4/15/2026

that idiot chump and general hospital

marc caputo ('axios') reports: 

Before President Trump posted an image of him as a Christ-like healer, he discussed the meme with his controversial housing finance chief Bill Pulte, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Trump's Truth Social post Sunday night drew such a fierce backlash from Christians that he pulled it down, an extremely rare move for him. But the mystery of who may have helped introduce the meme to him wasn't clear, until now.

  • Pulte declined to comment, as did the White House.

Behind the scenes: Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is a ubiquitous figure in the president's orbit both in the White House and at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., where Pulte is a member.

  • Trump was in South Florida over the weekend and the two spent time together, according to two advisers who spoke to the president about the image.

At some point, Pulte brought the image to Trump's attention, the advisers told Axios. It's not clear whether he just displayed the rendering on his phone or actually sent it to the president.

  • "Everyone thought it was a joke," one of the advisers said.
  • A third adviser who's friendly with Pulte said he didn't provide the meme to Trump.

Friction point: Trump's Sunday post came at a particularly provocative time for a meme widely interpreted as Trump portraying himself as Jesus, healing the sick.

  • It was Easter Sunday for Eastern Orthodox Christians.
  • The Sunday before, on Easter Sunday for Catholic and Protestant Christians, Trump had posted a vulgarity-laced threat to destroy Iran's infrastructure that ended with, "Praise be to Allah."
  • Hours before posting the meme Sunday, Trump lashed out at Pope Leo XIV over the pope's criticism of war, calling the pontiff "WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy," and accusing the U.S.-born pope of "catering to the Radical Left."


chump is an idiot and he is blasphemous.  there was no excuse for posting the illustration he posted.  none.  

'general hospital'?  


brook lynn was surprised when tracy was angry at danny.  tracy found that brook lynn's car wasn't parked where it was supposed to be and when she located it, there was a big slash down 1 side.  brook lynn admited she had been in a car accident.  she hit the guard rail.  tracy asked about any 1 else being involved and brook lynn told her about jordan.

remember, danny and charlotte were run off the road as well and brook lynn may have been in that 1 and not the 1 with jordan.

tracy told her to cover it with a tarp and that she would get it taken care of and that they would never speak of this again.

joslyn worked out with 'nathan' and ended up talking to him about caesan and he freaked out.  she may end up being the 1st 1 to figure out that nathan isn't nathn.


jordan's got some bad cuts on her face.  the doctor came in and told her that they may not heal and that they could set her up with a doctor.  jordan then took off her bandages and looked at them herself.  she feels like she's lost everything. 

ava visited laura and got laura to agree to sidwell's helicopter path tat he wants or airplane or whatever.  

she told sidwell about it and he asked her why she did that for him and she said she knew loss and she wanted to help him out while he's suffering from marco's death.  

dante went to laura while ava was talking to sidwell and told her that the council member who is always working against her is at a bar drunk.  laura walks in and hear's the man ranting - and laura can tell he's ranting about sidwell.



let's close with c.i.'s 'The Snapshot:'


Wednesday, April 15, 2026.  Chump claims war may be winding down, Americans struggle to manage with inflated prices from the war, NYT does a deep dive in Homeland Security, Kristi Noem's work is under examination, Pam Bondi skips her deposition before the House Oversight Committee, Melania's speech last week appears to have been prompted by a former friend announcing on social media that she was going to spill, and much more.



Most Americans still think their taxes are too high, according to recent polls, even after last year’s tax law fulfilled several of President Trump’s tax-related campaign promises.

In fact, a new Fox News poll indicates people are more upset about taxes than they were last year. The findings from the survey, which was conducted in late March, are another sign that Americans are on edge about their personal finances as the U.S. experiences a spike in inflation and sluggish economic growth. Other polling finds that frustration goes beyond personal tax obligations, with many believing that wealthy people and corporations are not paying their fair share, while others worry about government waste.

