Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.
Republicans in Congress are confiding to Raw America White House reporter Brian Karem that they’re worried about Donald Trump ignoring the economy to talk about his 2020 election conspiracy theories during his primetime speech tonight. Two of the biggest broadcast networks have already announced they won’t be airing the speech live. In Maine, the ICE agent who killed a 26-year-old father has been named, and his ex-wife says he asked her to lie for him. And Trump’s media company just found a new way to cash in on the presidency.
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Republicans Urge Trump to Stop ‘Rewriting History’ of 2020 Election
Multiple members of Senate Republican leadership are telling Raw America they think President Donald Trump is making a serious mistake with tonight’s address to the nation.
One Republican in Senate leadership told Raw America White House reporter Brian Karem that they were Trump would use the coveted primetime slot to talk about what he’s doing for the economy. Instead, it’s widely expected that he’ll waste much of the address “rewriting the history of the 2020 election,” in that lawmaker’s words.
Another member of Republican leadership was even more blunt, telling Raw America the 2020 election “has been investigated to death.” Joe Biden was the winner even after multiple recounts and audits. More than 60 courts, including federal judges Trump himself appointed, threw out the Trump campaign’s lawsuits. There’s nothing left to find, and Republicans know it.
Even Republican Thomas Massie, who’s on his way out of Congress, isn’t buying the fraud narrative. He pointed out that outside of Trump, Republicans actually did pretty well, telling Raw America the GOP “won most of them,” referring to down-ballot races. That’s a hard argument to square with Trump’s stolen election claims. If the election was rigged against Republicans as Trump insists, you’d expect Republicans to have suffered steep losses in every state. that didn’t happen.
So even inside Trump’s own party, there’s a growing sense that tonight’s speech is going to be more about grievance than governance. And several are visibly worried about what that says to the country, and what it means for their own political future if they keep entertaining the president’s delusions.
At Least 2 Major Networks Won’t Air Trump’s Address
ABC News and NBC News both confirmed to the Daily Beast that they will not air President Trump’s primetime address in full on their networks. That’s a significant break from the usual tradition of carrying a president’s national address live, and the decision is almost certainly due to Trump being expected to spend the bulk of the speech lying to Americans about an election he lost six years ago.
ABC says the speech will run on its free streaming service, ABC News Live, and on ABC News Radio, with what the network calls “comprehensive, anchored coverage.” ABC’s Special Report team says it’s ready to divert from regularly scheduled programming if Trump actually makes real news.
NBC is taking a similar approach. The network says it’ll air a special report after the remarks wrap up, and it’ll stream the speech itself on NBC News NOW rather than putting on its national airwaves.
CBS hasn’t said what it’s doing yet, but CNN media reporter Brian Stelter noted the network is likely take a cautious approach, where CBS Evenings News anchor Tony Dokoupil will reports on what Trump said and then fact-check it afterward.
As of Thursday, cable giants Fox News, CNN, and MS NOW hadn’t responded to the Daily Beast’s questions about whether they plan to carry the speech live. It’s rare that a president conducts a primetime national address. It’s even rarer when America’s biggest networks hesitate to air it.
ICE Agent Who Killed Man in Maine Asked Ex-Wife to Lie for Him
The ICE agent who fatally shot 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine this week has been identified as David Michael Brouillette. Guerrero was a Colombian man living with his partner and young daughter when ICE agents killed him in his car.
Brouillette’s ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, told the Portland Press Herald that her ex-husband called her Wednesday, using his current wife’s Facebook account, and admitted to being the one who shot Guerrero. She says he asked her to lie for him and vouch for his character.
She refused. She says he then said the shooting was justified because the Guerrero tried to hit him with his car. But she’d already seen video from the scene, and plainly told him that nothing in that footage shows Guerrero doing anything of the sort. She added her ex-husband was “unusually calm about it.”
