7/07/2026

living forever (and general hospital)

colum motherway ('extra.ie') reports:

A millionaire who has spent a large amount of his fortune on anti-ageing has been diagnosed with an incurable disease.

Bryan Johnson, a tech entrepreneur famous for spending nearly $2million (€1.75m) a year to reverse ageing, revealed last week that he has been hit with a devastating health battle.

The millionaire shared that he has been diagnosed with autoimmune gastritis (AIG), a rare condition in which the body’s immune system attacks the stomach lining.

The 48-year-old revealed the news on X, writing that his ‘stomach is eating itself’.

Johnson warned that the illness affects approximately 2 to 5% of people, often developing silently to lead to iron deficiency, anaemia and an increased risk of stomach cancer if left undetected.

He wrote: ‘I’m going to try and solve it. Will share all.


and still he's trying to live forever.


i don't want to live forever.  i don't want to die tomorrow but i'm not some 1 who wants to reach 100 or more.  


'general hospital'?  monday's episode? i watched that today.


dante went to see britt.  he's an ass who doesn't believe she loves rocco.  he believes she thinks she loves rocco.  no 1 has told britt yet that she doesn't have hunington's.  lucas goes to visit her to tell her that ross lied to her.  but, britt says, when she didn't take the medicine, she got worse.  lucas told her it was saline and that her mind convinced her that she had it.  she got very angry.  lucas left and called lisel to tell her to visit her daughter.  

lucas spoke to josslyn.  she told him that she lied to him and manipulated him.  when carly was telling him not to move in with marco at sidwell's, she only took his side so she could have an in at sidwell's and be able to visit without raising suspicions.  would she, lucas asked, do it again?


she said yeah, she would.

nina visited jack and told him he couldn't leave the hospital yet. he wasn't healthy enough.  a wsb agent came in and told jack the same and said he'd need to debrief jack at some point in the near future.  he then said he was glad nina was there because he needed to tell her something.


charlotte and lulu were talking.  charlotte mentioned her father.  and let slip that she'd seen him.  then she explained that he came to port charles immediately after he broke free from the wsb.  charlotte doesn't give up carly but lulu's demanding to know where he was staying and who else was in on it.


danny is trying to shame rocco into going to the wsb and admitting he shot ross so that they will let jason (danny's father free).  rocco says he promised britt that he wouldn't and then danny starts telling him off.  as he gets louder, charlotte and lulu come out.  lulu tells danny that rocco is not telling any 1 that he shot ross.

danny leaves.  lulu wants to know how danny found out and charlotte tells her mother that she overheard lulu talking to her mother (laura) and she felt danny had a right to know so she told him.


lulu says that rocco's staying at the house because dante is on the way over but she and charlotte are going to the hospital because lulu's 1/2 brother ethan got shot.


the wsb guy tells nina that cassius is dead.  


danny goes to the hospital and wants to talk to jack about who shot ross.


lisel talks to britt.  britt is outraged that she was tricked into doing all of that illegal work for ross and sidwell due to their lying that she had a disease.  as she rages, lisel smiles and finally points out that this is great news, it means britt is going to live.  nina comes up to britta's cell and tells lisel and britt that the wsb just told her that cassius died. 


carly's been having it out with q (john oliver in a guest role) over josslyn getting out of the wsb.  she bumps into sonny in the parking lot.


charlotte and lulu pull up.  they're arguing.  they get out of the car.


a black suv pulls up.  cassadine gets out of it and runs to carly.  they hug and kiss as sonny watches and as charlotte watches and as lulu watches (and it's clear that lulu is piecing together who was helping charlotte see her father - carly). 


i noted yesterday:


joslyn agreed to protect the wsb by lying and pinning the blame on 'nathan' (cassius) who apparently died (i wouldn't sign off on that) so the the world doesn't know ross, a wsb leader, was a double agent. 

i was right not to sign off on cassius being dead.  q goes into a room and there's cassius.  q tells him he's taking the fall and ross is going to be portrayed as a hero.  he can remain in a wsb holding site or he can go to work for the wsb. 


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


Tuesday, July 7, 2026. The Iran War continues, Chump's failures continue, what's going on with Mitch McConnell and Graham Platner, and much more.


Ben (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) notes this morning more clashes in the Strait of Hormuz. 



Eric Schmitt and Qasim Nauman (NEW YORK TIMES) note:


Strikes on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz presented another test of the fragile cease-fire between the United States and Iran, as President Trump flew on Tuesday to a NATO summit where discussions about the war were expected.

Iranian missiles hit two ships in the strait, but there were no casualties, a U.S. official said late Monday Eastern time.

According to a notice issued early on Tuesday by United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a monitoring center led by the British navy, the crew of a tanker off the coast of Oman reported a strike by an unidentified projectile, which caused a fire on the vessel.

The report did not identify the tanker or its cargo, and said that no casualties or environmental effects were reported. The tanker was near the eastern mouth of the strait when it was hit, according to the report.

So, yes, the war goes on. The war Chump started.  The war that's destroying the economy.  