And why wouldn't they be on edge about personal finances?  Paul Wiseman (AP) reports,  "U.S. wholesale prices surged last month as the Iran war drove up the cost of energy.  The Labor Department reported Tuesday that its producer price index -- which measures inflation before it hits consumers -- rose 0.5% from February and 4% from March 2025. The year-over-year gains was the biggest in more than three years. Energy prices surged 8.5% from February."  Tristan Bove (FORTUNE) notes Chump's tariffs have hit all fifty states, "As farmers have faced higher costs for livestock feed, fertilizer, and machinery, those higher costs now appear on grocery store shelves across the country as food inflation, according to the study." 

As the economy remains in the toilet, the editors of THE INDEPENDENT note:

“Stagflation” is the phenomenon that dare not quite speak its name, but will soon perhaps stalk the Earth. Crucially, that depends on how long the Iran war lasts, and the skill of central banks and national treasuries, but it could easily become an extremely uncomfortable reality in the coming months.

Given that the United States is the IMF’s major “shareholder”, and its irascible president is known to take critical remarks personally, the IMF avoided mentioning Donald Trump by name. But we all know who is to blame for this catastrophe – the president, with his illegal, unplanned and unnecessary war.

The IMF’s list of industrial casualties from this war is a long one. The Gulf economies, which had in recent decades become a new hub for global growth (and tax avoidance), are the hardest hit, for obvious reasons. But, in the broader sense of their vast reserves of money and natural resources, they can afford it. As with the spike in commodities prices that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it is the poorer people in Africa and Asia who will find the struggle to survive even harder.
The emerging economies of East Asia, which rely so heavily on the Middle East for their oil and gas supply, and for many raw materials, will also suffer a slowdown, having already borne the brunt of Mr Trump’s tariff war. China, in particular, will see growth drop to its lowest in three decades – around 4.5 per cent. While enviable by European standards, that is insufficient to sustain jobs growth for the rising generation.
The advanced economies will also suffer from the disruption to trade and investment, and the cost-of-living crisis will intensify once more – including in the United States. President Trump’s “hottest nation in the world” will cool, even if its fossil-fuel providers enjoy a windfall.


And yet Chump's war of choice on Iran continues.  Ben notes the latest this morning on MEIDASTOUCH NEWS.





NPR notes this morning:

In a Wednesday morning interview with Fox Business, Trump said the war with Iran was "very close" to ending.

"I view it as very close to being over," Trump told anchor Maria Bartiromo.

Trump has repeatedly suggested the war is nearing an end without offering a clear timeline.

The latest developments came as the International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday that the global economy could be heading toward a recession triggered by the war.




The velocity at which President Trump’s war on Iran has spiraled out of control is unsurprising.

History neither repeats nor rhymes, but patterns flash like neon signs in the recent U.S. experience in the Greater Middle East. The combination of underestimating the enemy, overestimating one’s own power, and altogether ignoring the need for a clear definition of victory leads to escalation with no end in sight.
The president raced to the top of the escalatory ladder, threatening to destroy Iranian civilization on April 7. Mercifully, he backed down and offered a ceasefire, leading to a single day of peace talks in Pakistan. Already, however, Trump is ordering the U.S. Navy to blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and is reportedly weighing the resumption of limited air strikes.

The United States was supposed to have learned these painful lessons after the long nightmare in Vietnam. Despite serious doubts in his own mind and among his chief advisers that victory was attainable, President Lyndon B. Johnson sank his legacy in the jungles of Southeast Asia.


Moving over to Homeland Security's former secretary Kristi Noem.  William Vaillancourt (DAILY BEAST) notes:

The Homeland Security deputy secretary who was on the outs late last year is back in the department following Kristi Noem’s firing.

Troy Edgar is serving in the same role under Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Politico reported on Monday.

Edgar was sworn in last March, but his working relationship with Noem deteriorated late last year, one Trump administration official and a former DHS official told the outlet. The ex-DHS official said Edgar had essentially been “ousted.”
In January, Donald Trump nominated him as ambassador to El Salvador, but that nomination has now been withdrawn.

