Trump’s $1.8B Slush Fund, Live with John Aravosis

Donald Trump has finally found the perfect MAGA policy: Take nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer money and use it to help the people who tried to violently overthrow the US government.This new fund would reportedly be run by a tiny group of people appointed by Todd Blanche — Trump’s own loyalist at the Justice Department — and Trump can fire any of them at will. So the man who benefits politically from the payouts also gets a government-controlled process to decide who gets paid. Little transparency. Lots of formal apologies. Cash relief. All for the supposed victims of a “weaponized” justice system.And who are we talking about? January 6 defendants. Tina Peters. Likely people who assaulted police officers. JD Vance was asked whether people who the cops on January 6 should be ruled out from getting taxpayer money. He wouldn’t say yes. Instead, he started talking about the “kangaroo courts” that convicted the seditionists — which is the tell. It’s not enough that these crooks are running around free. Trump wants to delegitimize the courts that convicted them in the first place.That’s the authoritarian move. The courts aren’t courts anymore. The convictions aren’t real. The criminals are the victims. And the taxpayers get the bill.At the same time, this settlement will force the IRS to drop current investigations into Trump, his family, and his businesses — and block future investigations for any crimes committed before the settlement. Which is basically Trump finding a backdoor way to pardon himself on taxes — his government negotiates a settlement that kneecaps the IRS.And then Trump claimed today that he knows “very little” about the settlement. Please. This was his lawsuit. He sued the government, well, he sued himself. He also agreed to settle it. And now we’re supposed to believe he had no idea what was in the settlement of his own lawsuit? Everything is a lie with this guy, everything.Meanwhile, Trump is scaling back US military commitments to NATO, which is exactly the kind of signal Vladimir Putin wants to hear. If you tell Russia that America is less likely to defend Europe, you don’t prevent war. You invite it. Dictators do cost-benefit analyses. Trump is lowering the cost of war, in Europe and Asia.Then there’s Iran. Trump keeps pretending he’s on the verge of a deal, but Iran’s public demands don’t look like surrender. Iran still wants the right to enrich uranium. They want sanctions relief. They want frozen funds released. They want the naval blockade ended. They want compensation. Other than that, total capitulation.And while this chaos threatens to raise gas prices, Trump’s answer is that the price increases are “peanuts.” Peanuts, he said today. That’s easy to say when you’re Donald Trump. It’s a little different if you’re a normal person trying to afford gas, groceries (an old word no one uses anymore, according to Trump), rent, and everything else that’s gone through the roof since Trump imposed his tariffs, and now the war.There was also the public-health disaster brewing around Ebola, right as the World Cup is headed to the US. Trump and Musk’s DOGE boys gutted foreign-aid and disease-monitoring programs because they decided keeping people alive overseas was somehow wasteful. Now Ebola is spreading, the US is banning entry from certain affected countries, and one of the teams headed to the World Cup is from the Democratic Republic of Congo, ground zero for the latest outbreak.In other Trump screw ups today, Trump announced he’s backing Ken Paxton over John Cornyn in Texas, potentially turning a safe Republican Senate seat into a gift for Democrats. Trump lied about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, called it a “lake,” then suggested that Obama spent $200m on it, which he didn’t. Louisiana’s GOP governor is in Greenland, offering children cookies as part of Trump’s creepy imperial cosplay. And Giorgia Meloni gave a stronger statement on Ukraine than half the American right.And finally, the Trump phone is back in the news. The long-promised Trump Mobile review unit finally appears, preloaded with Truth Social, labeled “Proudly Assembled in the USA,” and decorated with an American flag that has 11 stripes.Eleven.There are 13 stripes on the American flag. For the original 13 colonies. This is not a hard test. If you’re going to wrap your cheap political grift in the flag, maybe count the stripes first.But that’s the whole thing in miniature. Trumpism sells cheap knockoff patriotism made in China, and it can’t even get the flag right. It screams law and order, then pays the people who attacked the police. It claims to fight corruption, then creates a secretive $1.8 billion payout machine for Trump’s friends. It claims strength abroad, then signals weakness to Putin and Xi, and chaos to Iran.The brand is nationalism. The product is corruption. And we’re the ones footing the bill. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aravosis.substack.com/subscribe