A new Financial Times poll has added to a growing body of evidence that Americans don’t want President Donald Trump’s war in Iran. The survey, conducted between June 26 and June 30 among 1,795 registered voters, found that 58% believed the conflict was not worth the cost. The same study found that 44% believe the war has strengthened America's position against Iran and put Trump’s approval rating at just 36%.

The data also showed that independents were most likely to withdraw their support for the president over the war.

Tom Boggioni (RAW STORY) reports on one of Chump's grift.  This one is the jet he took from the Qatari government.  The one worth over $400 million.  He took it despite the fact that he's not supposd to.  And he's announced that when he leaves office, the plane will be coming with him.  Members of Congress may say otherwise.  Bogginoni notes:


The problem for Trump runs deeper than just congressional opposition. The aircraft, valued at roughly $400 million and upgraded with an additional $400 million in taxpayer-funded military communications and safety equipment, follows strict protocols for military aircraft retirement.
"There is standard protocol for retiring military aircraft—first and foremost there are no more military requirements for it," Doug Birkey, executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told the Journal.

So the American people had to spend $400 million on this plane and Chump thinks he's going to leave with it?   He does nothing but waste tax payer money.  Another example, Erkki Forster (THE DAILY BEAST) reports:

President Donald Trump has added nearly $1 million to the price tag of his new helipad as he races to finish the project before a coveted guest arrives.

Construction crews began tearing up the iconic White House South Lawn last week to install a landing pad, the latest chapter in Trump’s unprecedented makeover of the People’s House.

The 80-year-old president appears to be in a hurry to get the $13 million project done.

Clark Construction, the contractor handling the construction of the helipad, was told in a last-minute directive from the government to wrap up work no later than Sept. 17, The Washington Post reports, citing documents related to the project.

The new deadline cut more than a month from the original timeline and drove up the cost by $875,000, according to the Post.

The government’s directive came days after Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit the White House on Sept. 24. Trump extended the invitation during his May trip to Beijing, where he groveled to Xi, declaring his “respect” for the authoritarian leader and telling him, “You’re a great leader.”

The South Lawn is traditionally where the White House welcomes its most prestigious foreign visitors. 


It was already bad enough that he was kissing Xi Jinping's butt but now he's spending an extra million of our dollars in order to try to impress Jinping?  


Senate Republican leaders are delivering dire warnings about upcoming midterms, as President Donald Trump's approval ratings plummet amid an anti-incumbent wave.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-SC) warned colleagues privately that Republicans are underperforming in the polls, and the president is losing support from all groups, reports Alexander Bolton for The Hill.

Senate Conference Chair Tom Cotton (R-AR) presented polling data showing independents fleeing the GOP in "significant numbers" toward Democrats, leaving attendees "visibly shaken."

Former Republican pollster Whit Ayres explained, "We know that the party in power tends to lose House seats in a midterm election, but the number of seats lost is highly correlated with the president’s popularity."


In addition, Tom Boggioni (RAW STORY) reports:


The "cavalry" isn't arriving, and Republicans are freaking out, according to a new report.

With the midterm election four months away, GOP candidates and their campaign advisers expressed alarm that Donald Trump shows no inclination to spend the approximately $350 million sitting in his MAGA Inc. super PAC. While the money is there, Trump may not deploy it, according to Politico.

"We've beenwaiting for the cavalry," one campaign consultant told Politico, summing up the Republican desperation in five words.

A GOP lobbyist and donor laid out the strategic case bluntly: "We didn't leave our most powerful missiles on the ships when we were trying to crush Iran. Money is the political equivalent in politics. The electorate's mindset on the economy is normally locked in stone by Labor Day after a summer of backyard conversations and paying for summer vacation gas. Now is the time to sell the message."

But Trump hasn't been selling anything, Politico reported.

"MAGA Inc., hasn’t spent directly on a race since March, when it spent $17,900.88 to support Rep. Clay Fuller’s campaign for his House seat in Georgia," the report noted.


Chump is doing nothing to help the Republicans with re-election.  The bipartisan housing bill?  He refuses to sign it and says he's not singing anything until his SAVE AMERICA ACT makes it through Congress.  Thomas Kika reports:

Republican lawmakers are increasingly fed up with President Donald Trump's insistence on pushing for a doomed voting reform bill, with some telling MS NOW that he should drop the idea because the math behind it just "don't work."

The SAVE America Act has emerged as one of Trump's biggest legislative goals in the last year, verging on an obsession. If signed into law, it would require Americans to produce documents proving their citizenship status, like a birth certificate or passport, when registering to vote, among other provisions, like a rollback of mail-in voting. The bill was drafted largely as a response to Trump's long-debunked claims about non-citizens committing widespread voter fraud.

Despite passing in the House multiple times, the SAVE Act has stalled out in the face of the Senate's 60-vote filibuster threshold, with across-the-board opposition from Democrats sinking any hope of it prevailing. GOP leaders in the chamber have repeatedly told the president that the votes for the bill just do not exist, and they are also unwilling to nuke the filibuster as it currently is to get around the problem, putting them in a heated stalemate with Trump.

Now, in an MS NOW report from Monday morning, some Republicans are venting about how fed up they are becoming with the ordeal, including noted Trump critics, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska.

