Trump’s Two-Year Take From Foreign Governments While He Was President Is Staggering

If you still had any doubts as to whether Donald Trump had self-serving motivations as the nation’s forty-fifth president, then a new report detailing the millions of dollars he received from foreign governments should make it clear it definitely wasn’t America he was putting first.

Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8 million from nearly two dozen foreign governments during his presidency, according to documents released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. The pocket-lining funds include money Trump received from some of the “world’s most unsavory regimes,” without ever asking for congressional approval as mandated by the U.S. Constitution.

The report, titled “White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump,” notes that it is likely an inconclusive analysis. It details just two years of Trump’s presidency and transactions between just four of his businesses, of which he owns more than 500, with 20 countries.

The biggest spenders included China, which gave Trump the largest sum out of all the nations—$5.5 million from entities including China’s Embassy in the United States, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and the Hainan Airlines Holding Company—as well as Saudi Arabia, which gave Trump $615,000. Other nations on the list include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malaysia, Albania, Kosovo, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, India, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Kazakhstan, Thailand, the Self-Declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Mongolia, Lebanon, Latvia, Turkey, Hungary, and Cyprus.

“These payments were made while these governments were promoting specific foreign policy goals with the Trump Administration and even, at times, with President Trump himself, and as they were requesting specific actions from the United States to advance their own national policy objectives,” the report notes.

“That narrative is insane,” Eric Trump told The New York Times, adding that “there is no president in United States history who was tougher on China than Donald Trump.”

The junior Trump brother also explained to the Times that the Trump Organization did “not have the ability or viability to stop someone from booking through third parties” at the hotel.

Republicans have tried to wipe away the report, amplifying their own double standard by claiming that the money stemmed from legitimate business interests, all while pushing an impeachment case against President Joe Biden on the basis of the Biden family’s own business dealings, which even some Republicans have admitted is a meritless cause.

In December, Senator Chuck Grassley told reporters that he felt the caucus had failed to provide any evidence pointing to wrongdoing on the sitting president’s part.

If only they looked inward.

People on the far right are aggressively pushing a bonkers new conspiracy theory: that comedian Jimmy Kimmel was on the list of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s associates. And the biggest question seems to be … why?

A federal court began releasing documents related to Epstein late Wednesday. The disgraced financier was charged in 2019 with sex trafficking minors, but he killed himself in prison before he could stand trial. The more than 900 pages of documents list names of people associated with Epstein and his former partner Ghislaine Maxwell.

Although the documents name a wide range of politicians, academics, and celebrities, Kimmel is not among them.

But that hasn’t stopped multiple fake versions of the list that include Kimmel’s name from circulating on X (formerly Twitter).

The conspiracy to include Kimmel started earlier this week when New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers appeared on The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday. When McAfee’s co-host brought up the Epstein list, Rodgers said, “There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, are really hoping that doesn’t come out.”

Kimmel threatened to sue Rodgers over the heinous joke, posting on X, “For the record, I’ve not met, flown with, visited, or had any contact whatsoever with Epstein, nor will you find my name on any ‘list’ other than the clearly-phony nonsense that soft-brained wackos like yourself can’t seem to distinguish from reality. Your reckless words put my family in danger. Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court.”

Rodgers has not apologized for the comments, which appear to stem from bad blood between the two men. Kimmel made fun of Rodgers’s anti-vax opinions and called him a “tinfoil-hatter” when the quarterback previously brought up the Epstein list in February.

When Rodgers mentioned Kimmel on Tuesday, McAfee said, “Jimmy mocked him for it, and Aaron has not forgotten about it.”

There has been no indication whatsoever that Kimmel would be mentioned on the list. But despite that fact—and the clear animosity behind Rodgers’s terrible quip—conservatives have pushed the Kimmel conspiracy with mind-boggling enthusiasm.

If people want to use the Epstein list to back up their QAnon theory that liberal elites run a global child sex trafficking ring, it’s unclear why they have decided to make Kimmel the poster boy. There are plenty of other names that appear on the list (which, to be clear, is not proof of any legal wrongdoing) that would prove their case much better than a mid-tier late-night comedian.

The first series of Jeffrey Epstein documents have been released, and as expected they name Donald Trump. And how is the country’s social media–obsessed former president responding? Well he’s gone surprisingly mute.

Donald Trump’s last slew of posts on his Twitter-dupe social media platform TruthSocial seemed like an effort to flood his MAGA followers’ timelines with unrelated content. In a series of rapid-fire posts Thursday morning, Trump shared endorsements for his presidential campaign as well as a slew of videos from news outlets validating his legal strategy in his upcoming criminal trials. He also made more than two dozen posts attacking E. Jean Carroll, all within the span of half an hour.

