Happy Saturday! I’m John Byrne.
Do us a quick favor before we start. Hit that ❤️ and restack this edition. Corporate media will never tell you this honestly, and restacking is what forces the platform to carry it to people who would otherwise never know it happened.
The White House has turned mass deportation into a video-game arcade. The president woke up Saturday to a nation calling him the “dumbest racist alive.” Trump’s former labor secretary allegedly ran her department like a bachelorette weekend, booze on federal property and all. And a woman who spent seven years trapped in Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit is speaking publicly for the first time. Four stories, one thread: power that treats people as props.
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The White House Made a Video Game Out of Arresting People
If the cruelty were confined to policy, that would be one horror. Instead, the administration has decided to make it fun.
The official White House website has launched an “arcade” of five games built around Trump’s priorities.
In “Build the Wall,” a Tetris knockoff, you stack blocks to keep out green and orange alien-like figures swarming what the game calls the “Southern Border” in a “zombie border siege.” In “Rio Run,” a Snake clone, you “arrest” asylum seekers at the Rio Grande, and each one you catch trails behind you in a growing line of orange jumpsuits.
Then there’s more: a game about sorting school lunches to “make America healthy again,” another about a Trump savings account, and “Flappy Bill,” where you pilot a bald eagle down the National Mall.
The launch video ripped off Sega’s logo and its signature jingle. Metro has asked Sega for comment.
A White House official told CNN the arcade was about contrasting a “culture of fun and winning” against the “dark socialist vision Democrats have for America.”
Earlier this year, the same website rolled out an “aliens” portal urging citizens to report neighbors they suspect of being undocumented.
Turning human beings into falling blocks and jumpsuited dots isn’t a glitch; it’s the entire point.
Trump’s “Hot Tamale” Tirade Earns Him a New Title: “Dumbest Racist Alive”
Bewilderment rolled across the country Saturday morning as word spread that the president had threatened to cut off trade with Canada because America doesn’t need a cinnamon candy he thinks comes from south of the border.
It started in the Oval Office Friday, when Trump decided to teach a reporter how trade deficits work. He promptly revealed he has no idea.
“We lose, with the European Union, $200 billion a year,” he said. “If I didn’t trade with them, we’d lose nothing.”
This isn’t true. A trade deficit isn’t money handed over; it means you bought more from someone than they bought from you. As one reader’s fact-check on X put it, it’s like having a “deficit” with your grocery store — you give Safeway money, Safeway gives you food, and nobody’s been robbed.
Then Trump reached for a punchline he didn’t know he was writing.
“If I don’t trade with Mexico, they have nothing that we have to have,” he said. “I mean, Hot Tamales, tomatoes, a couple of things. But basically they have nothing that we need.”
Hot Tamales are made by Just Born, a company founded in Trump’s home state of New York that’s now headquartered in Pennsylvania. It proudly bills itself as maker of “America’s #1 Cinnamon flavored candy.”
Trump then threatened to blow up trade with Canada, musing that without us, “I don’t think they’d exist.”
The reaction was swift. “Hot tamales?” replied Ron Filipowski. “WTF?”
Metro Weekly editor Randy Shulman offered the morning’s tidiest summary: “He is the dumbest racist alive.”
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The Labor Secretary’s Lost Weekend
And then, because the week refused to quit, there’s Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
Trump’s former labor secretary was appointed in January 2025 and resigned this past April under a cloud. She’s the subject of a 38-page Inspector General report drawn from 38 witnesses. It reads like a screenplay somebody rejected for being too over-the-top.
According to the report, Chavez-DeRemer drank during working hours, kept alcohol on federal property, and mocked employees who abstained. She used agency funds for personal travel, including five trips to Las Vegas and three nights at a luxury Palm Beach hotel. She purportedly made staff come to her home to organize her bedroom closet on the clock.
Then there’s the showstopper. During a personal trip to Oregon, she allegedly had a security agent stop at a strip club, pulled bills from her purse, and instructed him to drop them “one by one” onto a dancer.
He complied, the report says, “against his wishes.”
Her aides reportedly held “beatdowns” where they berated employees. One deputy allegedly moved a worker’s desk so a “fat person” wouldn’t be visible from the front office, and told another employee not to cut her hair short lest she risk “turning into a lesbian.”
Her attorney’s defense: she “did not break any laws.”
