly with local health officials to provide capacity where it may be lacking."

He quotes Stephanie Psaki, a former National Security Council official, outlining the "playbook" that those agencies followed to stem countless disease outbreaks — implemented at high speed with international partners, emergency funding and trained health professionals in place.

What's suddenly different, says Goldberg, is that "there's no one left to execute that playbook. Trump fired most of them. ... Simply put, the methods and strategy that have successfully kept Americans safe from eight Ebola outbreaks over the last decade are no longer operational."

The same numbskull who once mouthed off about Ebola has left us more vulnerable to it than we've ever been before. Trump's own former surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, recently warned against the vindictive and stupid assault on the nation's public health infrastructure by his old boss.

"Regardless of how you feel about 'public health,' or 'Fauci,' it's a real bad time to have blocked public communications from CDC, and work with WHO," Adams scolded on social media. "Republicans must understand (that) they're gonna own any and all preventable outbreaks / harm moving forward."

He means the Republicans who are letting Trump run wild. But no worries! When the coffins are lined up, I'm sure they will all send thoughts and prayers.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

GOP Senators Must Ask Patel Why The Kremlin Wants Him To Run The FBI

GOP Senators Must Ask Patel Why The Kremlin Wants Him To Run The FBI

When Kash Patel appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee seeking confirmation as FBI director on January 30, someone will no doubt raise questions about his threats against Donald Trump’s critics, his stated penchant to abuse power, his minimal job qualifications and his embarrassing career as a conspiracy monger.

But in addition to all those pressing issues, and perhaps even more vital, is that Patel be grilled on the boundless enthusiasm for his candidacy among America’s adversaries in the Kremlin. No Senator of either party should leave that hearing room without seeing this video, one of many that have appeared on Russia’s main television channel in the weeks since Election Day.


“When will they bring my Kash to power?” demands Vladimir Solovyov, the most prominent newscaster in Moscow and a close associate of President Vladimir Putin. “I just want to see how Kash Patel turns the FBI into a Museum of Repression on his first day in office.” Solovyov and the panel of commentators in that clip are echoing the Kremlin’s official line, as they do every evening – and their hunger to see Patel take over the premier law enforcement agency in the United States is not a joke.

Solovyov’s quip about what "his Kash" would do to FBI headquarters in Washington echoes remarks that he himself made last November when the likelihood of his nomination by Trump suddenly became real. He promised to shut down the J. Edgar Hoover building in downtown Washington and “open it up the next day as the Museum of the Deep State.”

But Patel went further, vowing to abolish the bureau’s Intelligence Division, which he claims has been “weaponized” against Trump and the MAGA movement. “We have an intel agency. I don’t need it to be redone within the walls of the FBI, ” he said, displaying his ignorance of both national security law and the functions of the CIA, NSA and other US intelligence agencies. “Send those 7,000 agents in the headquarters building downrange to chase down rapists, murderers, and drug traffickers.” Chasing down rapists and murderers (and most drug traffickers) are what local police do, of course, as former prosecutor Patel ought to know. He's just gaslighting the MAGA rubes.

But Patel’s promise to close down the FBI intelligence division – whose actual job is to thwart and capture foreign spies in the United States – is why the Russians are so giddily celebrating the prospect that he will take over the bureau. On an earlier show, Solovyov proclaimed that the elevation of figures like Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, would enable the Kremlin to “quickly dismantle the United States.”


- YouTubeyoutu.be


What Patel doesn't know -- and clearly has no interest in understanding -- is that the thousands of agents and officials in Washington have an enormous task in defending the United States against hostile foreign powers, not only the GRU and other Russian outfits but agents employed by China, Iran, and North Korea as well. Just last year, the FBI exposed a Chinese agent secretly nested in New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's office, part of an enormous network used by Beijing to carry out influence operations and intimidation of dissidents in the Empire State.

The Chinese aren't loudly boasting like the Russians, but they too can only be excited by the destruction of the agency that stands in their way on our soil.

None of this is theoretical. Trump and his minions have been determined to wreck American counterintelligence ever since his connections with Russian intelligence were first exposed in the wake of the 2016 election.

Listen to Dave Troy, who has worked hard to expose this looming existential menace:

"Counterintelligence will be gone; terrorists will not be tracked; expect unjust prosecutions and leaks to support extrajudicial persecution of personal foes and enemies of Putin. Impossible to overstate the danger here."

