Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
Donald Trump is coping with being thunderously booed at Madison Square Garden by saying he was actually cheered. Bari Weiss’s destruction of CBS News is now threatening to blow up Paramount’s $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. The Trump family has pocketed $2.3 billion from cryptocurrency while outside investors lost the exact same amount. And the Iran war just hit its 100-day mark with no peace deal in sight, despite Trump’s promises to keep America out of foreign wars.
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Trump Humiliated at Madison Square Garden During NBA Finals
Donald Trump showed up to Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, and New Yorkers didn’t exactly give the president the warmest welcome in his hometown.
When Trump appeared on the jumbotron during the National Anthem, the crowd erupted into boos. Jeff Mordock from the conservative Washington Times said Trump was “thunderously booed.” Multiple videos from inside the arena backed that up. Trump was booed again later when he appeared on the screens a second time.
Even before he got inside, New Yorkers lined the streets to greet the presidential motorcade with middle fingers and obscenities as it rolled through.
Then Trump walked out to the microphones before boarding Air Force One and was asked directly about the reaction he received, saying he “thought it was great” and “amazing, actually,” He argued it was “mostly cheers” and that the crowd was “very enthusiastic.”
That’s a remarkable statement. And the video evidence tells a completely different story.
Trump wasn’t just shamed by the loud booing. At one point, cameras caught Trump appearing to nod off at one point during the game, reportedly only snapping back to attention when a referee blew his whistle. And the New York Knicks may have also been a little thrown off by the president’s appearance, as they lost their first game since April 23, losing to the San Antonio Spurs by a score of 115-111. That’s their first loss in 46 days, and it happened at home.
ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith pleaded with Trump beforehand to stay away, warning the appearance would create chaos around the city and disrupt fans. He wasn’t wrong. Several surrounding blocks were shut down. Fans were told to arrive at least two hours early. A planned watch party outside the arena was canceled, disappointing fans who hadn’t seen their team play at home in the NBA Finals since 1999.
Trump responded to Smith’s criticism by saying he lacked a “high IQ,” which seems to be his go-to insult whenever a person of color criticizes him.
When a man insists the boos you can hear with your own ears were really cheers, he’s not talking about a basketball game, he’s showing you how he’ll describe an election he loses. Hannah Arendt warned that a free people is in real danger the moment its leader assumes nobody can tell the difference between what they witnessed and what they’re told they witnessed, because a republic runs on the consent of the governed, and consent you have to imagine isn’t consent at all.
Bari Weiss Threatens Paramount’s Merger with Warner Bros. Discovery
The ongoing meltdown at CBS News over Bari Weiss’s management is now casting a shadow over one of the biggest media deals in years.
Paramount is pushing to complete its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, which would put CBS, CNN, HBO, and a massive portfolio of entertainment properties under the thumb of pro-Trump billionaire David Ellison. The deal is already facing antitrust scrutiny. And now, with Scott Pelley going on the record saying CBS News is “on fire,” and “60 Minutes” veterans Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim publishing a joint statement about their concerns with management, the PR situation has grown exponentially worse.
An executive involved in the merger told CNN’s Brian Stelter that legally, the CBS News turmoil doesn’t affect the regulatory review, since regulators are focused on antitrust, not journalism ethics. But the same source acknowledged, “PR-wise, it might matter.”
They’re right: The Financial Times ran a piece headlined “Inside the CBS mutiny against Bari Weiss and David Ellison.” The Los Angeles Times wrote that “in Hollywood, image is everything, and David Ellison has an image problem.” Groups opposing the merger, like the Freedom of the Press Foundation, are citing the CBS News chaos directly in their campaigns against the deal.
The real legal danger to the proposed mega-deal isn’t coming from the Trump administration, which appears inclined to approve it, but rather from state attorneys general. A coalition of Democratic AGs led by California’s Rob Bonta is reportedly preparing an antitrust lawsuit that could be filed in the coming weeks.
Back inside CBS News, Stelter is reporting that exhaustion and low morale is prevalent in Bari Weiss’ newsroom. A few want her to explain herself publicly, though legal agreements appear to prevent that.
But one CBS News veteran posed the bigger question: “How many viewers have turned us off or tuned us out because of all of this?”
There’s a bitter irony in watching “60 Minutes” get gutted at the same network where Edward R. Murrow took on Joe McCarthy, because Murrow warned broadcasters back in 1958 that these tools could be used to distract and delude us just as easily as to inform us. When one Trump-friendly billionaire can put CBS, CNN, and HBO under a single roof, the real question isn’t whether the law allows it, it’s whether a self-governing people stays self-governing when everyone deciding what counts as news answers to the same man.
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Trump’s Crypto Machine Is a Boon for His Family and a Disaster for Investors
Reuters just published one of the most damning financial investigations of the Trump era, and it should warrant serious attention.
Reuters found the Trump family has made $2.3 billion from cryptocurrency projects since mid-2024, while outside investors in those same ventures have lost $2.3 billion. That’s not a coincidence.
Reuters examined four main Trump crypto projects: World Liberty Financial, the $TRUMP meme coin, and two Nasdaq-listed companies, ALT5 Sigma and American Bitcoin. In every instance, the Trump family made out like bandits while everyone else lost their shirts.