Despite the flurry of activity, there are absolutely zero mentions of the revelatory unsealing of nearly 900 pages of a lawsuit launched by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, nearly a decade ago, even though she’s one of Trump’s former employees, meeting Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell roughly two weeks into her employment at Trump’s Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, according to court documents.

Along with Trump’s, some of the major names that jump off the pages range from some of the world’s biggest politicos to show-stopping entertainers. They include former President Bill Clinton, British Prince Andrew, Epstein, and Trump legal ally Alan Dershowitz, Michael Jackson, David Copperfield, and Stephen Hawking.

Their presence in the documents is not proof of any legal wrongdoing.

A Clinton spokesperson has redirected attention to a 2019 statement put out on behalf of the forty-second president denying any knowledge of Epstein’s pedophilic, sex-trafficking empire.

“In 2002 and 2003, President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation,” read the statement.

The list of Jane and John Does, which was formed nine years ago, after Giuffre filed a defamation claim against Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, was partially released on Wednesday. More of the documents could be unsealed sometime today.

Many of the names are expected to be publicly known Epstein associates, including employees of the financier. Other possible names to be unveiled could include Epstein’s clients and perpetrators, though the judge has specified that the identities of minors or sexual assault victims will not be released.

A senior Education Department official and the department’s only Palestinian American political appointee has resigned over Joe Biden’s response to the war in Gaza.

Tariq Habash, who sent his resignation letter on Wednesday, is at least the second high-ranking Biden administration official to resign in protest over the Israel-Palestine war.

“The actions of the Biden-Harris Administration have put millions of innocent lives in danger, most immediately for the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians living in Gaza who remain under continuous assault and ethnic cleansing by the Israeli government. Therefore, I must resign,” Habash said in his letter.

“I mourn each and every loss, Israeli and Palestinian. But I cannot represent an administration that does not value all human life equally.”

Nearly all of the 2.3 million people living in the Gaza Strip have been displaced due to Israel’s unrelenting bombardment of the region. Palestinians were forced to flee to designated “safe zones,” only for Israel to bomb those areas as well. Almost 22,500 Palestinians have been killed, the majority women and children. Some organizations, such as the nonprofit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, put the death toll at nearly 30,000.

South Africa asked the International Court of Justice in late December for an urgent order declaring that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in its nearly three-month assault on the Gaza Strip. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby criticized South Africa’s lawsuit on Wednesday as “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”

“I cannot be quietly complicit as this administration fails to leverage its influence as Israel’s strongest ally to halt the abusive and ongoing collective punishment tactics that have cut off Palestinians in Gaza from food, water, electricity, fuel, and medical supplies, leading to widespread disease and starvation,” Habash said in his letter.

Over the last three months, our government has aided in the indiscriminate violence against Palestinians in Gaza—over 22,000 civilians killed, thousands more buried under rubble, and the vast majority displaced from their homes. Despite claims that Israel’s focus is on Hamas, its military actions simultaneously persist across the West Bank where there is no Hamas governing presence, with hundreds of Palestinians killed in the West Bank before October and hundreds more killed since. Additionally, thousands of Palestinians have been detained, arrested, and held without charge or trial—a violation of international humanitarian law. Meanwhile, the President has publicly questioned the integrity of Palestinian death counts frequently used by our own State Department, the United Nations, and numerous humanitarian non-governmental organizations. Our representatives at the United Nations have repeatedly voted against the vast majority of the international community, including vetoing resolutions calling for a ceasefire. And administration leaders have even repeated unverified claims that systematically dehumanize Palestinians.

Habash is now the second Biden official known to have resigned in protest over the administration’s response to the situation in Gaza. Josh Paul, who had worked at the State Department for 11 years, resigned in October, slamming the government for its “one-sided” policy that prioritized Israel at the expense of Palestinian civilians.

“I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions, including rushing more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be short-sighted, destructive, unjust and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse,” Paul said in a statement.

Also in October, a director of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights resigned, condemning the organization, the U.S., and Western media for their stance on the war. Craig Mokhiber, who had worked with the U.N. for more than three decades, called the situation in Gaza a “text-book case of genocide.”

“Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it,” he said.

Read Tariq Habash’s full letter here.

GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley is apparently willing to sacrifice just about anything for her political career—even her husband’s name.

In a true Selina Meyer move, the former South Carolina governor apparently decided that her then boyfriend’s name wasn’t fashionable enough for her political motivations.

“You may be wondering how ‘Bill’ became South Carolina First Gentleman Michael Haley,” Haley wrote in her autobiographical 2012 book, Can’t Is Not an Option: My American Story.

She then outlines how she suddenly decided he no longer looked like a Bill, opting instead to call him by his second name, Michael, which her friends quickly adopted.

“From that point on, I started calling him Michael, and all my friends did the same. When he transferred to Clemson his sophomore year, my friends became his friends, and before we knew it, he was universally known as Michael,” Haley wrote.

“He looks like a Michael,” she added.