Vladimir Solovyov worried that Senate Republicans wouldn't confirm Trump's dangerous nominees. But he seems to have overestimated their wisdom and patriotism.

It is indeed impossible to overstate the danger from Patel and whatever lunatics he would bring in to the FBI -- and from Gabbard as well. But it is the FBI nominee who has declared his desire to tear down America's defense against foreign spies. Confirming him to a position where he can do that will give aid and comfort to hostile powers -- and Republican senators should think carefully before they cast that vote.


Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

Why Did Trump Silence Public Health Officials -- Again?

Why Did Trump Silence Public Health Officials -- Again?

Within days of Donald Trump entering the Oval Office, he decreed by executive order that the United States will withdraw from the World Health Organization. He ordered the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services to stop communicating with the public and other scientific organizations. And he withdrew the security protecting Dr. Anthony Fauci, the retired federal infectious disease expert.

Why would Trump issue these reckless orders, which appear ill-timed and foolish as the H5N1 virus — bird flu — begins to spread across the nation? Having already killed millions of chickens, this disease appears now to have killed at least one American male — and could soon mutate into a form transmitted from human to human.

To anyone who remembers how Trump mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic during his final year in office, his actions during the first week of his second term are deeply ominous. The U.S. death toll was the highest in the world, with over a million Americans struck down by the virus, despite the fact that we had access to vaccines before many other countries.

Despite Trump's laudable effort to encourage production of vaccines, he also became the principal obstacle to an effective response. Politics dictated Trump's actions from the very beginning, when he downplayed the pandemic threat and pretended that coronavirus would disappear before Easter. He discouraged testing, again because he wanted to minimize the threat. Listening to extremist advisers, he promoted quack cures, scoffed at effective health measures like masking, and undermined trust in public health authorities. His statements and actions resulted in countless unnecessary fatalities — ironically concentrated among his own Republican supporters.

Now Trump appears to be deflecting blame for his own failures onto international and federal agencies — and onto Fauci, whose undeserved status as a whipping boy for the far right has brought death threats against him and even his family.

It's not that WHO and the U.S. health agencies didn't make mistakes in coping with COVID-19 — a new form of illness that kept mutating and defying measures to bring it under control. Even the wise and experienced Fauci didn't get everything right. But the errors and missteps by Trump and his administration were far more consequential — and worse, were plainly motivated by political self-interest.

While the actual impact of Trump's executive orders has yet to be determined, their effects could severely undermine our defenses against the next pandemic, which seems likely to arrive sooner than expected. As a member of WHO, the United States benefits from the WHO global surveillance network that monitors perilous diseases such as influenza and Ebola — providing timely data, genetic material and other crucial information to our scientists. Removing U.S. funding and support will seriously undermine that system and endanger the entire world, including us.

Silencing or chilling communications from federal health agencies — and halting their exchanges with other scientists both here and abroad — poses a different risk. Prohibited from publishing scientific reports, issuing health advisories or updating their websites, the CDC and NIH won't be able to send out public alerts and recommended procedures, with potentially grave effects on our collective response to a pandemic.

These dictates from the new Trump regime are a spooky echo of the old Trump regime's bad behavior.

Recall that in late February 2020, a top CDC official publicly warned of an imminent pandemic and urged Americans to prepare for the shutdown of schools and workplaces. The president instantly threatened to fire her and forbade the CDC from delivering briefings on measures to combat the virus.

Instead, Trump took over the briefings and constantly misinformed the public. On masking, for instance, he said, "You don't have to do it. I'm choosing not to do it." Trump not only contracted the virus and became gravely ill — surviving only thanks to special care at Walter Reed Army Hospital — but made many others in his orbit sick as well. He nearly killed his former friend Chris Christie by exposing him to the virus (although typically Trump claims it was Christie who infected him).

We may soon relive that nightmare. Sadly, this president appears to have learned nothing from experience, except how to deflect responsibility. That won't protect any of us — not even Trump.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.



It's Inauguration Day! Welcome To The Grifters Ball

It's Inauguration Day! Welcome To The Grifters Ball

Legalized bribery is still bribery — and there is no other way to describe the celebration that marks the second presidential inauguration of Donald Trump.

With the menacing manner of a mob boss, Trump has extorted million-dollar contributions from dozens of corporations that fear federal retribution against their shareholders or management (as in the case of Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, who coughed up his million after Trump literally threatened him with "life in prison" not so long ago).

