Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.
Trump’s spiritual adviser is publicly dismissing the president’s alleged sexual assault of women. CBS’ top primetime anchor got embarrassed by Bari Weiss’ rookie mistake. Trump is taking away low-income Americans’ healthcare to punish blue states. Elon Musk flew to China with Trump in direct violation of a federal judge’s order. Let’s dive in.
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Trump’s Spiritual Advisor Makes Wild Excuse for Trump Groping Women
Pastor Mark Burns is a South Carolina-based minister and one of Trump’s spiritual advisers. He sat down this week for an interview with Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker that was full of eye-popping moments.
Burns didn’t deny Trump’s history with women. Instead, he basically said God forgives him, and voters already knew and elected him anyway, so what’s the big deal?
For those unaware, Trump was found legally liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll. He’s been accused of predatory behavior by dozens of women. And he famously bragged on tape that he could grab women by their genitals without consent.
Burns’ response: “It doesn’t matter what President Trump has done in his past.” He then pivoted to arguing that in God’s eyes, gluttony is just as sinful as murder, so there’s no real scale of wrongdoing. And he suggested Chotiner might have skeletons in his own closet he’d prefer to keep hidden.
The New Yorker journalist wasn’t having it. He pointed out that he personally hasn’t grabbed women against their will and bragged about it, or shared racist videos of the Obamas as apes. Burns didn’t really have an answer for that. He did say, however, “The president is not grabbing anybody or talking about grabbing anybody from their private parts today.”
That’s the bar. That’s where we are.
Bari Weiss Embarrasses CBS’ Top Primetime Anchor in Massive Error
This week, Trump is in China for a high-profile summit, and every major broadcast network scrambled to get their anchors into Beijing for the coverage. NBC’s Tom Llamas is there. ABC’s David Muir is there. CBS had a problem.
Tony Dokoupil, the CBS anchor, couldn’t get a Chinese visa in time. The network hasn’t said why, and the Chinese Embassy didn’t respond to questions about it. So instead of Beijing, Dokoupil is broadcasting from Taiwan.
CBS is trying to spin it as a deliberate editorial choice. But this is also a network that has been stumbling badly.
CBS Evening News is already in third place in the ratings, and the numbers keep sliding. The network has been reshaped in significant ways by the right-wing billionaire Ellison family, which owns CBS and desperately needs Trump’s blessing to own CNN’s parent company.
The network also brought in Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief, and critics have noted that Weiss and her team don’t have much experience running the logistics of a major television broadcast operation. Getting a correspondent into a foreign country in time for the biggest global story of the week is exactly the kind of thing that requires experience and planning. Weiss didn’t get it done.
Trump Cuts $1.3 Billion in Medicaid Funding to California
The Trump administration announced this week it’s withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements from California. The stated reason is fraud. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz held a press conference Wednesday to announce what he called the largest Medicaid deferral in the agency’s history. He claimed that roughly half of the hospices in the greater Los Angeles area are fraudulent. Vice President JD Vance backed him up.
Here’s some important context. Medicaid is a joint federal-state program. California has already paid the healthcare providers who serve low-income patients in the program. The federal government is supposed to reimburse the state for its share of those costs. What Oz is doing is refusing to pay California back unless the state can prove those patients actually received the services they were billed for.
The $1.3 billion is a small percentage of total reimbursements to California, but it’s still the kind of action that can create real disruption for low-income patients and providers.
California hasn’t officially responded yet. Oz said the agency wants the state to “come to the table” and explain the billing patterns. He’s also now requiring every state’s Medicaid fraud control unit to detail what they’re doing to fight fraud, signaling that more states could lose funding in the future.
Elon Musk Violates Federal Judge’s Order By Going to China with Trump
Elon Musk this week traveled to China with Trump, and he did it despite being under a federal judge’s order that he remain available to testify on short notice in his ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI.
Musk is suing OpenAI, a company he co-founded, arguing the company spinning off a for-profit arm was a betrayal of its original nonprofit mission. The trial is taking place in federal court in Oakland, California. Musk testified over three days in April.
Before he stepped down from the witness stand on April 30th, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, an Obama appointee, asked both sides whether Musk should be held in “recall status,” meaning he’d have to be available to return to the stand if called. OpenAI’s lawyers said yes. The judge told Musk: “You are not excused, but you can leave for the day.”
He then left for China.
Two sources told NBC News that Musk did not obtain permission from the judge before leaving the country, and that he remains subject to recall.
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