Trump Lashes Out In 2am 4th Of July Meltdown as Fair Falls Apart
Trump Pardons More Criminals; Trump Has 2 am Meltdown; Ivana Allegedly Helped Epstein; Mamdani Sounds Off
Good morning. It’s the Fourth of July, and Donald Trump marked it with 2 a.m. insults and pardons for men convicted of tampering with truck emissions, while a new allegation surfaces about his first wife’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the day to lay out a very different vision of what America can be. Let’s get into it.
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Trump Pardons Six While Fair Falls Apart
Fresh off the collapse of his so-called Great American State Fair, Donald Trump announced Friday afternoon that he was granting clemency to six people he claims were “persecuted” by the Biden administration. In a Truth Social post, the 80-year-old president said he was “setting them all free, right now” for what he described as being punished for “fixing their car.”
That phrase almost certainly refers to violators of the Clean Air Act, people convicted of tampering with emissions monitoring systems on trucks and other vehicles. One recent example is Wyoming mechanic Troy Lake, who spent seven months in federal prison after admitting he disabled pollution monitoring systems on more than 300 commercial trucks. Trump pardoned him in November.
Behind closed doors, Trump was also weighing a pardon for Sean “Diddy” Combs, according to CBS News, despite telling the New York Times back in January he wasn’t considering it. In January, the Justice Department also ordered federal prosecutors to abandon criminal investigations into devices used to defeat vehicle emissions controls.
This is the same administration that opened its first day in office by issuing blanket pardons to every Jan. 6 Capitol rioter. Clemency requests have been flooding in ever since.
America Turns 250. Trump Spends 2 AM Mocking Lawmakers’ Faces
At 2:11 in the morning on the 250th anniversary of American independence, Trump used Truth Social to tell the country that Sen. Jon Ossoff looks like Pee wee Herman. Eight minutes later, he returned to post that Rep. James Talarico, who is running for Senate in Texas, resembles MAD Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman, complete with an edited photo blacking out one of Talarico’s teeth.
Ossoff has been an outspoken critic of Trump as he runs against the president’s preferred candidate in Georgia. When Trump mocked him last month, Ossoff shot back that the president is “humiliated globally” by the failed war in Iran and called him “an increasingly unstable lame duck and a national disgrace.”
For all his overnight posting, Trump does not seem to be putting in many daytime hours. A recent review found he made just three public appearances in Washington before 11 a.m. during all of June, with most events pushed to the afternoon or later. The Daily Beast called the schedule “shockingly lazy.”
Beauty Queen Alleges Ivana Trump Helped Funnel Women to Epstein
A former Miss Switzerland and Miss Europe contestant is making a new and disturbing claim, this time about Donald Trump’s first wife. Beatrice Keul, who has previously accused Trump himself of assault, told the Daily Beast’s Punch Up Substack that she believes Ivana Trump operated as a “madam”-style figure in Jeffrey Epstein’s world, comparing her role to that of convicted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Punch Up has not independently verified Keul’s claims and notes there is no evidence Ivana knew of or participated in any crimes. Ivana Trump, mother of Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka and Eric, died in 2022 and was never charged in connection to Epstein. A reporter on the Substack noted that Ivana was originally from Czechoslovakia and that many trafficking victims came from Eastern Europe.
Keul has said Epstein tried to recruit her at one of Trump’s pageants and that Trump assaulted and threatened her. She became the 28th woman to publicly accuse Trump of sexual misconduct. The White House has rejected her claims, and Trump denies every allegation against him.
Mamdani Marks 250 Years With a Different Vision of America
While Trump spent his early morning hours mocking his political opponents, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the 250th anniversary to lay out a very different picture of the country. Speaking from City Hall, Mamdani, an immigrant himself, described how generations of newcomers built New York into what it is today, and took direct aim at the anti-immigrant politics coming out of the Trump administration.
“The story of America has been written by those who have so often been told by those with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional,” Mamdani said. He argued that the wealthy and powerful have long tried to convince Americans that the country shrinks the more people it welcomes, and that belonging depends on having the right accent or the right skin color.
Mamdani pointed instead to nurses working double shifts to check on elderly neighbors, and fathers clocking in before dawn under leaking ceilings while still believing the country can do right by their families. He closed by describing America as a nation still striving toward the ideals it was founded on 250 years ago, ideals he said are strong enough to outlast any authoritarian regime, but only if people keep reaching for them.
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Stay Strong. Stay Vigilant. And have a great holiday.
John, Justin and the Raw America Team
Here are five political stories from the last day worth catching up on:
Supreme Court quietly reshapes campaign finance rules. While the mail-in ballot ruling grabbed headlines this week, a companion Supreme Court decision in a case involving the National Republican Senatorial Committee may matter more. The Court struck down federal limits on coordinated spending between political parties and campaigns, opening the door for parties to pour far larger sums directly into competitive House and Senate races ahead of November.
Trump tells gas station owners what to charge. In a Truth Social post, the president demanded that gas stations lower prices to $2.50 a gallon, well below the current national average of roughly $3.84. The post came as falling prices tied to the Strait of Hormuz remaining open have already given Republicans a talking point heading into the midterms.
Pope Leo XIV uses Liberty Medal speech to needle immigration crackdown. Accepting the award from the National Constitution Center by livestream from the Vatican, the first American pope praised the country’s history of welcoming immigrants and called America’s founding promise “a work in progress.” He avoided naming Trump directly but has repeatedly spoken out on the treatment of migrants.
Appeals court rules against Trump detention policy, again. The Tenth Circuit ruled that the administration’s practice of holding immigrants without bond hearings is unlawful, making it the fourth federal appeals court to reject that policy. The ruling ordered the release of a man who has lived in the country for two decades and has a U.S. citizen daughter.
The 250th anniversary fair briefly shut down from the heat it denies exists. Trump’s Great American State Fair on the National Mall temporarily closed Saturday as temperatures hit triple digits and Washington recorded its hottest Fourth of July on record, even as the president pushed ahead with a planned “really long speech” he bragged about giving regardless of the heat.