“The Admin is withdrawing Troy’s nomination and the withdrawal is expected to be transmitted to the Senate today,” a second administration official told Politico. “Troy never resigned from his DHS position so he was able to return.”

Acting DHS Secretary Lauren Bis told the Daily Beast in a statement: “DHS is fortunate to have Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar continue in his role. He brings valuable knowledge of the Department from the President’s first term when he served as DHS’ Chief Financial Officer. He will play an integral role in helping to make America safe again.”




The main engine of Trump’s enforcement campaign is the Department of Homeland Security. To understand how the agency has transformed, we interviewed more than 80 former and current D.H.S. employees, as well as officials in the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts. Many of them supported increased enforcement but criticized the administration’s execution, aspects of which they characterized as chaotic, dangerous and ineffective.

Career employees described experiencing a frustrating sense of whiplash as immigration policy has swung back and forth between Republican and Democratic administrations. The root of the problem, as they see it, is the failure of Congress over many decades to pass new laws that address today’s realities. In February, the Department of Homeland Security shut down after Congress failed to reach a deal on Democrats’ proposed changes to enforcement tactics.

D.H.S. policies bar employees from speaking to the news media without authorization. Some of our sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution from the administration. We corroborated their descriptions of specific incidents with colleagues, contemporaneous notes and court documents. Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, former Secretary Kristi Noem and other agency leaders declined our requests for interviews. We also sent the department detailed questions.

It's a lengthy transcript piece.  THE DAILY BEAST's Tom Lacthem adds:

It amounts to a sweeping indictment of the agency under Noem, 54, who was fired by Donald Trump on March 5 after a controversial 14-month run. As the Daily Beast has reported, Trump’s aides had wanted her gone for months before he finally acted, with the final straw reportedly being her insistence, under oath, that he had personally signed off on her $220 million vanity ad campaign.
The hits in the Times feature come thick and fast. A former ICE field director describes how Trump’s deputy chief of staff and immigration czar, Stephen Miller, told a room full of agency chiefs that targeting lists were irrelevant. “There is no list,” Miller said, according to the Times. “Everyone is fair game.”
One former senior ICE officer says that when agents fatally shot unarmed Minneapolis mother Renee Nicole Good on Jan. 7, 2026, Noem cleared the shooting as justified within an hour, before any investigation had taken place. The officer says the exoneration’s speed sent a message to agents in the field that they could “push the limits.”
The testimony about Noem’s arrival at the agency is withering. A former associate counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recalls her first DHS town hall, at which she entered to the theme song “Hot Mama,” spoke for a few minutes, took no questions, and left. “It felt like a South Park moment,” he told the Times.


Still on Homeland Security, Hafiz Rashid (THE NEW REPUBLIC) reports: 

An immigrant child detained by ICE with her family in Texas nearly died before receiving medical care.

The New Yorker published a long article Monday about the medical neglect of children under Trump’s draconian immigration crackdown, and the story highlights Amalia, who was detained by ICE with her parents and sent to Texas’s Dilley Immigration Processing Center in December when she was only 18 months old.

At the time, Amalia was a healthy toddler with no known issues. The water at Dilley smelled strange, so her parents, Kheilin Valero Marcano and Stiven Arrieta Prieto, bought bottled water at the center’s commissary for her, despite having no income in detention. (The article noted that nonprofit organizations who work on immigrants’ rights, such as Human Rights First and RAICIES, have found that families detained at Dilley say the water there is “unclean, foul-smelling, and causes stomachaches.”)

Marcano also said that one child found a bug in her food in the facility’s cafeteria, leading other kids not to want to eat. Not long after that, children in the facility began to fall sick, including Amalia. In January, Amalia developed a high fever, and at the facility’s clinic, Amalia was given ibuprofen and her parents were told the fever was “good, because it means she’s fighting off a virus.”

But after two weeks, the fever persisted, and Amalia started vomiting and having diarrhea. Going back to Dilley’s medical clinic didn’t help, as Marcano told The New Yorker she waited in line on eight different occasions without her concerns being addressed. Marcano at one point gave Amalia a cold bath to try to lower her temperature, only for her daughter to pass out. She went to the clinic and shouted, “Are you going to watch my baby die in my arms?”