No doubt many of the corporate and billionaire donors are keen to prove their loyalty to a new administration that promises to uphold their interests. They know better than to worry about Republican proclamations that their party now represents "working class" Americans. Nobody who has glanced at Project 2025 or read Elon Musk's posts could harbor any such illusions — and surely the inaugural donors from outfits such as General Motors, the pharmaceutical lobby, Pratt Industries, Uber, Amazon and Microsoft do not.Many of the corporations currently greasing Trump withheld donations from his 2016 festivities, apparently repelled by the racism, misogyny and propensity for violence he had flaunted during the campaign. Some combination of fear and greed has overcome any such scruples this year.

Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, a nonprofit that monitors corporate influence, is tracking the payments of tribute, and even its jaded staffers are shocked by the Trump inaugural's brazen style. Said Craig Holman, a government ethics expert at the Nader group: "The record-breaking cesspool of special interest financing for the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee raises serious concerns about the ability of corporations and wealthy special interests to purchase influence over public policy or lucrative government contracts." Remember last spring when Trump told oil executives that they could have whatever they want, so long as they raised a billion dollars? He just appointed one of them, a fracking magnate and climate denier named Chris Wright, to take over the Department of Energy.

Estimates of the amount that the presidential inauguration committee will collect from both eager and reluctant donors range up to $200 million, a record sum that has prompted boasting from Trump and his minions. Impressive as it is, the inaugural hoard only represents a down payment on what portends to be four years of unprecedented and gluttonous corruption.

If you wonder why Trump needs $200 million for this little event, so does everyone who ever ran a prior inauguration. Due to frigid weather in Washington, the 47th president will take the oath of office indoors at a ceremony paid for by the taxpayers. Then the Trump-Vance committee will host only three inaugural balls — a tiny schedule compared with the number of balls held by his predecessors — plus a few events at his Trump National Golf Club, miles from the capital.

In other words, they're spending almost none of that big haul.

Yet while the actual expense of parties and fireworks will be nominal, the opportunities for grift are vast. As in so many instances during Trump's first presidency, those golf club events are siphoning big money from the inaugural fund into his business accounts. The Trumps ran a similar scam eight years ago, when the 2016 inaugural committee inked massively overpriced contracts for rooms and services purchased from the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

That pattern continued during his administration, with big profits booked from taxpayers footing the bills at Trump resorts for Secret Service agents protecting the president and members of his family.

Where will all the money go this time? In 2017, the Trump inaugural raised $107 million, a total far in excess of what the committee spent on its events. The committee — whose top staff included notorious crooks like Rick Gates and Elliot Broidy — never presented any accounting of its expenditures, let alone an audit. Tens of millions of dollars simply disappeared.

The official story is that funds not spent on this week's festivities will be transferred to the newly formed Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund Inc. — ostensibly to establish a repository and museum memorializing his presidency.

Maybe that will happen someday. But the sordid history of the Trump Foundation, ordered to shut down after the New York state attorney general proved its myriad abuses, showed that the Trumps are familiar with every trick for looting a nonprofit. Nobody audits the inaugural committees, which are not required to disclose their spending. The likelihood is that most or all of the tainted inaugural lucre will wind up somehow in their pockets.

Day One won't see a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia, a drop in grocery prices, or anything else that Trump promised during his campaign. The customary grifting will resume promptly, however, as soon as he takes his hand off the Bible. In fact, it has already begun.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.






Why Veterans -- And Every American Who Cares For Them -- Must Beware Hegseth

Why Veterans -- And Every American Who Cares For Them -- Must Beware Hegseth

When Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense appears before the Senate Armed Service Committee, they ought to ask his views on the health care and other benefits provided to the Americans who serve our country. If he is honest, Pete Hegseth's answer may surprise or even shock many Trump supporters who naively believe the president-elect “loves our veterans,” as he often declares.

If Hegseth believes anything, it is that veterans’ benefits are wasteful and way too lavish – and because he is a veteran who promotes that canard, he has consistently enjoyed the support of wealthy benefactors and right-wing media outlets. That is probably why, despite his manifest failures and disturbing personal history, he is on the verge of taking over the Pentagon’s top position.

Trump reportedly chose Hegseth, a glib and telegenic figure decorated for his service in Iraq and Afghanistan, because he “looks the part.” Presumably that is also why he appealed to the billionaires who elevated him to lead two conservative veterans’ organizations – Veterans for Freedom (VFF) and later Concerned Veterans for America (CVA).

