Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.
Trump is now demanding his Justice Department resurrect criminal charges against a former American Olympian, even after his own handpicked prosecutor admitted there was no evidence. Former President Barack Obama couldn’t help but mock Trump’s gold-gilded Oval Office during a cameo on HBO Max. Trump is somehow findind a way to blame Joe Biden for a munitions shortage that’s actually the result of Trump bombing Iran for the past six months. And a former Clinton administration official says Trump’s visible decline could mean Stephen Miller is already effectively serving as the acting president.
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Trump Demands Jeanine Pirro Revive U.S. Olympian’s Reflecting Pool Charges
Back in June, a former U.S. Olympic athlete named David Hearn rode his bike ride near the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. He says he reached into the water to touch a piece of lining that came loose. Federal prosecutors initially charged him with vandalism.
But later, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro dropped the charges. Her office blamed the botched installation of the coating on the bottom of the pool for the damage, rather than any act of vandalism. Because there was no way to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt, Pirro had no choice but to drop the charges against Hearn.
Trump has spent the last week or so fuming about the dismissal, even telling reporters that Pirro “choked” and “folded like an umbrella.” Now, White House staff are applying new pressure to the Justice Department and asking prosecutors to file new charges against Hearn.
Keep in mind there’s not been any new evidence or witnesses. And Hearn’s lawyers are pointing out that if the White House really did request new charges, it basically means that a case the DOJ admitted it had no chance of winning is somehow being revived just because the president had a tantrum.
Attorney General Todd Blanche was careful not to defend Pirro’s original decision to drop the charges, and maintained the president has the power to fire U.S. attorneys who don’t follow his orders. That’s not exactly reassuring for anyone who thought prosecutorial decisions were supposed to be based on evidence rather than whether the president got enough sleep last night.
Obama Makes Fun of Trump’s Gold-Gilded Oval Office
Barack Obama is now getting some laughs in at Donald Trump’s expense. Obama filmed a cameo for an HBO Max comedy special featuring Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry David, and part of it involved him touring a replica Oval Office built to look like it did during the Obama presidency.
The 44th president walked through the set, and approved of the bowl of apples he used to keep on the coffee table, calling the replica “fantastic.” He then added one deadpan observation that unlike Trump’s second-term Oval Office, this one didn’t have a giant tacky gold sign out front with “The Oval Office” in script lettering.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that,” Obama told David.
That gold sign went up near the Rose Garden entrance last fall, and it’s just one piece of a much bigger gilding project. Trump has covered the Oval Office with gold trim on the ceiling, the fireplace mantel, and even the doorways. Trump told Fox News the historic one-of-a-kind room “needed a little life,” which apparently means making it look like a Temu knock-off version of Versailles.
Of course, the gold isn’t the only ugly change Trump’s made to the White House. Last year he bulldozed the East Wing to build his gaudy $400 million ballroom, which judges recently ruled illegal. He also paved over part of the Rose Garden to make it into a patio similar to the one at Mar-a-Lago. And he’s set up something called a Presidential Walk of Fame along the colonnade, which is rife with childish attacks on both Obama and Joe Biden. 2029 can’t come soon enough.
Trump Blames Biden for Munitions Shortage Tied to Iran War
The United States has rapidly depleted its arsenal long-range munitions and missile interceptors. That’s all thanks to Trump spending the last six months launching everything at Iran. But Trump is telling MAGA something completely different.
While speaking on the far-right outlet Real America’s Voice, Trump claimed the real reason munitions are low is because of Joe Biden sending weapons to Ukraine. He also said in practically the same breath that there is no munitions shortage and that we’re already building even more. That was somehow not an incongruous position to the president and the person interviewing him.
The nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies has already said that despite the war, the United States still has enough missiles to keep attacking Iran in perpetuity under any scenario that’s been war-gamed by the White House and the Pentagon. So regardless of what Biden did or didn’t do many years ago, it ultimately has no bearing on our current situation.
We should also remember the United States spends more on its military than the next several nations combined, and yet we’re somehow supposedly running short on weapons after just six months of war. And the president blaming that shortage on his predecessor is the same one who started this war in the first place.
Ex-White House Staffer Says Trump’s Decline Could Make Stephen Miller ‘Acting President’
David Rothkopf, the Daily Beast’s global affairs columnist who once served in the Clinton administration, recently suggested something genuinely frightening: If the 80 year-old Trump continues to decline, would there be someone ready to pick up the slack?
Rothkopf then said White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller could end up as the de facto “acting president,” quietly running the White House’s day-to-day operations all without any formal announcement that Trump himself isn’t actually calling the shots anymore.
He then noted this has happened before, saying both Joe Biden and Ronald Reagan went through periods during their administrations in which their inner circles held down far more of the day-to-day duties of the presidency than the public realized. Rothkopf added that Trump’s decline is a real concern, pointing to his obvious bruises, his family health history and his public behavior, like falling asleep during press conferences in full view of the press.
Rothkopf acknowledged that while Vice President JD Vance would become acting president under a 25th Amendment scenario, that’s not how power actually works in the White House. He argued that presidential power usually flows to whoever controls the president’s schedule and issues his public statements. And right now, many of those duties are handled by Stephen Miller, who is the chief architect of Trump’s draconian immigration agenda.
That’s the kind of quiet, undocumented shift in power that voters usually don’t find out about until much later. And it’s all the more reason the media needs to be much more skeptical of this White House the more the president declines in public.
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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris, with Raw America. We’ll see you tomorrow.