“He wants to go it alone, his way to the highway, and it don’t work,” Bacon told the outlet. “He’s trying to pound the square peg through the circle, and it doesn’t work.”



Steve Bennen (MS NOW) notes:


Ahead of the July Fourth holiday, there were some reports that Donald Trump might help celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial by issuing 250 pardons. That hasn’t yet happened, though the day before Independence Day, the president did sign a new batch of pardons that were controversial in their own right. The New York Times reported:

The White House announced on Friday that President Trump had issued pardons to 11 men, most of whom had been convicted of crimes related to the Clean Air Act, a bedrock environmental law.

The president also pardoned Adam Kidan, a major donor to Republicans, including Mr. Trump. He had served about two and a half years in prison for his role in a fraud scheme involving the disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

By way of his social media platform, Trump boasted about some of the pardons, writing, “It is my Great Honor to have just signed Pardons for six people who were persecuted by the Biden Administration, and were in, or being sent to, prison, for ‘fixing their car.’ While I know this sounds ridiculous, it is nevertheless a fact, and part of the Weaponization and Stupidity that our Country had to endure during four long years of Sleepy Joe Biden. I AM SETTING THEM ALL FREE, RIGHT NOW!”

None of this reflected reality. The men the president referred to weren’t convicted of auto repairs; they were convicted of selling or installing truck devices designed to help them pollute more and circumvent the Clean Air Act. What Trump described as “a fact” wasn’t factual in the slightest.

For that matter, the Republican characterizing enforcement of environmental laws as “weaponization” suggests that he’s effectively rewritten the definition of the word. It now means “punishing people for committing crimes I like.”

Margo Oge, a former director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality at the Environmental Protection Agency, told The Washington Post, “These pardons don’t just forgive a paperwork violation — they reward people who ran businesses stripping pollution controls off diesel trucks for profit. She added that the devices “released far more nitrogen oxides, which worsen asthma and drive up heart attacks and hospitalizations. … That’s the protection these individuals were undermining — clean air we breathe.”


Rachel Maddow provided her perspective on Chump's Fourth of July last night on MS NOW.



Let's note some other commentary on Chump's failed fair.






Let's go back to Congress.  Catie Edmondson (NEW YORK TIMES) reports:


Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the former majority leader, was hospitalized on June 14. Since then, his office has provided few updates about his condition.

The scant official statements have led to speculation around Washington and efforts to piece together information on what happened.


We are seven days short of a month since McConnell had his health crisis.  The American people have a right to know what's going on.  Now let's move over to the junkyard fire that is Graham Platner's senate campaign.  Graham has been championed by so many.  They were often the same ones who championed John Fetterman a few years back when he ran for Senate.  And they attacked those who questioned Fetterman.  They did the same with Platner.  Taylor Lorenz and the rest of the whores.  

Today on MS NOW's MORNING JOE, they covered the latest. 




He's now accused of assault, of rape. Bayliss Wagner (NEW YORK TIMES) notes:

Jenny Racicot, who accused Graham Platner of sexual assault in an interview published in Politico on Monday, detailed her recollection of the alleged attack in an extended interview with the CNN host Jake Tapper that aired on Monday evening.

She said that Mr. Platner had drunkenly assaulted her at her home in 2021, and she described the encounter as rape. Detailing the violent struggle that she said took place, she recounted that a sewing cabinet had been knocked over, causing a needle to be stuck in her leg.

“This is something that I tried for many years to forget,” Ms. Racicot said.

Mr. Platner, 41, called all allegations of nonconsensual behavior “categorically false” in a video posted on social media on Monday.

Ms. Racicot, 41, said that she met Mr. Platner on a dating app in 2019 and found him “intelligent” and “charming,” but that he also self-medicated with alcohol.  

Elaine noted last night:

This latest revelation has left people calling for him to step down and one-time supporters announcing they are no longer endorsing him.  

US House Rep Ro Khanna has withdrawn his endorsement and called for Platner to drop out of the race.  Senator  Ruben Gallego has also pulled his endorsement.  Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand withdrew their support and the support of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee which they are leader and chair of.  Senator Martin Heinrich says Platner "should step aside." 

You didn't want to listen earlier.  You didn't want to listen when there were already enough warning signs.  


This morning, Lisa Lerer and Katie Glueck (THE NEW YORK TIMES) report:


By Tuesday morning, it was clear the party had turned against him. Officials from the Democratic Senate campaign arm and an aligned super PAC — the most powerful engines of the party’s infrastructure — urged him to withdraw, and top party leaders in Maine called on him to abandon his bid.

“With so much at stake, the best path forward is for Graham Platner to step aside as the Democratic nominee and address these serious allegations outside this Senate race,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, who had campaigned with Mr. Platner and championed his bid.

Her withdrawal of support was a major blow to Mr. Platner, underscoring how even the left wing of the party was pulling away from him.

In a private call with his campaign staff on Monday evening, Mr. Platner did not announce plans to withdraw but implied such a decision would be coming, according to three people familiar with the conversation. He said that he believed he still had leverage to influence which candidate would replace him on the ticket and wanted to ensure that the movement his campaign had built would continue, the people said.

