Bezos Ate Halibut As He Gut The Washington Post

And all the Epstein bombshells Trump's War tried to hide this week.

Hey, Raw America family. Welcome to the Sunday Wrapup. I’m here with my cup of coffee, excited to update you on what you might have missed.

Thank you for being a paid subscriber. You’re the reason we had a reporter in Senate hearing rooms, at White House protests, and on Capitol Hill this week. While corporate newsrooms were being managed, we were showing up. That’s only possible because of you.

Now let’s get into it.

Bezos: Let Them Eat Pecan-Crusted Halibut

Last week, Jeff Bezos gathered the top editors and journalists of The Washington Post at his Washington mansion. He served them pecan-crusted halibut on plates embossed with the Washington Post logo. There was sliced steak, medium-rare, patatas bravas and sautéed vegetables.

By a coffee station, he’d displayed a lock from the Watergate burglary as if to mock the assembled journalists. This is what the Post used to be.

The bald-pated titan showed no remorse. Half of the Post’s newsroom, gone. Its international desk, eliminated. Most of its foreign correspondents, laid off — weeks before the United States went to war with Iran. While Bezos gnawed on halibut and cheered the paper’s glorious past, 350 journalists cleared out their desks. 60,000 readers canceled their subscriptions in a single week.

The New York Times revealed all this Saturday. Bezos told his opinion editor when warned that gutting the editorial page would cost subscribers: “I don’t care.” He killed an endorsement of Kamala Harris weeks before the election. He restricted the opinion pages to views aligned with “free markets.”

And Bezos? He’d just had dinner with Bari Weiss.

The paper that exposed Watergate now can’t cover the war it helped Donald Trump deliver.

This is exactly why Raw America exists.

The Epstein Cover-up Just Got Worse

This week, Epstein’s longtime accountant Richard Kahn was deposed before the House Oversight Committee. After the deposition, Democratic Congressman Suhas Subramanyam told reporters what they’d learned: a woman who accused Donald Trump was given a settlement by Jeffrey Epstein’s estate.

Yes, Epstein’s estate. Settling with a Trump accuser.

Meanwhile, South Carolina’s Post and Courier corroborated key details from the account of a woman who told the FBI that Trump sexually assaulted her when she was 13.

The paper verified her mother rented a Hilton Head home to Epstein and confirmed her mother was charged with stealing $22,000 from her employer — which she told investigators was connected to Epstein’s blackmail scheme. The FBI interviewed her four separate times. A source told the Miami Herald the agency would not have done that if it found her not credible.

The White House called her a “disturbed woman with an extensive criminal history.” What they didn’t say is that her criminal history is largely the story of a girl whose life was destroyed before it started.

Three Democratic senators joined Republican Lisa Murkowski this week in asking the GAO to investigate the DOJ’s handling of the files. Bondi has now been subpoenaed by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee, with bipartisan support.

This story isn’t going away. We won’t let it.

Also this week, NBC News published a damning investigation into Epstein’s Zorro Ranch, a 10,000-acre New Mexico compound where at least 10 women and girls say they were abused. New Mexico conducted its first-ever search of the property this week. Six years after Epstein’s death.

What took so long? Trump’s Justice Department told New Mexico’s AG to stand down in 2019, promising to handle it themselves. They never did. The FBI received a tip claiming two foreign girls had been killed and buried on the property. They never followed up. The former New Mexico AG told NBC that federal prosecutors “essentially gutted our ability to aggressively seek justice for victims.”

Epstein’s ranch has since been purchased by a Texas Republican turning it into a Christian retreat, renamed San Rafael Ranch. The man who bought a child predator’s sex compound and rebranded it a house of God is now the Republican nominee for Texas comptroller.

That sentence alone deserves a front page.

Trump’s Epstein War Continues: The Latest

The Trump administration is now openly threatening to pull broadcast licenses from TV stations that cover the Iran war in ways the president doesn’t like. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr posted a warning Saturday that broadcasters running what he called “hoaxes and news distortions” should “correct course” before their license renewals, or lose them. He posted it directly on top of a Trump complaint about Iran war coverage.

Pete Hegseth has been doing the same thing from the Pentagon podium, criticizing outlets for coverage that “makes the president look bad.” This is not a subtle campaign. This is a government official telling journalists: cover the war our way, or we will put you out of business.

The FCC can’t touch cable, streaming, or print. So they’re going after the one medium that still reaches rural America: local broadcast TV. Threatening the licenses of local stations is the most surgical way to control what people in red states see. That’s not an accident.

At least 13 U.S. service members have now been killed in Trump’s effort to distract you from the Epstein files. 200 service members have been wounded. Crude oil is hovering near $100 a barrel, up 70% since early January.

When asked if Americans should worry about rising prices, Trump said: “I don’t have any concern about it.”

His solution? More tariffs. His administration is now trying to raise tariffs on countries across the world, as gas prices continue to rise.

MAGA Isn’t On Board With the War

MAGA, however, is no longer uniformly in Trump’s pocket.

Tucker Carlson said flatly: “This is Israel’s war. This is not the United States’ war.” Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump before the 2024 election, said: “He ran on ‘no more wars, end these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.” Ann Coulter called it a war that “does not make one American safer.”

A majority of Americans oppose the military action. A CNN poll put disapproval at nearly 60 percent. The coalition built on grievance was always going to crack the moment the costs became real. We’re watching it happen.

Now For The Good News

In Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old district, which Trump won by 37 points in 2024, Democrat Shawn Harris is leading heading into an April 7 runoff.

Democratic primary turnout is surging nationwide: 1.5 million early votes in Texas doubled 2022’s turnout. North Carolina’s votes are up 24 percent over the last midterm cycle. These are not the numbers of a demoralized opposition.

And a Reagan-appointed judge ruled Kari Lake’s entire Voice of America tenure illegal and unconstitutional. Every action she took, including laying off more than 1,000 journalists, was declared null and void.

We’ll take all of it.

Why I’m In This Fight

Raw America exists because someone has to say it plainly: we bombed a school, the president is lying about it, his estate paid off an accuser, and he’s drowning it all in bombs and tariffs while working people pay the price.

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I’m so glad you’re in this fight with me. We’re in it to win it.

— John Byrne

Founder, Raw America and Raw Story