Neither of those organizations could ever have been described as a “grassroots” group with organic roots among actual veterans. Instead, as The New Yorker magazine reported in its damning profile of Hegseth, each of these outfits was a synthetic construct financed by super-rich and ultra-right Republicans for specific purposes that had little or nothing to do with veterans’ own interests. To describe them as “veterans advocacy organizations” is bit like describing MAGA as an immigrant advocacy organization.

The actual purpose of VFF was to advocate for the expansion of the war in Iraq, a project that Hegseth eventually repudiated -- long after the American public and even Republicans who had supported the initial invasion (including Trump) decided that the war had been a terrible mistake. Far from helping veterans, VFF promoted a conflict that caused the deaths and grievous wounding of thousands of American soldiers.

Hegseth’s gross mismanagement of that group and its finances resulted in his ouster before it was folded into another organization to avoid bankruptcy. By then, however, Hegseth had established himself as a conservative talking head with a military resume.

The far-right Koch brothers, who have deployed their fortune in support of their politics under many guises, hired him as the public face of CVA, the “veterans organization” that is an integral part of their ideological network. CVA serves multiple purposes on the Republican right, putting a stamp of veteran approval on GOP candidates and causes.

Among those CVA causes is privatization of the Veterans Administration, which the Kochs apparently viewed as a way of driving down costs and cutting federal spending. Their general attitude is that everyone in American society benefits too much from government, which is funded with their money, which they shouldn’t have to pay in taxes.

But Scrooge McDuck isn’t a great look for any corporate leader, so billionaires like the Kochs always need someone else to front for them, advocating benefit cuts and other policies that will probably be unpopular. No doubt that's why Pete Hegseth held onto those well-compensated jobs at VFF and CVA, even though he spent much of his time getting drunk and abusing women while employed by those Republican fatcats. Although his embarrassing misconduct became too big a liability for them, he had moved on to Fox News by then, where his misogyny and extremism were a perfect fit.

Whatever his sponsors may have felt about Hegseth as a human being, they appreciated his views on veterans’ benefits and health care – which closely paralleled their own desire to cut spending. As head of Concerned Veterans for America, Hegseth pushed drastic cuts in Veterans Administration programs, so that the network of hospitals and comprehensive medical care would be provided only to those with “service-connected disabilities and specialized needs” – not the lifetime health benefits that veterans have long received. Many veterans would no longer qualify for VA care of any kind.

Now the world’s wealthiest man, Elon Musk, and his billionaire pal Vivek Ramaswamy, have articulated much the same vision for their “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE. They want to cut a trillion or two from the federal budget, and the Veterans Administration is in their gunsights. Of course neither of them has ever served in the US military, nor has anyone in their families.

That is where Pete Hegseth has always played such a useful role. Having begun his career in politics and media as the servant of wealthy Republicans who wanted to slash veterans’ benefits, he serves the same purpose now, except with immeasurably higher status – and, given his extraordinary lack of qualifications as defense secretary, the potential to do grave damage to the security of the United States.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

Stoking Division Amid Disaster, Trump And His Minions Betray America

Stoking Division Amid Disaster, Trump And His Minions Betray America

The solidarity of American communities in the face of catastrophe, whether natural or manmade, is an aspect of our national character that most of us cherish. We never tire of stories about our fellow citizens upholding each other at the worst of time. We venerate the firefighters, emergency service workers, law enforcement officers and ordinary neighbors whose endurance and sacrifice holds communities together against cruel circumstance – without regard to race, creed, color, gender, or partisan affiliation.

Or at least we did during much of our history. Yet as huge swaths of Los Angeles are consumed by wildfire, it is striking to see those traditional American values torched by a self-serving coterie of right-wing billionaires, whose loyalty to any principle beyond self-aggrandizement is nil: Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, and of course their political avatar Donald Trump, the president-elect.

While the LA blaze rages on, all three of these men have used their gigantic public platforms to stoke a different but exceptionally destructive conflagration. Rather than encourage patriotic bonding and mutual aid, they broadcast messages of division, hatred, and suspicion, served up in a poisonous stew of blatant lies, conspiracy theories, and wretched nonsense.