That sentence tells you everything about the bar this administration sets for itself.
The Woman Who Escaped Epstein’s Cult
The Epstein story isn’t going away, no matter how badly the Trump White House wants it to. And this weekend, we learned about a new survivor.
Julia Molchanova was 22, living in Russia, and barely spoke English when Jeffrey Epstein spotted her on a Manhattan sidewalk in December 2011 and steered her to his townhouse. He asked, through a translator, what she dreamed of. She said fashion design. He promised her a spot at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
“That was the hook,” she told the Wall Street Journal, speaking publicly for the first time.
The school never materialized. What did was seven years of sexual abuse under the cover of a fake job as one of his “assistants.” Molchanova revealed she was the lead Jane Doe in the class-action suit against Bank of America, which a judge recently settled for $72.5 million to be shared among dozens of Epstein victims.
Her account shows how much more careful Epstein got after his 2008 conviction. He targeted women over 18 who looked younger. His lawyer set up an LLC in her name, sold to her as her own design company, which Epstein then used to move money and make purchases she knew nothing about. This included a furniture order of nearly $40,000 she only found this year, buried in the Justice Department files.
Epstein dictated what she wore, how long her hair was, which doctors she saw, and whom she dated. He arranged for her to marry another young woman. When she failed to bring him new girls, he sent her to a room in his home to sit in isolation for days.
“It was like a cult,” she said.
Molchanova got out in 2019 after finding strange credit cards on her credit report and confronting him. Epstein invited her to Palm Beach. She refused.
“I thought for sure, at that moment, someone would find me on the bottom of his pool if I go,” she said.
Epstein was arrested three months later.
His lawyer and accountant say she never told them she was a victim. His longtime assistant says she knew nothing. The modeling agency says it never dealt with him. The bank says it facilitated nothing.
Everyone, as always, saw nothing. Which is precisely why the remaining files matter, and why this administration fights so hard to keep them shut.
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Donald Trump lies like he breathes. He is also a self-centered malignant narcissist, who lacks the ability to empathize with anyone else. And of course he changed his mind at the last minute about the Iranian cease-fire, because he's disorganized, doesn't know what the heck he's doing, and makes it up as he goes along. And let us not forget the fact that five years ago on january 6th, Trump led an insurrection at the capitol, where many people died. There were people that, after attacking police, we're walking in the capitol building itself with confederate flags, shouting “Hang Mike Pence!” BecauseThe vice president wouldn't certify donald trump's lies about the election results. And the violence was so horrific that some people involved in defending the Capitol later committed suicide. Think about that. Then to make matters worse, trump pardons all the J6th rioters, many of which were members of right wing extremist groups like the "proud boys." Trump called them "true patriots" What a f****** joke. More presently, the fact that Pam Bondi's replacement immediately says, "let's just forget about the whole Epstein thing" shows how corrupt the entire system is. Trump has forced himself on countless women of ALL AGES throughout his life. Trump has also said, that if your famous and rich enough, "You can grab women by the p***y" He's also a pedophile, and has been mentioned in the Epstien files a record 38,000 times. Trump is a horrible human being, and he's incapable of empathy with any other human being, and only cares about himself. He's a spoiled brat, and has always used his daddy's connections to get out of the vietnam war, with his fake bone spurs b******t that he got his daddy's doctor to submit to the draft board. He and Epstein have raped countless girls aged only 11, 12, 13, and 14. Trump has cheated on every business deal he's ever made. He's cheated on every wife he's ever been married to. HE'S THE MOST IMMORAL AND WORST PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES! Now he's started a war in the mid-east, where thousands of innocent people have been killed, including many children. The sooner he gets impeached, and/or removed from office due to health or other reasons, the better off the U.S. AND the world will be. Trump said he would keep the united states out of foreign war. He said he would lower the cost of living. What he has done is bomb Iran despite no imminent threat from them. And as one of the effects of this war, the cost of living for gasoline food, Medical care, housing and many other things continue to cost more. Trump is a clear and present danger to the United States, and the entire world. He needs to resign. The Republicans that have influence on him need to section 25, convince him to resign, and whatever, just get him the hell out of there! Sincerely David Morris, who was born one day long ago in Fort Wayne Indiana.
Video games??!! Like they said the dumbest racist alive!!! 😝😝😝