Yesterday was April 14th, the day Pam Bondi was supposed to be deposed by the House Oversight Committee.  She did not show.   SCRIPPS NEWS SERVICE notes:


Pam Bondi could face contempt proceedings if she does not testify before the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into the federal handling of records related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Bondi did not appear for a scheduled deposition Tuesday, prompting accusations from lawmakers that she is evading a lawful congressional subpoena.

The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee issued a statement yesterday:


Washington, D.C. — Today, Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, released the following statement after former Attorney General Pam Bondi missed the scheduled date of her deposition before the Oversight Committee. Pam Bondi is attempting to evade a lawful bipartisan subpoena the Committee issued last month. The subpoena was issued following a bipartisan vote supporting a motion by Rep. Nancy Mace to subpoena, “the Honorable Pamela Jo Bondi,” and not just the Attorney General.

“Pam Bondi is evading a lawful congressional subpoena by failing to appear before the Oversight Committee for a deposition about the Epstein files and the White House cover-up. This subpoena applies to her regardless of her title. She must appear before the Committee, and if she continues to ignore the law, Oversight Democrats will move forward with contempt proceedings immediately. We will fight until there is true accountability and justice,” said Ranking Member Robert Garcia.

 
###







Bondi's not the only person garnering attention for The Epstein Scandal. 



Even in the UK, they're talking about -- and making fun of -- Melania Chump and her claims to have not been close to Epstein and Maxwell.  


President Trump said Friday that he had known his wife wanted to speak about Jeffrey Epstein at some point, and that he “thought she had a right to talk about it,” even if he had not known what exactly she planned to say.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Mr. Trump said in a brief telephone interview, referring to the remarks Melania Trump made from the entrance hall of the White House a day earlier.

“I didn’t know what the statement was,” he said, “but I knew she was going to make a statement.”


And she did.  And it did not work out how she planned if her plan was to draw a clear line between herself and Epstein and Maxwell.   Jude Cramer (FAST COMPANY) notes:

If the first lady’s associations with Epstein had recently reentered the headlines, her speech might have been understandable. But instead, her statement left many scratching their heads and pointing at her and her husband’s proven connections to Epstein, particularly the two men’s friendship in the 1990s.

It also brought renewed attention to the infamous birthday message and lewd drawing allegedly left for Epstein by Donald Trump in 2003, which read, “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.” The president has denied writing the message and sued The Wall Street Journal’s parent company for defamation after the outlet reported on the letter.




A former model who’s flown on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet and has close ties to President Donald Trump’s orbit warned late Saturday that “the truth will come out” after reportedly threatening to “tear down the entire system” by revealing insider knowledge.

That woman is Amanda Ungaro, a former Brazilian model, former ambassador to the United Nations and ex-wife of Paolo Zampolli, Trump’s special envoy and longtime friend. The New York Times reported last month that Zampolli successfully pushed Trump in 2025 to deport Ungaro, then his ex-wife.

Now, Ungaro is vowing revenge.

“Now it’s war,” Ungano told the Spanish news outlet El País in its report published Saturday night.

“We’ll see who wins. I kept quiet for years, and that’s why people are judging me. ‘Why are you speaking out now?’ they ask. ‘Because the guy wouldn’t let me live in peace!’”

Last week, an account on social media apparently belonging to Ungaro issued a series of threats directed at First Lady Melania Trump, vowing to “expose everything I know.” The threats were later suspected to be the potential motivation for the first lady’s surprise statement last week in which she denied having had a relationship with Epstein.


Amanda Ungaro?  When Melania made her statement last week, many said she was acting like someone trying to get out ahead of some news that would be breaking.  It appears to have broken.  QUEERTY notes:

It all starts with a story in the New York Times about a longtime Tr*mp friend who asked ICE to detain the mother of his child so he could win a custody battle that flew under the radar recently.

Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent and current presidential envoy, reached out to a top ICE official when he learned his ex, Amanda Ungaro, had been arrested on fraud charges in Florida.
Ungaro first arrived in New York as a 17-year-old model on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane in 2002. Later that year, she met Zampolli at a Manhattan night club. They entered into a relationship, had a kid together, but never married, and eventually broke up in 2023.

According to documents, Zampolli told the ICE agent that Ungaro was in the country illegally, and asked if she could taken into custody, hoping her detainment would help him win custody of the couple’s teenage son.

“The [ICE] official, David Venturella, promptly called the agency’s Miami office to ensure that ICE agents would pick up [Ungaro] from the jail before she was released on bail,” reports the Times.

OK, but what does this have to do with Melania?

Well, Zampolli is credited with bringing the future FLOTUS to the United States when she was a model in Slovenia, as well as with introducing her to Tr*mp at the Kit-Kat Club in 1998, a story that she referenced Thursday.

[. . .]

Then this week, Ungaro–or at least someone claiming to be her–started posting veiled threats towards Melania and fired AG Pam Bondi.

Though Ungaro doesn’t directly reference Epstein, the implication is apparent, especially after Melania’s remarks yesterday.

On top of that, Ungaro apparently taped an interview with a TV station in Spain that’s slated to air this weekend. 







Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:

Text of Letter (PDF)

Washington, D.C. — As President Trump’s war in Iran drives up food costs for American families and small businesses, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Minority Leader Schumer (D-N.Y.) led a group of four senators in pressing the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to crack down on food and agriculture companies engaging in grocery price fixing. The senators pressed the administration to lower costs for Americans by taking action to stop anticompetitive practices in the food supply chain and predatory pricing behavior, including breaking up illegal monopolies.

Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) signed onto the letter, which comes as oil, fertilizer, and other costs continue to surge as President Trump’s war in Iran continues into its seventh week — making the need for action even more urgent.

In December 2025, President Trump issued an executive order purportedly aimed at investigating “price fixing and anti-competitive behavior in the food supply chain.”

“[T]he Administration has yet to take any meaningful action to tackle consolidation and bring down food and farm input prices, which continue to squeeze farmers, small businesses, and consumers…Now, more than ever, it is time for the Administration to get serious about addressing these problems,” wrote the senators.

Despite President Trump’s promises to bring down prices “on Day One,” Americans saw their grocery bills rise faster than overall inflation last year, leading them to pay an average of $310 more for groceries compared to 2024. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz due to Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran has effectively halted the shipment of one third of global fertilizer supplies, leading to higher fertilizer prices for farmers that are expected to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher grocery prices.

Instead of working to lower costs, the Trump administration has undermined antitrust enforcement in the food and agricultural industries, including by forcing out the DOJ’s top antitrust official and closing the FTC’s investigation into surveillance pricing even after an initial report found that retailers frequently use people’s personal data to tailor prices for goods and services.

“Excessive consolidation and anticompetitive practices by dominant firms are also major drivers of these price increases,” wrote the senators.

Consolidation in the fertilizer and seed markets, which are similarly dominated by just a handful of companies, are also driving up prices for farmers and American families. Giant food retailers and suppliers continue to engage in exclusionary contracting practices (such as slotting fees, category captain arrangements, and volume-based rebates) and discrimination.

The senators called for the DOJ and FTC to take the following specific actions to take on retailers’ and suppliers’ anticompetitive practices:

  • Crack down on violations of antitrust laws by giant corporations in the meatpacking, seed, fertilizer, and farm equipment sectors, including by breaking up these dominant companies;
  • Scrutinize and, where appropriate, block anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions in the food and agricultural sectors; and
  • Issue enforcement guidance on potential violations of the Robinson-Patman Act and investigate and take enforcement action where merited.

The senators also called on the FTC to:

  • Pursue rulemaking and enforcement action to tackle exclusionary contracting practices by corporations; and
  • Reopen its investigation into surveillance pricing and new rules and enforcement actions to address exploitative surveillance and dynamic pricing practices.

The lawmakers pressed for answers by April 27, 2026.

###




The following sites updated:



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