Good evening, I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.
Tonight, we’ve got four stories that expose the hollow rot at the center of America’s oligarchy. Melania Trump’s vanity documentary bombs, wasting $75 million of Amazon’s money. A bombshell Epstein email destroys Trump’s timeline about cutting ties with the convicted pedophile. Warner Bros. considers selling to Paramount instead of Netflix, putting CNN in Trump’s sights. And explosive claims emerge that a tech whistleblower was murdered.
But first, a brief request: Raw America exists because billionaire-owned outlets are snuffing out real news. Can you expect Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post to tell the truth if Amazon just spent $75 million on a documentary defending Trump’s wife? If you value journalism that follows the evidence wherever it leads, please become a paid subscriber today. Independent media is democracy’s last line of defense.
Melania’s $75 Million Flop
Let’s start with the most delicious irony. Melania Trump’s documentary suffered a devastating 62% drop in attendance in its third weekend, heading toward a pathetic $15.4 million total gross. Jeff Bezos’s Amazon spent $40 million to acquire this vanity project and another $35 million promoting it. That’s $75 million to make the former model look sympathetic.
But here’s the kicker: the documentary was directed by Brett Ratner, who has documented ties to Epstein and faces sexual misconduct allegations. Because of course it was. In Trump’s America, if you’re not somehow connected to convicted sex traffickers, you’re not rich enough to matter.
Amazon’s distribution chief Kevin Wilson claims they’ll recoup losses through streaming, but even he admits the goal wasn’t profit: “Whether or not people like it, the value of these movies is different for our business model.” Translation: we spent $75 million to buy political influence, and box office numbers don’t matter.
Those empty cinema seats aren’t just a commercial failure: they’re Americans rejecting oligarch propaganda.
Epstein Email Destroys Trump’s Story
Speaking of Epstein, a new email just surfaced that obliterates Trump’s denial timeline. In April 2011—seven years after Trump claims he cut all ties with Epstein—the convicted pedophile wrote to someone he’d hired to investigate his victims: “Before I call Trump, with regard Virginia are there any other alternatives.”
“Virginia” likely refers to Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers. So either Trump was still chatting with his old pal Epstein in 2011, or Epstein was planning to call the future president about handling a sex trafficking victim.
Trump has repeatedly claimed he hadn’t spoken to Epstein since around 2004, when Epstein supposedly “stole” workers from Mar-a-Lago. This email proves that’s a lie. The man who’s now president was still coordinating with a convicted child sex offender years after his conviction.
CNN in Paramount’s Crosshairs
While oligarchs cover for pedophiles, they’re also positioning to destroy what’s left of journalism. Warner Bros. Discovery is now leaning toward selling to Paramount instead of Netflix—and that’s terrifying.
Here’s why this matters: Warner Bros. Discovery owns CNN. If David Ellison’s Paramount wins the bidding war, CNN falls under the control of the Ellison family empire. And we’ve seen this playbook before.
Remember what happened when the Ellisons got their hands on CBS News? They systematically dismantled editorial independence, pushed out experienced journalists, and tried to snuff out a 60 Minutes special covering torture of US deportees.
The pattern is always the same: tech oligarchs buy media properties, gut the journalism, and replace real reporting with sanitized content that protects their business interests. Bezos did it to the Post. Now the Ellisons could do it to CNN.
When billionaires control the news outlets, there’s no one left to investigate billionaires. Whether it’s Netflix or Paramount, Americans lose. But at least with Netflix, CNN might survive as a news organization. Under Ellison, it could become another corporate propaganda outlet. Think Fox News-lite.
In an era of billionaire takeovers, your support for Raw America really matters. Raw America connects dots corporate media won’t touch. We’re 100% reader supported; unlike oligarch-owned outlets, we answer to you. Please consider upgrading today to power the journalism Americans so desperately need.
Tech Oligarch Whistleblower’s Suicide Questioned
Finally, the most disturbing story that corporate media will barely touch. Fifteen months ago, an OpenAI whistleblower who exposed Sam Altman’s company for stealing copyrighted data was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. This was just months after an explosive New York Times interview.
His name: Suchir Balaji. The official story? Suicide. The evidence? It seems quite damning in the opposite direction.
In an exclusive interview with Radar Online, renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Ronald Graeser identified massive red flags suggesting foul play. First, Balaji had enormous levels of GHB in his system. (That’s the date rape drug that completely incapacitates victims.) As Graeser noted, “Incapacitated people don’t generally shoot themselves. They’re incapacitated.” Yet the medical examiner dismissed this as “self-induced.”
The blood splatter pattern, he said, shows an angle consistent with a shooter standing over the victim, not someone shooting themselves. Then there’s the crime scene: security camera wires were cut, blood was found in two rooms, and Balaji had ordered DoorDash before allegedly killing himself. None of that suggests someone preparing for suicide.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Sam Altman, Trump’s new tech bro ally, told Tucker Carlson it “looks like a suicide to me.” But even Carlson disagreed: “No, he was definitely murdered.”
Elon Musk went further on Joe Rogan’s podcast: “All signs point to it being a murder.”
Balaji’s mother agrees, saying her son was killed by “assassins” after blowing the whistle on Altman’s business practices. She described her son as a “happy-go-lucky engineer.”
This follows the same pattern we saw with Epstein: inconvenient whistleblowers die under suspicious circumstances, medical examiners rush to declare suicide despite contradictory evidence, and powerful oligarchs with motive get protected by the system.
This Is Why We Built Raw America
These aren’t separate stories; they’re symptoms of oligarchy. Amazon spends $75 million on propaganda. Trump maintains relationships with pedophiles while lying about the timeline. Media companies consolidate to control more of the narrative.
This is what happens when billionaires capture democracy: they serve themselves, not the people. They’ll throw each other under the bus when profitable, but they’ll always close ranks to protect the system that enriches them.
The Melania documentary’s failure shows Americans are starting to reject this garbage. Those empty seats represent people who refuse to subsidize Bezos’ propaganda. But rejection isn’t enough. We need alternatives.
That’s why Raw America exists. We’re not funded by Bezos, Thiel, or any other oligarch with an agenda. We’re accountable to you. Subscribe, share this video, and help us build the media infrastructure democracy actually needs. We need your help. And so does democracy.
I’m British Chris for Raw America. Thanks for watching.