Even as the Los Angeles Fire Department’s undaunted officers and leaders work around the clock, confronting danger and tragedy in every moment, loudmouths like Musk have the temerity to attack them, prattling on about “DEI,” the effort to mitigate decades of discrimination. Neither the Tesla mogul nor Murdoch’s blithering minions on Fox News Channel -- who are shocked that the LA fire chief is a lesbian -- have produced a shred of evidence to show that diversity hinders firefighting. They never will. For the purposes of right-wing Republican propaganda, facts and logic are irrelevant and annoying.

In the same vein are Trump’s attacks on California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom he disparages with his usual gutter vernacular as “Newscum.” Posting ridiculous falsehoods about the state’s water supply, claiming the governor is withholding water from burning communities, can only be regarded as an obnoxious distraction while state officials try to save lives and stop the fire. With reservoir levels at or above capacity in most of the state, there is no shortage of water, but its use has been hampered by the awful winds and other technical barriers.

Instead of seeking ways to support the scorched and weary Angelenos, the Trump gang aims only to fabricate myths that will overshadow the real cause of this disaster. On CNN, GOP spokesman Scott Jennings has repeated a fake story about budget cuts to the LA Fire Department, when in fact the department received a $50 million increase last year. Donald Trump Jr and various other clowns are whining over a tiny donation of equipment to Ukraine, which has no impact whatsoever.

They will literally say anything to avoid discussing the way climate change – the underlying cause of the hot, dry superstorm that turned a local fire into a regional inferno. They don’t believe in it, so it can’t be causing the fires. Except of course it is.

Trump’s impending return to power is awful to contemplate in these circumstances -- especially for those in California who remember how he behaved the last time he occupied the Oval Office. He denies climate change and oppose any program to stem its deadly impact. And he has repeatedly manipulated federal aid to punish states he considered politically hostile to him, including during the 2018 wildfires in southern California.

As reported earlier this year by Politico, Trump refused to approve critical assistance for those communities until aides showed him that Orange County had given him more votes in 2016 than the entire state of Iowa. Obviously, that is not what presidential duty requires, as if that would matter to him.

The incoming president appears to have no compassion, no instinct to help those who have suffered horrendous losses and terrible. As usual, he is thinking about himself, his partisan objectives, and his obsession with vengeance against perceived enemies.

The Trump years, which will now be extended for another presidential term, have inflicted awful damage on American morale, empathy, and unity. Restoring that spirit will take years and probably decades. It doesn’t seem accidental that Murdoch and Musk, Trump’s gleeful enablers, are of foreign origin. Like him, they display no regard for American ethics and customs. And like him, they are making America not great, but small, stupid, and mean.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.--


In Belligerence Toward Our Neighbors, The Real Trump Emerges

In Belligerence Toward Our Neighbors, The Real Trump Emerges

Anyone naïve enough to believe that Donald Trump is an “antiwar” politician -- or, more fashionably, a foreign policy “realist” -- must have been startled when he threatened the security of Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and Panama at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.

But for anyone who has paid the slightest attention to Trump’s utterances and actions over the past ten years, his latest outburst is no surprise at all. Notwithstanding the incessant efforts by his fans on the far right (and far left) to shine him up, the incoming president is an unrepentant imperialist, warmonger, and international bully.

Trump lied about his military and foreign policy record throughout the 2024 campaign -- and Democrats somehow failed to point out that he was emphatically not the cautious, peace-loving opponent of intervention being sold to voters. “I had no wars,” he told Iowans last summer, as if that were the end of any further discussion. “I’m the only president in 72 years…I didn’t have any wars.”

But when Trump proclaims his pugnacious intentions toward America’s neighbors and NATO allies, he is merely expressing the same dangerously aggressive schoolyard attitude that always marked his rhetoric and then his presidency.

Whenever the United States intervened in the Middle East, for instance, Trump has urged that our only objective should be seizing oil for ourselves, rather than seeking to stabilize the region or curtail brutal dictators. Although he lied about his own supposed opposition to the Iraq invasion, he has never tried to conceal the fact that all he wanted was Iraq’s oil. Several years later he repeated himself when the Obama administration moved against the Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. "I would take the oil — and stop this baby stuff," brayed Trump. "I’m only interested in Libya if we take the oil. If we don’t take the oil, I’m not interested."