One thing that would be really helpful?  If people stopped pimping and protecting candidates.  When you have to use all your times to defend someone due to tattoos, due to comments made online, due to women coming forward, at that point, you might want to grasp that your personal savior has a problem and stop attacking those noting reality.  


But Taylor Lorenz and others use their platforms to pimp their desired candidate and attack the rest.  She's attacked Jasmine Crockett non-stop, for example.  Even though Taylor's hand picked won the primary, she has continued to attack Crockett.  She's not concerned how it looks, a White entitled woman attacking a Black woman.  She's not concerned how it sounds.  She just goes in for the kill day after day after day.  And Crockett supporters do not trust her.  


And that's what you whore away when you can't play fair.  


Let's wind down with this from Senator Ron Wyden's office:


Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley today wrote Gov. Tina Kotek’s data center advisory committee to convey concerns both senators have heard from Oregonians as the state panel works on solutions that balance data centers’ economic benefits with their financial impacts on utility consumers and environmental impacts on entire communities.

“Thank you for coming together to tackle the challenges posed by the rapid expansion of data centers in Oregon,” Wyden and Merkley wrote committee members. While we acknowledge that data centers are critical to American national security, can help ensure technological advancement, and create good union jobs, your work to strike a balance between pursuing economic development opportunities in alignment with sustainable utility costs and environmental impacts is critical for Oregon and the Northwest. Several issues have been raised by constituents regarding responsible data center development with our offices, ranging from local to state to federal jurisdiction.”

The Oregon senators asked the state data center advisory committee to consider the following concerns that accompany the growth of data centers around the state:

  • Increasing energy demand to power and cool equipment.
  • Increasing electricity costs for consumers because of increased demand.
  • Water quality and quantity issues because of data centers’ use of large water volumes from surface, ground, municipal or reclaimed water sources to cool servers and prevent overheating.
  • Visibility issues from steam, and noise pollution from cooling systems and fans.
  • Land use decisions dealing with the rezoning of productive agricultural land.
  • Tribal rights and consultation that respect treaty rights, including rights to hunt, fish, and gather food and medicine.
  • Transparency and public accountability that reflect community concerns about environmental and infrastructure impacts that data centers can present for future energy and water needs, as well as impacts to utilities and municipal services.

Wyden is a cosponsor of the AI Environmental Impacts Act and has pressed Google, Apple, Meta, and Amazon for answers about the impact of their data centers on water usage. He is also developing legislation to ensure that data centers pay their fair share in taxes to address the various stresses they create on local infrastructure.

“We are grateful for your work to embody the ‘Oregon way’ to hear from all perspectives and chart a path forward,” Wyden and Merkley wrote the data center advisory committee. “We stand ready to partner with you on data center policies best for Oregon.”

The entire letter is here.


Kat's "Kat's Korner: Madonna's homage to survival" went up last night and the following sites -- plus Rebecca's "accountability for 1 j-6-er (and general hospital)" -- updated:


7/06/2026

accountability for 1 j-6-er (and general hospital)

A federal judge rejected a motion to dismiss the criminal charges against the man accused of planting pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, finding that President Trump's sweeping pardons of the rioters were "expressly limited" to those who were convicted of their actions that day. 

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali denied a motion by lawyers for Brian Cole Jr. arguing his actions were "inextricably and demonstrably tethered" to the events of Jan. 6 and should be dismissed. 

Cole's legal team pointed to filings by prosecutors that said Cole had told the FBI he had traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend a 2020 election-related protest, which suggested he was part of "the same political controversy that animated the January 6 crowd." And they noted that even though the bombs were allegedly planted on Jan. 5, they were discovered on the following afternoon. 

"The Pardon—like it or not—applies to Mr. Cole, based on the ordinary and plain meaning of the Pardon's language as applied to the relevant facts in this case," Cole's lawyers wrote. 

In court filings, the Justice Department argued the pardon explicitly does not cover Cole's alleged conduct, which Ali agreed with. 


good.  1 less crazy getting a pass via chump's outrageous pardons.


'general hospital'?  haven't watched today's yet.  did catch friday's.  had to travel to be with family but i could have written about it.  i didn't because i wasn't that into it.


instead of picking up from the day before's episode, they made it at least 24 hours later.  


joslyn agreed to protect the wsb by lying and pinning the blame on 'nathan' (cassius) who apparently died (i wouldn't sign off on that) so the the world doesn't know ross, a wsb leader, was a double agent.  in exchange, jason and cassadine will be released by the wsb.  molly took charlotte and danny to the wsb to talk about getting in contact with their fathers (cassadine and jason) and charlotte and danny kept straying from the agreed upon script and letting the wsb agent know that they knew much more about what happened.

carly spent the entire episode attempting to see her daughter josslyn.  and didn't get to.  lucas did.  


lisel visited britt in jjail and told her that they had no relationship because time and again britt had refused to trust her - she didn't even tell her that nathan was really cassius.


danny told his father off when he found out that britt was arrested because of dante.  lulu at one point told him that she knew that when danny declared he cared about britt. 


