Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
The Trump regime is quietly keeping its billion-dollar MAGA payout scheme alive despite public assurances it’s been scrapped. CNN’s Trump fact-checker has mysteriously vanished from the air since the conglomerate led by a billionaire Trump donor announced its merger with the network’s parent company. The president has been quietly buying tobacco stocks and collecting millions in donations from the industry while his FDA rolls back public health protections. And Trump has inadvertently handed Democrats a gift-wrapped package of campaign ads with a string of jaw-dropping statements about inflation.
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Trump Still Quietly Pushing MAGA Slush Fund
Back in May, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund designed to compensate Trump loyalists including Trump himself, his family, January 6 defendants and other political allies who faced federal investigations.
The backlash from both sides was immediate. Democrats pointed out that the fund could pay people who attacked police on January 6. Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina called it a “payout for punks.” Senator John Curtis of Utah said it could hold up Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general.
So Blanche told the House the fund wasn’t moving forward. Problem solved, right?
Not exactly.
Blanche made those statements without being under oath. When Democratic Congresswoman Grace Meng of New York asked him to put his promise in writing, he refused.
And here’s where it gets interesting. The Atlantic is citing eight sources including current and former DOJ officials, current and former members of Congress, and people close to the White House, that behind the scenes, administration officials have been quietly assuring allies that the payouts are still on track.
Those sources are saying that officials dropped public support for the fund to get Blanche confirmed by he Senate and wait for the political heat to die down before moving forward with payments. Officials are reportedly exploring whether elements of the fund can be reactivated, and whether loyalists can be paid in other ways, like lawsuits that the government would then settle quickly.
One Republican former member of Congress told the Atlantic that he’d been assured the public retreat was “all part of the plan” and that “nothing has changed.” An attorney advising clients seeking compensation simply said, “you have to be an insider to know who to talk to.”
Trump himself has been conspicuously unwilling to say the fund is dead. When NBC asked if he was looking for a way to revive it, he said: “If it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve.” He also added, “I think the weaponization fund is a great idea.”
And Stanley Woodward, the associate attorney general who signed the original settlement agreement, told Republican Lindsey Graham “we’re on it” after the senator suggested victims could still be compensated through Federal Tort Claims Act lawsuits, before quietly deleting the message.
A federal judge has ordered DOJ to halt any further action related to the fund pending a hearing tomorrow. Democracy Forward, the legal advocacy group challenging the fund, filed briefs this week arguing that the government’s shifting statements make it impossible to trust their assurances. The group’s president, Skye Perryman, told Blanche: “If you can say it on TV, you should say it in court.”
The administration has a pattern of saying one thing publicly and doing another quietly. And this is $1.776 billion in taxpayer money we’re talking about, potentially going to people convicted of attacking the Capitol.
The framers handed the power of the purse to Congress for exactly this reason, and Madison called it the most complete and effectual weapon the people’s representatives could ever hold. Watching an administration try to route taxpayer money around that check isn’t a budget story, it’s Article One getting hollowed out in real time. Watch this one closely.
CNN’s chief Trump Fact-Checker Has Been Missing Since Paramount-Warner Bros. Deal Announced
In late February, fact-checker Daniel Dale appeared on CNN after Trump’s State of the Union address and catalogued more than 20 false or misleading claims, saying “there was just a lot of lying tonight.” The next morning, he was back on air saying Trump’s claim of $18 trillion in new U.S. investments was “total fiction.”
That was more than three months ago, and according to reporting from Status, it was the last time Dale appeared on CNN’s air to fact-check the president. Aside from a brief March appearance to discuss AI-generated videos, he’s been off the air entirely.
The timing is hard to miss. Two days after that State of the Union fact-check: Paramount announced its merger with CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. That deal would place CNN under the same corporate umbrella as CBS News and put billionaire Trump donor David Ellison in full control of one of the largest media brands in the world.
CNN insists there’s no link between Dale’s disappearance and the deal. A network spokesperson told Status that Dale’s fact checks of Trump “are an important part of CNN’s political coverage,” and like all of the network’s reporters, his appearances are “determined by the news of the day.”
But it’s worth noting that Dale was appearing roughly a dozen times a month before the merger announcement. Since then, nothing. He’s still publishing fact-checks online and appearing in short digital videos, but CNN’s broadcast audience hasn’t seen him hold Trump accountable on air in over three months.
There’s still a demand for Dale’s fact-checking. This week alone, CNN published an analysis finding that Trump said a deal with Iran was imminent at least 38 different times. Trump continues to lie about gas prices, the economy, and the war. There’s plenty of on-air fact-checking to be done.
Nobody outside of network leadership knows whether this is editorial caution ahead of a major regulatory approval process, an attempt to avoid conflict with the White House, or simply a coincidence. But the pattern is visible, and it fits neatly into the trend of billionaire-owned media outlets softening their coverage as Trump turns up the heat.
When the Supreme Court sided with the Pentagon Papers, Justice Hugo Black reminded the country that the press was built to serve the governed and not the governors. A fact-checker who quietly vanishes the moment a merger needs federal approval tells you which one a billionaire-owned newsroom is starting to serve.
This is exactly why independent media outlets like Raw America are necessary. We don’t have a billionaire owner calling the shots behind the scenes, and we’ll never self-censor to appease shareholders. We’re only accountable to readers like you. If that kind of independence is valuable to you, invest in Raw America’s growth as a paying subscriber.
Trump Cashes in on Tobacco Stocks After His FDA Loosens Industry Regulations
While Trump’s FDA was rolling back public health protections on tobacco and nicotine products, Trump was personally buying millions of dollars in tobacco stocks, while his affiliated PACs were raking in tens of millions in donations from the industry.