Brouillette has bounced between several law enforcement and public safety jobs across Maine over the past decade, including stints with the Maine Correctional Center, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, and the Manchester Fire Department, where coworkers say he was let go after clashing with leadership. He’s also an Army veteran who deployed to Afghanistan and left the service as a sergeant, though the Army won’t reveal the nature of his discharge.
Ashley Brouillette says she previously reported concerns about her ex-husband’s mental health to his superiors in the military, and that he was abusive during their relationship. She says she’s now getting threatening calls after coming forward.
ICE still hasn’t officially named Brouillette as the shooter. It took an independent watchdog site, run out of the Netherlands with volunteer help, to identify him using tips from two people who knew him personally. Independent Senator Angus King’s office says the head of Homeland Security has admitted Guerrero wasn’t even the intended target of the warrant.
Trump’s Social Media Company Selling Wall Street Previews of Trump’s Posts
Trump Media & Technology Group has rolled out a paid data product called Truth API, which sells banks and trading firms faster access to posts from the ten most influential Truth Social accounts, including the president’s. The company says it’ll beat a regular push notification, giving trading firms a speed edge on posts that regularly move global markets.
TMTG’s interim CEO, Kevin McGurn, says the product is meant to become “a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue” for the company. Trump’s own posts, like his “Liberation Day” tariff announcements and comments on China trade restrictions, have already jolted markets in the past, and now the company is charging traders for a head start on reading them.
The service launches August 1, with round-the-clock coverage and an archive going back to 2022. TMTG says firms have been scraping its data illegally for months already, and McGurn made clear the company plans to make life difficult for anyone who keeps doing that instead of paying up.
So just to be clear, Trump not only knows his social media posts move markets, but now he’s charging investors for the privilege of getting premium access to them. If this was in a movie script about a corrupt president, it would be rejected for being too on-the-nose.
If tonight’s newsletter told you anything, it is that this administration can’t stay out of its own way, and somebody has to keep track of all of it. Tonight alone we brought you an exclusive report about Republicans souring on Trump’s election conspiracies, major networks refusing to broadcast the president’s lies, the name of the ICE agent who killed a man in front of his daughter and the full details of Trump’s latest breathtakingly corrupt scheme. Raw America does this work without a billionaire owner calling the shots. If you’ve been reading on a free subscription, today is the day to upgrade to a paying membership. Every subscription goes directly toward keeping this kind of reporting alive. Subscribe or upgrade right now.
Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris. We’ll see you tomorrow.
Here are some stories you may have missed:
GOP Senate Candidate’s Son-in-Law Outed as White Nationalist Influencer. David Alan Scheer II — the son-in-law of Georgia Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Collins — has been outed as a white nationalist influencer following an investigation by CNNs KFile. The network reported that Scheer, who lives on a property that Collins owns and makes promotional videos for Collins’ trucking company, has a “track record of sharing antisemitic material and Nazi imagery in comments across the internet.” Collins is running against incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who was elected in 2020 as the first Democrat to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate since the 1990s.
Attorney Debunks FBI’s Claim That Man ICE Killed in Houston Had Drugs. The FBI recently sought a search warrant to obtain bags found in the van of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was killed by ICE agents in Houston last week while he was on his way to work. The FBI stated it suspects the bags contain methamphetamine, but Ruby Powers, who is a Houston-based immigration attorney representing Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo (Lorenzo’s younger brother) said the bags contained granulated salt. Manual laborers in Texas are known for combining the salt with lemon juice and water to make a homemade blend of electrolytes that make it easier to work in the heat.
Trump Administration Dragging Its Feet on Disaster Aid Applications. The Trump administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency has been accused of both excessive delays in processing states’ requests for federal disaster aid, and of denying aid to Democratic-run states that meet the threshold for qualification. The Associated Press found that the second Trump administration has taken the longest of any presidency dating back to 1989 when it comes to approving aid requests. The administration has also denied requests to states with Democratic-run governments like Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island.