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


Monday, July 6, 2026.  Jeffrey Epstein is popping up all over the news cycle, Chump's Fourth was a failure, and his corruption gets more attention. 

Ben (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) walks us through Chump's latest social media meltdown. 



Starting with Chump's friend Jeffrey Epstein, this morning Shirsho Dasgupta (MIAMI HERALD) reports

In the months leading up to Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest on federal sex trafficking charges on July 6, 2019, a small U.S. Virgin Islands bank he owned that had employed no one and laid dormant for years suddenly came alive. 
A flurry of transactions totaling more than $20 million passed through the bank named Southern Country International from April to early July that year, according to a Miami Herald investigation based on the recently released documents by the U.S. Justice Department.
And months after the disgraced financier was found dead in a Manhattan detention facility on Aug. 10, an additional $25 million was moved through Southern Country, with roughly a quarter of that amount coming from unspecified sources. Southern Country ended 2019 with less than $500,000, leading Virgin Islands prosecutors who later sued Epstein’s estate to question in court where nearly $13 million the bank held in mid-December 2019 went in two weeks, according to the New York Times. 
U.S. federal and local Virgin Islands investigators had also jointly opened a wire fraud probe in 2020 into the mysterious transfer of $15 million to Southern Country from an Epstein account at Deutsche Bank in New York the day after the convicted sex offender died.
 
 No employees.  And it moved millions after Epstein died.  After he died.  


Jeffrey Epstein’s links to corporate America may have been broader and more costly than investors might think.

More than one in eight directors who served on S&P 500 boards between 2006 and 2026 appeared in the Epstein files, according to a new study, Him Too? Analysing the Effects of Epstein Connections.

Strikingly, much of the contact took place after Epstein’s 2008 conviction.

The study finds that Epstein acted as an important bridge between powerful people, creating a much more interconnected corporate world than would have existed without him, especially in the financial and technology sectors.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, boards with Epstein-linked directors had more ESG (environmental, social and governance) incidents. These declined sharply after those directors left or died, suggesting “tainted” directors played a direct role in companies’ ethical and legal problems.

As for investors, the key moment came when these links were made public following the release of the Epstein files in early 2026. 



Howard Lutnick isn't just the Secretary of Commerce, he's also a former buddy of Jeffrey Epstein's -- a detail that the American people refuse to forget.  Alexander Willis (RAW STORY) notes:

Posting on the social media platform X, Lutnick shared a single image of who appears to be President Donald Trump holding up the Trump Gold Card, which officially launched in September, costs between $1 million and $5 million, and grants holders permanent resident status and a pathway to full U.S. citizenship.

“If only they cared half as much about justice for Epstein's victims,” wrote MeidasTouch co-founder Brett Meiselas in response, a reminder of Epstein survivors' outrage at the Trump administration’s Justice Department for mistakenly exposing their identities, as well as the lack of prosecutions for potential Epstein co-conspirators.

Katie Phang is part of MEIDASTOUCH and she brought a law suit against the Dept of Justice over their refusal to release all of the Epstein Files as the Congress had ordered.  A judge ruled on the lawsuit and Katie won.  NEWSBREAK notes:

The Justice Department is pushing back against a federal judge’s demand for additional disclosure in the Jeffrey Epstein files case, setting up a new test of a transparency law signed by President Donald Trump.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan had ordered DOJ to produce less-redacted versions of certain Epstein-related materials or explain why the information could not be made public. Instead, Associate U.S. Attorney General Stanley Woodward asked the court to delay the deadline by 60 days or accept DOJ’s explanation that its redactions were proper, ABC News reported.

The dispute puts the Trump Administration’s Justice Department in conflict with the public-release mandate Congress passed in the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The law, approved Nov. 19, 2025, requires the attorney general to release documents and records in DOJ possession relating to Epstein. The White House said Trump signed H.R. 4405, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, into law that same day.


Katie Phang blasts the Justice Dept for its refusal to follow the rule of law.



Daniel Hampston (RAW STORY) notes a new accusation in the Epstein scandals:

A former beauty queen who says Donald Trump groped her at a 1993 pageant has leveled a new claim at the president's first wife, alleging Ivana Trump helped funnel young women into Jeffrey Epstein's orbit.

Beatrice Keul, 55, a former Miss Switzerland and Miss Europe contestant, told the Daily Beast's new Punch Up Substack that she believes Ivana acted as a "madam"-style figure in Epstein's social world, on par with his convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

In the final part of a three-part interview, Keul said she believes "Ivana played a major role in this whole cosmos, bringing in women in the same way as Maxwell."


Could it be true?  It very well could be.  Epstein's sex trafficking involved many recruiters.  He was highly resourceful.  Ethan Young and Jasmine Ni (THE DAILY PENNSYLVAINAN) report on a woman who went to the University of Pennsylvania with the understanding that she would be recruiting women for Epstein:

In the fall of 2013, hundreds of students entered the doors of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School for the first time. One of them — an Austrian woman — arrived with requests from Jeffrey Epstein to recruit women on campus for his sex trafficking operation, according to recently released documents. 