What draws his malign attention now to Greenland, Canada, and Panama is that they have enormous resources and strategic locations, all of which he evidently aspires to acquire, perhaps by force. While he complains about the border and the drug cartels, the same may be true of Mexico, another oil exporter. No such military adventures would be possible without grave costs in human life and American honor, but they would surely serve the interest of Trump’s admired friend and principal sponsor Vladimir Putin, justifying Russian imperialism against its own neighbors.

Those who minimize and excuse Trump’s bellicose rants are forgetting (or want us to forget) how close he brought us to a nuclear exchange with North Korea. Within less than a year after he took office, the inexperienced but arrogant president drove us toward the brink not only with his taunts against Kim Jong Un, but by ordering the Pentagon to prepare for an attack. As Fred Kaplan wrote in his book The Bomb, Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. James Mattis oversaw planning that “assumed the United States would strike the first blow.”

In early 2018, Trump told his national security aides that he wanted to evacuate all US personnel from South Korea – an insane directive that would have sent an unmistakable signal to Kim of warlike intentions. Mercifully we never learned how far that might have escalated. His orders were ignored and he apparently forgot about the whole mess. It is still horrifying to think how a mindless, reckless president might have stumbled into a holocaust.

So as with everything else Trump, believe him when he displays ill intentions and bonehead ignorance. Don’t pretend that he’s just kidding or cleverly “negotiating.” We are entering an extremely perilous time for the United States and the world.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.--

Tesla Workers Say Musk Used H1B Visas To Replace Americans He Laid Off

Tesla Workers Say Musk Used H1B Visas To Replace Americans He Laid Off

Elon Musk’s aggressive defense of the H1B visa program --which permits his companies Tesla and Spacex to bring engineers and other workers from overseas – has aroused fury among his erstwhile admirers on the far right. Despite his ongoing efforts to identify himself with the most extreme nationalists, xenophobes, and racists both here and across Europe, they suspect that the world’s richest man is driven not by love of his adopted country, but by his lust for money.

Fresh evidence that Donald Trump’s new best friend is motivated by greed rather than MAGA fervor has emerged via Electrek, a popular website that covers the electric vehicle and green energy industries (and has sometimes been accused of excessive solicitude for Musk and Tesla, or worse).

Electrekreported this week that after a massive wave of layoffs at Tesla last spring, the company replaced many of its higher-paid American employees with foreign workers holding H1B visas. In the wake of Musk’s bruising online feud with other Trump allies – most prominently Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer – a number of whistleblowers reportedly showed up to expose the EV giant's alleged mistreatment of Americans working there.

“Over the last few days, several current and former Tesla workers reached out to Electrek to reveal that Tesla ramped up its use of H-1B visas to replace US workers it let go during a wave of layoffs earlier this year,” according to a story by its editor-in-chief, Fred Lambert, that led the website on December 30.

Last April, Electrek reported that Tesla dismissed about 15,000 US employees, mostly in Texas and California – but then the company moved to fill those same jobs with imported labor at lower cost.

“Current and former Tesla employees said that many of the laid-off US workers were replaced by foreign workers using H-1B visas,” noted the website. “These claims are backed by US Department of Labor data, which show that Tesla requested over 2,000 H-1B visas during the time it was laying off US workers…Tesla workers said that many employees let go were more senior engineers with higher compensation and they have been replaced with junior engineers from foreign countries at a lower pay.”

Lambert offered his own nuanced view of the controversy, which is that H1B visas may well have a legitimate role in supporting US tech industries but can also be abused – which may be what Musk has been doing. He points out that the H1B rules afford corporations like Tesla enormous power over the visa-holding workers, who can only remain here as long as they are employed by the firm that sponsored them. In other words, those workers have far less autonomy and clout than unionized worker in auto – and we already know how much Musk hates unions.

One need not endorse the vicious bigotry of Bannon and Loomer -- nor their ridiculous views on immigration -- to acknowledge that they are probably right about Musk and other bosses lining up to exploit MAGA “nationalism” for their own power and enrichment.

As for the president-elect, of course he has been on both sides of the H1B debate, depending on whatever profits him at the moment. Various subsidiaries of the Trump Organization have hired thousands of foreign workers, using both the H1B and related H2B visa programs – and yet that didn’t stop candidate Trump from denouncing those programs as “very bad” and "unfair" for American workers when he was first running for president in 2016

Fraudsters like Musk and Trump are fortunate that the MAGA herd tends to be exceptionally ignorant and gullible – which is why Republicans can pretend to support American workers while complaining about the “globalists” and “elitists” who are lining their pockets.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.