Startup costs for the Trumps’ biggest venture, World Liberty Financial, were likely less than $1 million. In several cases, the Trump family received equity stakes at no monetary cost whatsoever, putting in almost nothing. Then they took investors for suckers as soon as the price went up.
World Liberty Financial raised $1.4 billion selling governance tokens. The Trumps took a 75 percent cut of those sales, netting roughly $987 million. But Reuters found evidence, through a European regulatory filing, that an additional three billion tokens were quietly sold without public disclosure. Finance professors concluded those tokens were “probably sold,” generating at least another $460 million for the Trump family. Duke finance professor Campbell Harvey said “the insiders were dumping,” pointing out that it was “unusual” to sell so early.
The $TRUMP meme coin added another $616 million or more to the family’s haul, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of ordinary retail investors bought in and lost money. The coin traded as high as $75.35. But as of late April, it was sitting at a mere $2.38.
ALT5 Sigma shares have dropped from over $9 to 75 cents. American Bitcoin shares fell from $11 to $1.15. All told, investors in those two companies lost roughly $875 million.
The White House notably didn’t dispute Reuters’ findings. World Liberty Financial’s spokesman said the governance tokens “are not an investment product.”
This clear-cut corruption from the president’s family is exactly the kind of story the billionaire-owned media would rather bury. A sitting president running what finance experts are describing as a classic insider dumping operation, while his supporters lose their savings. Reuters did the work. It deserves wall-to-wall coverage.
The framers wrote not one but two emoluments clauses into the Constitution because they’d watched royal courts rot from the inside when rulers stopped telling the public treasury apart from their own pockets. A president whose family clears billions while his own supporters lose their savings isn’t a loophole in that design, it’s the precise danger Article I Section 9 was meant to stop, and Reuters just laid it out in black and white.
Iran War Hits 100-Day Mark With No Exit Strategy
The war between the United States and Iran passed its 100-day mark over the weekend, and there’s still no deal in sight despite Trump’s false claims that the war is over.
Trump campaigned on keeping America out of new foreign wars in 2024. But when NBC’s Kristen Welker pressed him on that promise, Trump denied ever making it. He also pushed back on the Iran conflict being described as an “endless war,” even while his own party faces growing pressure over higher gas prices.
The ceasefire that’s technically been in place since April has effectively fallen apart, with Iran launching ballistic missiles into Israel over the weekend. That’s the first time Tehran fired into Israel since the ceasefire with the U.S. began. Israel struck back, hitting military targets in western and central Iran.
Then, in a notable escalation of tensions between Washington and Tel Aviv, Trump told the Financial Times that he calls “all the shots,” while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not. He also suggested Israel would have “no choice” but to accept any deal he negotiates. That was right before Israel conducted its own strikes in direct defiance of Trump.
Victoria Coates, a former Trump National Security Council official, says Washington holds real leverage as of this moment. But she also pointed out the war’s trajectory isn’t entirely in U.S. hands, saying Iranians “have a vote in all of this.”
Experts also warn that Iran appears to be deliberately dragging out negotiations, possibly hoping to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Israel.
This is all happening while four House Republicans voted with Democrats on a war powers resolution that would force Trump to end the conflict. It was symbolic, but the defections are a signal.
We’re a hundred days into a war in the Middle East with no exit strategy. Sound familiar?
James Madison warned that war is the true nurse of executive aggrandizement, which is exactly why the framers handed the power to declare it to Congress and not to any one president. A hundred days into a war nobody voted for, with gas prices climbing and four Republicans crossing the aisle to invoke the War Powers Resolution, we’re relearning the oldest lesson of the Gulf of Tonkin, that the easiest war to start is always the hardest one to end.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
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JD Vance Refers Top Minnesota Officials to DOJ for Criminal Investigation. Vice President JD Vance has officially submitted a criminal referral to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) to be investigated for alleged fraud. Vance alleges that Walz and Ellison were aware of $300 million in federal child nutrition assistance funding and $9 billion in Medicaid funds being “lost” or “at serious risk.” Walz has said earlier that the fraud allegations were false and made as political retribution for Minnesota’s resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Nevadans Say Trump’s ‘No Tax on Tips’ Overshadowed By Bad Economy. Workers in Las Vegas, Nevada have lately turned on President Trump, despite Trump being the first Republican to win Nevada in decades after promising to end taxes on tips. Service industry employees say the amount they saved in taxes pales in comparison to the lack of income due to a downturn in tourism. Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), who is retiring at the end of his current term, admitted to Bloomberg that an economy marked by high gas prices is hurting Republicans’ credibility with voters.
Missouri Republicans Go After Dolly Parton’s Child Reading Initiative. Missouri’s Republican-run Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recently announced it would freeze enrollment in country star Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The project offers one free book for every child per month from birth until age five, and gets funding from more than 20 U.S. states. Missouri Republicans cut the Show Me State’s support of the program from $6 million to $2 million.
USDA Secretary Fires Back at Texas Ag Commissioner Over Screwworm Criticism. In response to the ongoing screwworm outbreak threatening the United States’ beef cattle, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller (R) suggested ranchers may decline to report screwworm infestations due to the USDA’s rigid quarantine protocol. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins fired back, saying Miller’s suggestion was “a very unserious comment from a perhaps unserious ag commissioner.”