The billionaire financier pursued a yearslong relationship with the woman, influencing both her decision to attend Penn and her year on campus pursuing a Master of Laws degree, according to messages in the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice and reviewed by The Daily Pennsylvanian. 


Let's move over to Chump's corruption that netted him over 2,000,000,000.00 dollars last year alone.  Last Thursday, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent declared to CBS' Kelly O'Grady, "I don't think there's an appearance problem."  He is wrong, so wrong.  Ryan Mancini (THE HILL) reports:


Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) on Sunday said there “is something wrong” with President Trump making $1 billion in cryptocurrency.

“I do have an issue with some of the ways that we’ve now seen how we deal with cryptocurrency,” Moore said on “Fox News Sunday” with host Shannon Bream. “The President of the United States has made more money on crypto than crypto companies in the past year.”


And it was the first segment on ABC's THIS WEEK on Sunday:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC “THIS WEEK” ANCHOR:  Two hundred and fifty years later, that system is under stress, tested by a president determined to wield power and buck norms in a way his predecessors did not. Perhaps most brazenly, this week, President Trump’s financial disclosure forms revealed that he collected more than $2 billion in revenues during the first year of his second term from investments in some industries he regulates, fueled in part by payments from foreign powers and a steady steam of -- stream of stock trading, including stakes in companies he promotes.

The president and his team insists this is not a conflict of interest. Democratic critics and many ethical experts disagree. One thing is certain, no other American president has ever acted this way or amassed money like this while holding the supreme office of public trust.

Jay O’Brien starts us off.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAY O'BRIEN, CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This week, the money Donald Trump has made since returning to the White House coming into clearer focus, staggering profits unprecedented for an American president. New, mandatory financial disclosure forms, released by the Office of Government Ethics, show Trump reported making at least $2.2 billion last year, triple what he earned in 2024, before the start of his second term.

MEGAN GORMAN, TAX ATTORNEY & AUTHOR, 'ALL THE PRESIDENTS; MONEY': What we’ve not seen is someone who is proactively growing their wealth while president.

O’BRIEN (voice over): Money making on an historic scale, says Megan Gorman, who chronicled presidential wealth in her book “All the President’s Money.”

O’BRIEN: Have you ever seen a president make money on this scale while in the White House?

GORMAN: I’ve never seen a situation where someone has been proactive like this.

O’BRIEN (voice over): Trump pointing to the stock market to explain his gains.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don’t get involved in my personal. We have funds that run my money.

REPORTER: To critics who say you’re profiting off the presidency. Mr. President.

TRUMP: Well, you know why I’m profiting? Because the stock market’s going up. Everybody’s profiting.

O’BRIEN (voice over): But the more than 900 pages show a Trump family business empire that’s expanded alongside the president’s time in office, extending from real estate holdings, to merchandise, to the biggest recent profit driver, cryptocurrency. Trump raking in upwards of $1.4 billion from crypto ventures alone last year. According to the documents, more than 630 million in profits came via the president’s meme coin, the sales of which generate revenue for Trump and his family, even as the value of the coin itself has plummeted from a high of $74, just before Trump was inaugurated, to trading under $2 today. An analysis found that nearly a million people who have invested in Trump’s meme coin lost a combined $3.8 billion.

TIM MASSAD, HARBARD KENNEDY SCHOOL FELLOW & FORMER CFTC CHAIR: Investors who bought the coin, many of them have suffered losses. Think of it like a baseball card. I

think a lot of people bought it who may simply like the present, wanted to support the president. I think there are others who bought it to try to buy influence.

O'BRIEN (voice over): The other big dollar crypto profits coming from World Liberty Financial, a firm founded by Trump’s family and that of his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, which the disclosures show earned Trump well north of $500 million last year. World Liberty Financial has brokered a series of controversial overseas deals, including accepting a half a billion dollar investment just days before Trump’s second inauguration from Shaykh Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who heads the United Arab Emirates’ state investment fund and serves as national security advisor. Months later, the Trump administration approved something the Sheikh and others in the UAE had long coveted, the sale of hundreds of thousands of cutting-edge American artificial intelligence chips. A spokesman for World Liberty Financial later telling ABC News, quote, “any claim that this deal had anything to do with the administration’s actions on chips is 100 percent false.

But through that deal, in a flurry of branded real estate projects, Trump made roughly $300 million from the Middle East alone according to the disclosures, more than any other region in the world. And the president’s crypto profits coming as the industry itself has teetered. Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, losing over half of its value since last October.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We’re going to be the undisputed crypto capital and bitcoin superpower of the world.

O’BRIEN (voice over): At the same time, his family crypto business is flourished, Trump, who once said bitcoin, quote, “seems like a scam,” now promising to be the most crypto friendly president in history, rolling back enforcement of the industry, something crypto advocates argued was necessary to prevent overregulation.

O’BRIEN: As someone who was intimately involved in this kind of enforcement, what do you make of a president personally profiting off of an industry that he also has his administration regulating?

MASSAD: I think it’s absolutely reprehensible. We’ve never seen a president do anything like this, to my knowledge.

