Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.
Trump has taken out Republicans who pushed to release Epstein files, but now those Republicans are determined to hammer Trump on the issue until they leave office. The DOJ just greenlit a billionaire Trump donor’s purchase of CNN’s parent company. Tens of thousands of people watched live online as workers peeled Donald Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center. And a clinical psychologist says the president’s obsession with vanity construction projects reveals a lot about his deteriorating mental state.
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Ousted Republicans Aim to Pummel Trump Over Epstein
On Tuesday, South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace lost her Republican gubernatorial primary to a Trump-endorsed opponent. Almost immediately, Mace said she lost Trump’s endorsement because she supported releasing the Epstein files.
Mace is now the third House Republican to lose a primary after defying Trump on Epstein. Thomas Massie of Kentucky lost his seat last month. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia resigned months ago after breaking with Trump over the Epstein issue. And Trump is even going after Lauren Boebert of Colorado for supporting Massie, even though the deadline to challenge her has already passed.
This week, New York Times reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman revealed that Trump’s inner circle treated the Epstein story as a full-blown crisis. Senior Cabinet officials even huddled in the Situation Room to do damage control. Vice President JD Vance even floated the idea of having Tucker Carlson interview Ghislaine Maxwell to clear Trump’s name.
It’s not just a West Wing headache. The Epstein debacle led to Pam Bondi being fired as attorney general and replaced by Todd Blanche, who was also Trump’s former personal defense lawyer. Expect Epstein to dominate Blanche’s confirmation hearings, especially since he’s already vowed no more files will be released.
Democrats smell blood. Democrat Ro Khanna has introduced the phrase “Epstein class,” and Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff is using it in his reelection campaign. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown is running ads hitting Republican Senator Jon Husted for taking money from Epstein’s associates. In Maine, Democrat Graham Platner ran an ad pledging to “take back our government from the Epstein class.”
Robert Garcia of California, who is the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told reporters that if Democrats retake the House, Epstein will be front and center, calling it “the single most bipartisan issue in the country.”
Massie and Mace aren’t gone yet. They serve until January. When The Independent asked Massie if he’d be naming Epstein’s accomplices from the House floor before he leaves, his answer was simply: “Stay tuned. We’ve still got seven months.” Trump’s headache is about to get a lot worse.
Trump’s DOJ Allows Billionaire Trump Donor to Buy CNN’s Parent Company
The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division has officially approved Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. That puts CNN, along with HBO Max and Warner Bros. Pictures, all under the ownership of the pro-Trump billionaire Ellison family.
DOJ officials concluded the deal poses no competitive threat. This is one of the biggest media mergers of the Trump era, and it sailed through without so much as a speed bump from federal regulators.
Paramount CEO David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder and longtime Trump ally Larry Ellison, met in person with antitrust officials for about two hours just three weeks ago. The meeting came after the Ellisons wined and dined Trump DOJ officials at a private White House Correspondents’ Dinner event this spring.
It’s not over yet: California Attorney General Rob Bonta is still investigating, and he could still sue to block the deal even after federal approval. New York AG Letitia James also had representatives on the call between Ellison and DOJ officials.
Hollywood workers are particularly alarmed about the merger. Industry workers fear another round of brutal layoffs in a business already gutted by years of consolidation. Paramount’s COO told analysts in March that the company expects more than $6 billion in so-called “synergies.” Most of those savings, he said, would come from non-labor sources. That’s a phrase that tends to mean something very specific when you’re a worker whose job is on the line.
This merger getting one step closer to reality is exactly why we launched Raw America this year. Media owned by right-wing billionaires will never be able to truly hold those same people accountable. If you value independent journalism that doesn’t pull punches and want to see it survive, become a paying subscriber to Raw America right now.
Tens of Thousands Watch Livestream of Trump’s Name Being Removed from Kennedy Center
Tens of thousands of people streamed in live on YouTube Tuesday to watch workers rip Donald Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts building in Washington.
By early afternoon, the livestream had drawn more than 35,000 viewers. People could be heard cheering in the background on camera.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that Trump’s name change never had legal standing because it didn’t go through Congress, as the law requires.
The judge’s ruling was blunt. He wrote in his decision that Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it. Not the president.
So out came the workers. Off came the letters. And tens of thousands of Americans sat at their computers and phones and watched it happen live. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of the de-Trump-ifying of America.
Psychologist Says Trump’s Vanity Projects Hint at His Deteriorating Mental Health
Donald Trump can’t stop talking about his construction projects. And one mental health professional is saying that’s a telltale sign of something seriously wrong.
The president has reportedly steered conversations away from the Iran war and inflation to talk about his renovation of the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool. He showed renderings of his construction plans to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte during a meeting that was supposed to be about global security. In January, he interrupted a session with oil executives discussing Venezuela to brag about his planned $400 million ballroom.
A Washington Post analysis from April found that, by that point, Trump had mentioned his ballroom in roughly a third of all his public remarks. That’s more than he mentioned most of his stated policy priorities.
Dr. John Gartner, a former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, told The Daily Beast Thursday that this pattern is clinically significant, saying “tangential speech is one of the diagnostic criteria for dementia.”
Gartner also connected the fixation to Trump’s personality, saying the president is “obsessed with things that reflect glory on him.” He added that Trump is “changing Washington, D.C., to Trump D.C.”
Here’s the important context: Trump’s recent physical examination at Walter Reed Medical Center involved 22 specialists. That breaks the previous record for a presidential exam held by George W. Bush, who saw 10 specialists at once. The White House has not explained why the president required so many doctors, saying only that it allowed for a thorough evaluation.
The White House’s official physician declared Trump in “excellent health.”
Twenty-two specialists but he has excellent health? You can decide what to make of that.
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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris, for Raw America. Have a great weekend.
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