ProPublica laid out the timeline. Trump held as much as $1.64 million in Philip Morris stock this year. He’s also invested in Altria and a third major tobacco company. In 2025, tobacco interests donated $6 million to the MAGA Inc. super PAC and Trump’s inauguration. And on April 30, just one week before FDA guidance that gave the industry a major boost, Reynolds American dropped an additional $5 million into MAGA Inc.
That FDA guidance issued in May allows manufacturers to market vapes and nicotine pouches while awaiting full agency approval. It was widely condemned by public health advocates as scientifically indefensible. Mitch Zeller, a former head of the FDA’s tobacco center, called it “blatantly illegal.” Former FDA tobacco official Brian King, who was pushed out of the agency last year, described the overall policy direction as “a gift on a platter with a side of public health malpractice.”
These companies are raking in huge profits thanks to the rule change. Goldman Sachs estimated that Philip Morris’s Zyn nicotine pouches generate eight times the gross profit of traditional cigarettes. These are enormously lucrative products, and the Trump administration has cleared a path for them to flood the market with almost no regulations.
This is all happening while the CDC’s anti-smoking office has been gutted. The “Tips From Former Smokers” campaign, which has been one of the most effective public health interventions in decades, has been off the air for months.
The White House says the only guiding factor in FDA policy is “Gold Standard Science.” But Goldman Sachs and Barclays are describing these regulatory decisions as “very positive” for the industry, and they’re not talking about science when they say that.
This is corruption out in the open. The industry donates. The president invests. The regulations get loosened. And half a million Americans a year die from tobacco use.
Teddy Roosevelt watched corporate cash buy government in the Gilded Age and pushed through the Tillman Act of 1907 to make exactly this kind of company money to elected officials illegal. We’ve spent a century quietly unwinding that protection, and now the donation, the stock buy and the rule change all happen in plain sight and nobody even bothers to pretend it’s a coincidence.
Trump Hands Democrats Three Huge Midterm Gifts
Over the span of about a month, Donald Trump delivered three separate quotes that, on their own, would be politically devastating for any other public official. Together, they suggest the president has completely disregarded the economic concerns of everyday Americans.
On May 12, Trump said: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”
On May 27, he said: “I don’t care about the midterms.”
And this week, when asked about new inflation data showing a 4.2 percent overall rise in prices, the highest in three years, Trump said: “I love the inflation.”
Now, the president tried to walk back that last one, telling the New York Post he meant to say he loved that inflation wasn’t higher. But his remark is on tape, and campaign ads don’t need much context.
A Trump adviser admitted to Axios that “the president could have chosen different words” in regard to that first quote. But Trump reportedly responded by telling Fox News it was “a perfect statement. I’d make it again.”
This all translates to an electoral nightmare for Republicans. A new Economist/YouGov poll shows just 29 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, with 63 percent disapproving. Those are the worst numbers on record for both of his terms. Even at Joe Biden’s lowest point in 2023, his own economic approval never dropped below 39 percent.
Republicans on Capitol Hill have been pleading with the White House to focus on cost-of-living issues. But Trump has made clear that his priority is the war in Iran, and the political consequences for his party are not something he thinks about.
The midterm picture isn’t pretty for the GOP. Democrats didn’t have to manufacture an economic message. Trump simply handed it to them.
The framers built two-year House terms into Article One for one reason, so a leader who says out loud that he doesn’t think about your finances still has to face you on a clock he can’t stop. Madison wrote in Federalist 52 that frequent elections are the only thing that keeps a government dependent on the people, and Trump just reminded every voter in the country exactly what’s on the ballot in November.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
DOJ Official Wanted to Apply for Payment from Proposed MAGA Slush Fund. Patrick Davis, who is assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, was reportedly planning to apply for a payment from President Donald Trump’s proposed $1.776 billion so-called “anti-weaponization” fund. Davis planned to apply in his prior capacity as an aide to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), given that former DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith accessed phone records from Grassley’s staff as part of his January 6 investigation.
Trump’s State Department Told Colombian President to Cancel Meeting with Mamdani. While President Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani appear to have a cordial relationship in public, the Trump administration was caught quietly urging a Colombian President Gustavo Petro to call off a meeting with the mayor of America’s largest city ahead of his upcoming visit to the Big Apple. Administration officials reportedly told Petro that the meeting would be in violation of the terms he was being allowed to enter the United States.
Trump Administration Opened Complaint Line Only to Be Flooded with Complaints About Himself. The Trump administration this year opened a complaint line for the National Park Service encouraging Americans to file complaints about any exhibits deemed “negative.” The administration then received more than 35,000 complaints about the initiative, calling it “un-American.” The administration has targeted dozens of exhibits for removal pertaining to slavery and racism, saying it’s focused on “uplifting public monuments.”
MAGA Influencer Arrested in Texas for Making ‘Terroristic Threats.’ 31 year-old far-right online influencer Jake Lang was recently arrested in Dallas, Texas on state charges of making terroristic threats outside the Collin County Courthouse this week. Lang was attending the murder trial for teenager Karmelo Anthony, who was eventually convicted of fatally stabbing 17 year-old Austin Metcalf at a track meet. Lang threatened to shoot Anthony in the head if he wasn’t convicted. Anthony was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Lang’s bail has been set at $1 million.
Lindsey Graham Says Trump Is ‘Not Far Behind God’ After Winning GOP Primary. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) survived a primary challenge this week, all but ensuring he’ll serve another six-year term in the U.S. Senate if he wins the November election in the deep-red Palmetto State. Graham thanked “the big guy, God” in his victory speech, but then lavished praise on President Trump, saying, “Mr. President, you’re not far behind God, but we’re gonna start with Him.”