O’BRIEN (voice over): In a statement, White House Spokesperson Anna Kelly saying, “neither the president, nor his family, has ever engaged or will ever engage in conflicts of interest.” And the White House repeatedly insisting the president only acts in the best interest of the American people, and pointing out that President Trump’s assets are in a trust, but not a traditional blind trust run by a third party. Instead, one managed by his children.

TRUMP: Well, I don’t do anything having to do with my business. My kids run it. My son, Eric, handles it. I don’t talk to him about things such as this.

O’BRIEN (voice over): Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., have invested in a flurry of ventures that could also have business before their father’s administration, from military drones, to Donald Trump Jr.’s investment in a company seeking to sell guns through the mail, to mining. Both of Trump’s sons have repeatedly disputed their father is involved in any of their business dealings. Donald Trump Jr. saying this at a summit in Saudi Arabia last year.

DONALD TRUMP JR., TRUMP ORGANIZATION EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT: We understand we’re outside of government, obviously, but over the last ten years we’ve been embroiled in it. We’ve been in that fight. We understand what the administration wants to do because we helped craft some of that messaging. So, we can be on the outside but still have that understanding of what they plan to do. And that’s logical.

O’BRIEN (voice over): The new financial disclosures also shedding light on the stock trades made by the president’s financial advisors on his behalf. More than 21,000 last year, earning Trump a stake in some 1,600 companies, many of which are directly involved in deals tied to the administration.

On April 8th of last year, over 300 trades of various securities made on Trump’s behalf, just a day before he announced a surprise pause on the sweeping tariffs he had unveiled a week earlier. Trump has said he’s not directly involved in trades made on his behalf. All of the documents made public just as the president took his new Air Force One for its inaugural flight this week, a $400 million gift from Qatar, which some legal experts and Democrats charge could violate the Constitution’s prohibition on federal officials taking gifts from foreign countries.

White House staffers posting pictures inside, showing off the plane’s large rooms. To serve as the president’s personal aircraft, the jet also retrofitted by the Pentagon, estimated to cost hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

TRUMP: It will cost very little relative to what it would cost if we did it a different way.

O’BRIEN (voice over): And while Trump has called the plane a gift for the country, the jet is subject to a highly unusual arrangement that will transfer its ownership to Trump’s presidential library, not to the next commander in chief, when he leaves office.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O’BRIEN (on camera): And, George, while the president and vice president aren’t subject to the same ethics laws as other members of the administration or even members of Congress, Democrats are promising that if they take back the House come November, they’ll use the power of the legislative branch to investigate President Trump’s family business dealings and hold him accountable if necessary.

The corruption is mind boggling, the amount massive.  Chump is corrupt.  Matthew Chapman (RAW STORY) notes:

Nobel Prize-winning economist turned political analyst Paul Krugman ran over the latest numbers on just how many people fell for President Donald Trump's self-enrichment scams — and came up with an astonishing figure.

This follows a New York Times report that details the losses to investors from Trump's cryptocurrency "meme coin" issued around his second inauguration.

That report estimated a loss of $3.8 billion — but more than that, Krugman noted, "even more surprising is the number of people who were in effect suckers here — almost a million. That’s really amazing."


On MS NOW's WAY TOO EARLY today, Chump's Fourth of July disasters were noted.



Chump's state fair was a huge flop -- just like his presidency.  Erica L. Green (NEW YORK TIMES) notes

The celebration of the 250th anniversary of America’s independence was marked with the pomp and outsize circumstance that President Trump promised, and throughout it he paid homage to the person he cast as an embodiment of patriotism: himself.

Mr. Trump capped off the weekslong celebration with a speech on Saturday night on the National Mall, where he praised those who founded the country and shed blood fighting for it. But as he had in virtually every other commemoration speech, he couldn’t help but dwell on his own battles and portray the state of the union as stronger than ever under his leadership.

“Unlike so many others in the world, in this country we have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal justice under the law — although I wasn’t treated that well,” Mr. Trump said. “But we won’t get into that.”

“We had the American dream,” he added. “We never had the American dream, however, like we have it right now.”


Before our own eyes, we saw Chump fail, miserably fail.  We saw the waste of taxpayer money.  We saw Chump's inability to plan a fair, we heard his lies.  Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes:

The sky is actually falling at the Great American State Fair.

The stage for Freedom 250’s July Fourth celebration fell apart during rehearsals Thursday, with a large component of the structure’s ceiling falling roughly two stories down and landing behind a group of dancers and musicians. Miraculously, no one appeared injured.

Online commenters were quick to flame the stage’s apparently dangerous construction.

“That’s what happens when you don’t consider merit in hiring,” wrote one X user.

“This is why you never let Trump select the subcontractor based on percentage of kickback,” commented another.

[. . .]
Practically every component of Trump’s wildly expensive plan to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary has turned out to be a dud. The $15 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool failed to rid the iconic monument of algae; a multi-week lineup of music acts had to be cancelled after practically every artist pulled themselves from the program; and a fleet of buses carrying a contemporary retelling of American history have failed to make a splash in their journey across the country.


At THE GUARDIAN, Moustafa Bayoumi contrasts the speeches of Chump and Zohran Mamdani: 

If Donald Trump’s address on 3 July from Mount Rushmore will be remembered at all, it will be because that was the day of competing speeches, and competing visions, of the United States. Earlier on 3 July, the New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, delivered a speech that was about half as long as Trump’s 28-minute address, but one that offered a far different assessment of the challenges facing his city and our nation.

“We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions,” Mamdani said, while seated at George Washington’s desk and flanked by newly naturalized American citizens. “We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world – one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more.”

Mamdani’s speech was rich with historical references, beginning with his mention of the Lenape people who lived on the land of what we now call New York City before the Europeans arrived. (As far as I know, Trump never mentions the Indigenous nations of this land.) Mamdani’s address made a (too) brief nod to American chattel slavery, before celebrating American immigration, noting: “Irish immigrants [who] arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty” along with “Jewish people escaping pogroms”.

[. . .]

The latter half of Trump’s 3 July address and parts of his 4 July address were basically a stump speech for Republicans, as they face a tough midterm election season ahead.

Trump, clearly rattled by the success of the left wing of the Democratic party in New York and across the country, has decided to return to the 1950s. He is now brazenly resurrecting cold war rhetoric, repeatedly labeling his opponents “godless communists”, as he did on Friday.

Trump delivered yet another speech on 4 July and in Washington DC. This address, besides being almost rained out, felt more like a strange mix of a State of the Union Address and a 1970’s game show, as Trump kept wheeling out old flags and centenarian veterans onto his stage as if they were all up for auction. Human and non-human props aside, his actual 4 July lecture offered, perhaps surprisingly, less substance than the one he had given the day before.

[. . .]

Trump’s hubris is legendary (he has suggested he wants his face on Mount Rushmore), and he obsessively repeats, as he did in this speech, that the United States was “laughed at, mocked”, and seen as a “nation in decline” just two years ago. “And today,” Trump says, “We are the hottest country anywhere in the world. Everybody respects us like no nation.”

But the polling doesn’t bear any of this out. The Pew Research Center recently found sharp declines in US favorability around the globe. And what I imagine must really upset the president is that democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani polls at a significantly higher approval rating (48%) than Donald Trump does (39%).


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

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), along with Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), opened an investigation into reports that Softbank Group’s (Softbank) recently donated $50 million to the Trump Presidential Library — the largest publicly disclosed contribution to the Library and a possible attempt to curry political favor. 

“The Trump Administration is the most corrupt in the nation’s history, and one apparent nexus of that corruption has been tens of millions of dollars that have been given by corporate interests to the President’s pet projects including his gold-encrusted ballroom,” wrote the lawmakers. 

On May 22, 2026, Politico reported that SoftBank Group had donated $50 million to President Trump’s Presidential Library project, making it the largest publicly reported contribution to the Library. The donation followed a December 2024 Softbank announcement that it would invest $100 billion in the United States during President Trump’s second term. On March 11, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission also greenlit Softbank’s $4 billion acquisition of DigitalBridge, a data center investment firm. 

The $50 million donation came before President Trump weakened an executive order regulating the AI industry. Softbank is “one of the largest AI investors in the world,” raising questions as to whether the donation was an attempt to buy political favors. The reported donation is the largest publicly disclosed contribution to the Trump Presidential Library to date. 

Softbank has previously contributed to the Presidential Libraries of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, but only after the Presidents had left office. This time, reports indicated that Softbank quietly made the contribution while President Trump is in office, and before any presidential library has been constructed.  

“These circumstances [under which the donation was made] raise concerns about the potential for bribery and whether donors are seeking favorable treatment from the Trump Administration through contributions that personally benefit a sitting President,” wrote the lawmakers. 

The lawmakers asked the Softbank CEO, Mr. Masayoshi Son, to explain the company’s decision to contribute and whether it was made in exchange for any promises by the Trump administration. 

Senator Warren has led the fight to prevent the Trump family from using the Trump Presidential Library for corrupt pay-to-play deals: 

  • In April 2026, Senators Warren (D-Mass.) and Blumenthal (D-Conn.), along with Representative Stansbury (D-N.M.), released new responses from Big Tech CEOs indicating that they have no public explanation for where as much as $63 million in settlement money to Donald Trump’s now-dissolved Presidential Library fund has gone. The lawmakers followed up with a new letter to President Donald Trump pressing for answers to solve the ongoing mystery of the missing millions.
  • In March 2026, Senators Warren (D-Mass.) and Blumenthal (D-Conn.), along with Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), pressed ABC, Meta, X, and Paramount on their settlements with President Donald Trump, in which the companies promised to donate as much as $63 million to President Trump’s future Presidential Library.
  • In July 2025, Senators Warren (D-Mass.) and Blumenthal (D-Conn.), along with Representatives Moskowitz (D-Fla.), Raskin (D-Md.), and Stansbury (D-N.M.) unveiled the Presidential Library Anti-Corruption Act to close loopholes that allow presidential libraries to be used as tools for corruption and bribery.
  • In July 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a new report exposing how companies, special interests, and foreign governments may be pledging donations to President Trump’s future Presidential Library as a corrupt tool to secure favorable outcomes from his administration.

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The following sites updated: