I created the Musings Category so that I can include shorter articles in my postings. When I have enough topics for a posting I combine them together in the form of a Randy’s Musings Article. For the most part the postings are just random articles.

Table of Contents

-Who was Deborah Jeane Palfrey and what Happened to her?

-What Happened to Anthony Bourdain and how was he Associated with Adam Schiff?

–What is Project 2025?

-Why did Canada slow down their Immigration Policy?

-Why is England Arresting People for Posting on Facebook?

-Why is Elon Musk Working so Closely with Trump?

-How the Press is Ruining our Country?

-How can Trump get his Cabinet Picks Despite the Resistance of Congress?

-Why Does Mitch McConnell hate Trump?

Who was Deborah Jeane Palfrey and what Happened to her?

Deborah Jeane Palfrey (March 18, 1956 – May 1, 2008), dubbed the D. C. Madam by the news media, operated Pamela Martin and Associates, an escort agency in Washington, D.C. Although she maintained that the company’s services were legal, she was convicted on April 15, 2008, of racketeering, using the mail for illegal purposes, and money laundering. Slightly over two weeks later, facing a prison sentence of five or six years, she was found hanged. Autopsy results and the final police investigative report concluded that her death was a suicide.

Early life

Palfrey was born in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, on March 18, 1956. She spent her teens in Orlando, Florida. Her father was a grocer. She graduated from Rollins College with a degree in criminal justice, and completed a nine-month legal course at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law.

Career

Working as a paralegal in San Diego, she became involved in the escort business. Dismayed at how most services were run, including widespread drug abuse, she started her own company, recruiting mostly women over 25.^[6] In 1990, she was arrested on charges of pimping, pandering, and extortion. She fled to Montana, where she was captured while trying to cross the Canada–US border and brought back for trial.

Following her conviction in 1992, she spent 18 months in prison. After her release, she founded Pamela Martin and Associates.

D.C. Madam scandal

In June 2004, the United States Postal Inspection Service and Internal Revenue Service began an investigation into an illegal prostitution business being run in Washington, D.C. During the course of the investigation, Palfrey was identified as the operator of the prostitution ring. In October 2006, agents with the United States Postal Inspection Service posed as a couple who were interested in buying Palfrey’s home as a means of accessing her property without a warrant. Agents subsequently froze bank accounts worth over US$500,000, and seized papers relating to money laundering and prostitution charges.

As her case proceeded, it was revealed that Palfrey’s escorts charged as much as $300 per hour, and many have had professional careers. Palfrey continued to reside in California, and cleared some US $2 million over 13 years in operation. Palfrey appeared on ABC‘s 20/20 as part of an investigative report on May 4, 2007.

In response to Palfrey’s statement that she had 10,000 to 15,000 phone numbers of clients, several clients’ lawyers contacted Palfrey to see whether accommodations could be made to keep their identities private. Ultimately, ABC News, after going through what was described as 46 pounds (21 kg) of phone records, decided that none of the potential clients were sufficiently “newsworthy” to bother mentioning.

On July 9, 2007, Senator David Vitter (R-LA) acknowledged that he had been a customer of her escort service.

Thirteen former escorts and three former clients testified at her trial.

However, ABC News only published two of the names they had identified, men who were already known to have been clients of Palfrey — Randall L. Tobias, a State Department official, and Harlan K. Ullman, a Defense Department official. Journalist Neil A. Lewis reported, in The New York Times, that ABC would not publicize any new names.

The witnesses were compelled to testify, after being granted immunity from prosecution. In May 2007 a team at ABC News reported on their efforts to determine the identities of Palfrey’s clients from her phone records. They reported how many of Palfrey’s clients phoned from hotel rooms to obfuscate their identities. They found some clients had exaggerated their importance-one who had bragged about his role in evacuating colleagues from the White House on 9/11 turned out to merely work near The White House.

On April 15, 2008, a jury found Palfrey guilty of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes, and racketeering. Palfrey believed that contrary to the U.S. Attorney’s Office lower estimate, she might spend six or seven years behind bars. She faced a maximum of 55 years in prison.

Death

On May 1, 2008, roughly two weeks following her April 15 conviction, Palfrey was found hanging in a storage shed outside her mother’s mobile home in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Police found handwritten suicide notes in the bedroom where she was staying, dated a week before her death. The autopsy and the final police investigation concluded her death was a suicide.

Palfrey’s death resulted in her conviction being vacated.

Suicide notes

Palfrey’s two handwritten notes were released to the public. In one of them, she wrote to her sister, “You must comprehend there was no way out, I.E. ‘exit strategy,’ for me other than the one I have chosen here.” In another, she described her predicament as a “modern-day lynching“. She said she feared that, at the end of serving her sentence, she would be “in my late 50s a broken, penniless and very much alone woman”.

Speculation surrounding her death

The New York Times‘ Patrick J. Lyons wrote on the Times‘ blog, The Lede, that some on the Internet were skeptical that her death was a suicide. After investigating the crime scene, however, police found “no new evidence [that] would indicate anything other than suicide by hanging,” and a police investigative report released six months later concluded that her death had been a suicide. The police stated that Palfrey’s family believed the notes were written by Palfrey.

In early 2007, Palfrey learned of the death, apparently through suicide by hanging, of Brandi Britton, one of her former escort service employees. Palfrey reacted to this news by saying, “I guess I’m made of something that Brandy Britton wasn’t made of.” According to her former attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, she even took the extraordinary step of writing directly to the prosecutor, promising to show more resolve than Britton.

Journalist Dan Moldea, who was working with Palfrey on a book, recalled that in a 2007 conversation, Palfrey told him, “I am not going back to prison. I will commit suicide first.” He said her previous prison experience had traumatized her and she felt she couldn’t do it again.

On July 9, 2007, Palfrey released the supposed entirety of her phone records for public viewing and downloading on the Internet in TIFF format though days prior to this her civil attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, had dispatched 54 CD-ROM copies to researchers, activists, and journalists.

2016 Presidential Election

Montgomery Blair Sibley, Palfrey’s former attorney, claims to have her phone records and that they are relevant to the 2016 presidential election. In April 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the request to lift a lower court order, made by then-DC Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Merrick Garland, in place since 2007, that bars Sibley from releasing any information about her records.

The tragedy of Deborah Jeane Palfrey

On May 1, Blanche Palfrey awoke from a nap and wondered where her daughter was. The widowed 76-year-old wandered outside her Tarpon Springs, Fla., mobile home and noticed a tricycle — normally housed in a nearby toolshed — in her yard. Opening the door to the shed, she discovered her 52-year-old daughter hanging from a metal beam on the ceiling, a nylon rope fastened tightly around her neck.

In a handwritten suicide note, Deborah Jeane Palfrey — known as the “D.C. Madam” — begged for her mother’s forgiveness. She was the victim of a “modern-day lynching,” she wrote, convicted in April of racketeering, money laundering and mail fraud in the operation of a call girl service. She had served an 18-month prison sentence in the 1990s for a similar offense and could not bear to spend a potential 55 years in prison. Palfrey had amassed an impressive list of clients in Washington, including Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter, former U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias and Harlan Ullman, the man who coined the term “shock and awe.”

Palfrey is ultimately responsible for the decision she made to take her own life. But if the federal government had not pursued her in the merciless fashion in which it did, she would still be alive.

Washington is a place that chews people up and spits them out, and Palfrey is but its latest victim. Like Monica Lewinsky and Juanita Broaddrick before her, she got caught in the wake of big, important men with big, important careers. “We extend our condolences to Mrs. Palfrey’s family,” read a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which prosecuted her. How thoughtful of them.

Palfrey claimed that she merely ran a “sexual fantasy service,” the business of which was entirely legal.

She made her employees sign forms promising they would not engage in unlawful activity, and she claimed that if the women did, they did so without her knowledge. This sounds like hokum, but so what?

The government had no interest in spending countless dollars of our tax money on a three-year investigation into the doings of a woman who provided a contractual service for consenting adults that harmed not a soul.

Before one complains about the unseemliness of her profession, keep in mind that Palfrey started her agency because she was “appalled and disgusted” by “how seedy, lazy and incompetent” other escort firms were. Following this incentive, she was a teetotaler, and there is no indication that she ever physically abused, emotionally manipulated or otherwise took advantage of the women in her employ, all negative externalities of prostitution that motivate people to outlaw it. Indeed, all of her employees spoke highly of her, and Palfrey would often refuse to provide services to men she deemed indecorous.

Palfrey was a model “madam.”

The absurdity of our overzealous government’s hunting of this poor woman was made evident by the fact that Palfrey was arrested not for the sort of offenses committed by a sleazy pimp but, rather, for money laundering and other associated financial crimes, covert precautions that she would not have had to undertake were prostitution legal. Not only was Palfrey reportedly an excellent boss, she was also a successful entrepreneur: From 1993 until 2006, she earned an estimated $2 million. Unlike the government that prosecuted her, she actually created jobs and generated wealth.

Palfrey is not the first person whose death government prosecutors ought to have weighing on their consciences. After her indictment by a Washington grand jury, Palfrey spoke ominously of Brandy Britton, a former sociology and anthropology professor at the University of Maryland whom she once employed.

Britton later operated as an independent contractor and was caught in a police sting operation. She committed suicide — also by hanging — last February. “She couldn’t take the humiliation,” Palfrey told ABC News. “Her whole life was destroyed.”

Prostitution will exist whether the government outlaws it or not. Not for nothing is it called the “oldest profession.” Why not legalize its practice? That way, it can be zoned and regulated: “Streetwalking” could remain illegal and procurement would be limited to private residences. Even if one finds the legalization of prostitution too much to stomach (as most of the public currently does), surely the government should conserve its limited investigative and prosecutorial resources to go after pimps who engage in sex trafficking or who physically abuse their prostitutes. Or, you know, actual criminals like murderers and thieves.

If there was anything beneficial to emerge from this tragedy, it was the exposure of at least one government-employed john whose hypocrisy underscored his baleful influence on public policy. Tobias, former head of the United States Agency for International Development and Global AIDS coordinator, was one of the many men whose phone numbers appeared in the 46-pound list that Palfrey released to the media following her indictment. Tobias refused to fund programs that assisted prostitutes and encouraged abstinence over condom usage in the prevention of AIDS. Tobias was forced to resign over the revelations, and it’s beneficial to humanity that a proponent of such stupid policies is now away from a station where he could do so much harm. Yet, unlike the woman who provided him with the “massages” he sought, he lives to see another day and has never faced the threat of prosecution. Today, he serves as head of the Indianapolis Airport Authority.

As for Vitter, a week after Palfrey’s suicide, the Senate ethics committee decided not to launch an investigation into his use of the escort service. The consequences of his adultery are a matter for him and his wife, but something is seriously awry with our system of justice when Blanche Palfrey wakes up to find her daughter swinging from the rafters of a toolshed and Wendy Vitter wakes up to find her husband pontificating from the well of the United States Senate.

Suicide note: ”D.C. Madam’ said she didn’t want prison

May 5, 2008 Deborah Jeane Palfrey, convicted last month of running an elite Washington prostitution ring, wrote to her mother that she could not “live the next 6-8 years behind bars for what you and I have come to regard as this ‘modern day lynching,’ only to come out of prison in my late ’50s a broken, penniless and very much alone woman.”The notes were released by police Monday.Palfrey, 52, hanged herself with a nylon rope Thursday in a shed outside her mother’s mobile home in the Florida Gulf Coast community of Tarpon Springs, northwest of Tampa. Her mother, 76-year-old Blanche Palfrey, discovered the body.Deborah Palfrey was convicted of running a prostitution service that catered to members of Washington’s political elite, including Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican. She denied her escort service engaged in prostitution, saying that if any of the women engaged in sex acts for money, they did so without her knowledge. She was free while she awaited sentencing on July 24 and had been staying with her mother.Her suicide appeared to have been planned for days. The note to her mother was dated April 25, nearly a week before she killed herself. Police said the notes were found on a night stand in the bedroom where she’d been staying. One of the notes said, “Do not revive. Do not feed under any circumstances.”In the note to her younger sister, Bobbie, Palfrey expressed her love and told her to “be strong for mom.””Also, you must comprehend that there was no other way out, i.e., ‘exit strategy,’ other than the one I have chosen here,” she wrote. “Know I am at peace, with complete certainty, I believe Dad is standing watch – prepared to guide me into the light.”Also Monday, police announced that the medical examiner’s office officially ruled Palfrey’s death a suicide by hanging. A toxicology report is pending.Her death last week had sparked widespread Internet chatter among those who speculated that someone killed her to keep her from identifying more prominent clients of the escort service.”Tarpon Springs Police Department detectives, after following up on several investigative avenues have not discovered any new evidence which would indicate anything other then a suicide by hanging in this case,” spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Young said. Palfrey’s mother and sister identified her handwriting in the suicide notes, Young said.A federal jury convicted Palfrey on April 15 of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes and racketeering. Prosecutors said she ran the prostitution service for 13 years. The trial concluded without revealing many new details about the service or its clients. Vitter was among possible witnesses but did not take the stand.Palfrey had vowed that she would not go to prison, even telling a Washington writer that she would commit suicide first.

The madam, her girls and a city in fear

Deborah Jeane Palfrey first knew something was wrong on a trip to Germany. She suddenly found her bank card was not working any more. Then, back in her hotel room, a journalist from a gossip website called her.

He had been leaked a court document detailing Palfrey’s alleged sex empire in Washington DC, serving the rich and powerful with a ring of beautiful, university-educated call girls. Her assets had been seized by the government. As Palfrey struggled to understand what was happening, the journalist wanted to know if she was ashamed of herself.

The ‘DC Madam’ scandal had just been born. It is a story that has gripped Washington’s usually staid political classes. Palfrey stands accused of running a prostitution ring for more than 13 years. It is a charge she denies, maintaining her girls dealt out only massages and erotic role-play. She made them all sign agreements not to engage in illegal behaviour. Palfrey has vowed to identify the men who used her services to prove her story, and she has years of phone records to help her. All across the Washington area there are now thousands of nervous, powerful – often married – men.

But the DC Madam story is much more than a titillating guessing game. The scale of her operation exposed a dark underside of Washington life. Often decried as a dull government town, it has shown how sex and prostitution are key to how Washington works. From Nasa to the Pentagon to the State Department, officials of all levels were using Palfrey’s girls. The saga has also revealed a deep hypocrisy, showing how powerful men talk publicly of their ‘family values’ and then have escorts visit them in hotel rooms. As Rob Capriccioso, editor of Big Head DC, a Washington news and gossip website, says: ‘Tawdry sex is everywhere in Washington.’

It is not a scandal that is going to go away. Last Sunday, as President Bush sat in St John’s Church in Lafayette Square for the morning service, the Rev Luis Leon remarked on Palfrey’s case in his sermon. ‘Here in Washington DC a lot of people get in trouble on this one,’ Leon said. When the President’s priest is talking about a sex scandal, you know trouble is brewing in Washington.

Palfrey’s clients came from all walks of life. There is a Bush administration economist, a prominent company chief executive, Nasa officials, men who work at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, lobbyists for Republicans and Democrats, the commander of an air force squadron and at least five other military officers.

So far the identities – of perhaps up to 10,000 men – have remained secret. Only two have been exposed. One was Harlan Ullman, a military expert and the author of the ‘shock and awe’ strategy used in Iraq. The other was State Department official Randall Tobias, who, ironically, is a leading advocate of fighting prostitution abroad. He has now resigned.

The one thing all the men have in common was that they once rang Pamela Martin and Associates, the cover name for Palfrey’s operation, which advertised, like hundreds of other ‘massage’ services in Washington, online or in local newspapers.

Calls were rerouted to Palfrey’s home in California – specifically to a phone in her laundry room, where she sometimes battled the sound of her washing machine as she took down details of her client’s desires. She ran a network of about 130 girls. One was a legal secretary, another a University of Maryland academic and another an instructor at a naval academy. They charged $300 an hour.

It was lucrative, but not a goldmine.Over 13 years she earned $2m. That’s enough to get very comfortable with, but hardly a fortune. The surprising truth of the DC Madam is how ordinary her operation was. Compared to the high-octane glamour of Hollywood’s famous madam Heidi Fleiss, or New York’s blueblood procuress Sydney Biddle Barrows, Palfrey was very Washington: subdued, respectable and modest.

That modesty is displayed during her court appearances, where she has eschewed fashionable clothes, wearing navy blue outfits and subdued makeup. ‘She looks like she should be wearing little white gloves. She’s a soft-spoken woman. I curse more than her,’ said Lee Mirabel, a radio host who acts as her spokeswoman.

Palfrey would send out weekly messages to her girls, offering advice like a corporate newsletter. ‘Nail colour is to match lipstick colour,’ she suggested. She also said girls should use ‘fat cream for the thighs’. But the missives also acknowledged the legally shaky side of the business. She warned of an investigation by a Virginia vice squad officer, advising girls to burn or shred evidence of their client meetings within 24 hours. ‘Destroy the data immediately!!!!!!!’, she demanded.

Palfrey had good reason to be worried. She had been caught before. She was arrested in California in 1990 for running a smaller escort service. She ended up disappearing during her trial, leaving a long note with her lawyer saying the idea of prison was ‘an absurd and unthinkable horror’. But she was caught on the Canadian border the next year and served 18 months in jail. Not that it deterred her. She started Pamela Martin and Associates – where she was known as ‘Miz Julia’ – in 1993, shortly after she was released.

Her luck held out longer the second time around. She ran her business without incident until 2004, when – unknown to her – a tip -off to the tax authorities alerted them to her activities. It is believed to have come from someone angered by discovering his girlfriend was one of Palfrey’s escorts.

For two years detectives investigated the business, finally descending on it in October last year. But investigators combing through her home did not notice a huge pile of phone records. In total they weighed 21kg and recorded more than quarter of a million phone calls dating from the Clinton years through to the current Bush administration. The records were in Palfrey’s hands – the police had been looking for ‘a little black book’, unaware that Palfrey did not have one.

Now she is using those lists to show the DC establishment who used her service that she will not go quietly. ‘She has always realised the depth and breadth behind the names on her lists, and she has effectively used her own power in order to try to come out on top,’ says Capriccioso.

One of Palfrey’s missives is more telling than beauty tips. ‘Congress is back in session,’ she enthused to her girls. ‘This always helps to boost business!’

For the truth exposed by the DC Madam – and largely ignored by the American press so far – has been how ingrained the sex industry is in Washington. Escort services operate openly. In the metro area of the city an online search reveals more than 8,000 adverts for escort services. ‘That’s more escort services than there are McDonald’s,’ says Mirabel.

In many ways Washington represents a perfect market for a booming sex industry. Being a government-dominated town, it is heavily male – many rich, powerful and middle-aged. It is home to major international organisations, such as the World Bank, that are full of well-paid workers away from their home countries, where prostitution might be more socially acceptable. Or, like many visiting diplomats or businessmen, they might simply be lonely.

Washington also plays host to the Pentagon and the huge military support structure that surrounds it. Many of the calls on Palfrey’s list come from Pentagon City numbers. The five-star Ritz-Carlton (one of the most common numbers on Palfrey’s lists) is nearby.

‘It is going on unabated. There are brothels and services of every type,’ says Bill Keisling, a crime writer and friend of Palfrey. Palfrey’s attempts to publicise those who used her services has led many to accuse her of blackmail. But the real story of victimhood is not the men who may be exposed or already have been. The real victim here is Brandy Britton, one of Palfrey’s girls who was arrested by local police just as the investigation reached full swing. Britton, a former lecturer in sociology and biology, was also a call girl, entertaining clients in her suburban home. Her arrest threw her into the full glare of the media. She could not take the exposure and the mother-of-two hanged herself in January. ‘The press ruined her,’ says Keisling.

Others who have had their private lives exposed in the Washington media know how bad it can feel. ‘One day you’re just living your life, then suddenly it’s everyone’s business,’ says Jessica Cutler, a former junior Senate aide whose blog about her numerous affairs in Washington became a scandal when her identity was revealed. She was fired.

But then the DC Madam scandal is, at its heart, about hypocrisy. It is about the Washington movers and shakers sweating out the prospect of Palfrey’s court case. It is about the public face of a city whose political denizens exhort others to standards they clearly fail to meet themselves. ‘We think of ourselves as faithful to our Puritan founders, but the US regularly loses its innocence with scandals like this,’ says Bruce Gronbeck, an expert on political scandal at the University of Iowa.

Palfrey is not giving up. She recently turned over about 20 per cent of her client list to ABC News. She claims she did it to enlist its help in identifying her clients so they could exonerate her; it is a disingenuous argument. ABC’s main investigative reporter, Brian Ross, concluded the names they found were not newsworthy enough to publish – yet it still devoted a prime-time show to highlighting the case and its exclusive interview with Palfrey.

Palfrey has barely begun. She will find other ways to get the names into the public domain. Many won’t blame her. ‘I never named names, but if she’s getting in trouble, so should her clients,’ says Cutler.

Palfrey has been selling interviews on eBay. She has also handed over a whole new section of her list to a group of Washington investigative writers and there is the coming court case in which she will be defended by Preston Burton, the lawyer who once represented Monica Lewinsky. That seems fitting. ‘She’s decided to fight this until the end,’ says Mirabel.

The story of the DC Madam may have only just begun.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, Hounded to Death

Faced with the prospect of years in prison, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, known as the “D.C. Madam,” committed suicide on Thursday. Her pursuers and prosecutors should be ashamed of themselves.

Running a house of prostitution is not a distinction most of us would wish for our daughters. But it’s a vice, not a crime. That’s a crucial distinction in a free society. So far as we know, she never murdered, raped, assaulted, robbed, or defrauded anyone. Like any broker, she brought together willing buyers and willing sellers. And for doing so, she was convicted–not actually of prostitution but of “racketeering” and money laundering — and faced up to 55 years in prison, though prosecutors estimated that her sentence would likely be “only” four to six years.

Palfrey was indicted after a three-year joint investigation by the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal Service. Apparently they couldn’t catch her cheating on her taxes, but her employees mailed her cut of the proceeds in money orders, which led to racketeering and money laundering charges. As with former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, apparently a fishing expedition into money matters turned up something far more headline-worthy.

But really — a three-year investigation of a prostitution service? Are there no real criminals? Are there no terrorists? Before, during, and after 9/11, the Justice Department ran a 13-month investigation of a brothel in New Orleans. At least 10 FBI agents were involved. As Jonathan Turley noted, “Only the FBI could go to the French Quarter and find only a dozen prostitutes after a year of investigation. Given the roughly one-to-one ratio between agents and prostitutes, the FBI could have produced a hundred times this number by simply having agents walk down Bourbon Street.” What a ridiculous waste of money and manpower.

But the waste is not the worst aspect of this outrage. Even if there were no criminals and no terrorists to hunt down, it would be wrong to harass, arrest, prosecute, imprison — and hound to death — people who are violating no one’s rights.

There’s a nightmarish intersection of old prostitution laws and modern financial regulations. Palfrey was investigated on suspicion of tax evasion and then convicted of “racketeering” and “money laundering.” But she was no racketeer; she was one woman with some employees or contract workers. Spitzer’s bank accounts were being monitored, as apparently all our bank accounts are, under post‑9/​11 laws allegedly designed to turn up evidence of terrorist financing or other nefarious activity. And boy, did they find something sinister — a married man having sex with prostitutes.

In many ways we are more free today than we were in previous decades. But new regulations and new technology are making it much easier to monitor our activities and to actually enforce both old and new laws. It’s like a silent police state that we only realize when we’re suddenly served with papers. 

Palfrey told journalist Dan Moldea, “I’m not going back to jail. I’ll kill myself first.” A woman who had worked for her had also committed suicide after being charged with prostitution in 2007.

It’s time to repeal these antiquated laws against prostitution and to take a close look at the use and abuse of racketeering, money laundering, bank monitoring, and other intrusive laws. Someone needs to step forward and start that debate. Perhaps Governor Spitzer and Sen. David Vitter would be good candidates.

In the meantime, may Deborah Jeane Palfrey rest in peace. And may her persecutors have many sleepless nights.

New Details on the Infamous DC Madam Scandal Emerge

A decade ago, one of the biggest scandals to rock Washington, DC, was the revelation that some prominent lawmakers and government officials had allegedly been customers of Pamela Martin & Associates, an escort service operated by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, a woman better known as the “DC Madam.”

Videos by VICE

In October 2006, following a two-year investigation conducted by the United States Postal Inspection Service and the IRS, federal agents raided Palfrey’s Vallejo, California, home and froze her bank accounts. The government, which secured an indictment against Palfrey on money laundering, illegal mail use, and prostitution-related racketeering charges, alleged that Palfrey’s DC escort service was in fact a high-end prostitution ring that she had operated via phone and email from Northern California since 1993.

Palfrey, however, insisted Pamela Martin & Associates provided “legal, high-end erotic fantasy service” and that she had no idea her escorts had sex with customers. In March 2007, after she was charged, she turned over a list of nearly 10,000 phone records spanning four years to ABC News. (Palfrey said she didn’t know the names of her clients. She only had their telephone numbers.)

For days leading up to ABC’s exclusive interview with Palfrey, investigative reporter Brian Ross teased that Palfrey’s clientele included White House officials, lobbyists, and Pentagon, FBI, and IRS employees, as well as prominent lawyers. “There are thousands of names, tens of thousands of phone numbers,” Ross said.

But ABC backed away from naming names, and Palfrey accused the network of bowing to government pressure by withholding them. In the end, the network only revealed a few of the most prominent officials on Palfrey’s client list, including Republican senator David Vitter, Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias—who resigned when details of his use of escorts surfaced—and an adviser to the Pentagon, Harlan Ullman.

Palfrey was back in the news last year, when her former attorney Montgomery Sibley (pictured at right) tried to get the US Supreme Court to allow the release of records from Palfrey’s escort service, including customer names and Social Security numbers, which a lower court judge had already barred him and Palfrey from releasing. Sibley said the information in the Palfrey’s records could impact the presidential election. The Supreme Court denied his applications.

Palfrey’s brief reappearance in the news reminded me that I had not filed a Freedom of Information Act request for her file from the FBI, the IRS, and the US Postal Inspection Service. So I fired off an application, and about seven months later, the FBI sent me 54 pages but withheld 33. (The IRS has not responded and the US Postal Inspection Service has produced a couple of pages, with a promise that more are forthcoming.)

1. This document shows why the Postal Inspection Service was involved—Palfrey had long been on its radar. This December 3, 1986, letter, written by a postal inspector, alleges that Palfrey may have violated a federal law: mailing threatening communications.

2. The document says a US Navy officer, whose name is redacted on privacy grounds (that’s what the b7c redaction means), had met Palfrey at the Officers’ Club at NAS Miramar while on temporary duty in San Diego, and that Palfrey became “emotionally attached” to him. She mailed the officer a number of letters in which she tried to “establish a marriage,” and when the officer rejected her attempts, she threatened to “destroy him both professionally and personally.”

3. The document goes on to say that Palfrey’s harassment of the Navy officer had become a nuisance for the US Navy. The postal inspector notes that the threatening letters may justify “at least some form of preliminary inquiry” to resolve the officer’s complaint. But other documents show that Palfrey had only made a “veiled threat” that “did not meet the requirements for an investigation.”

4. This synopsis notes that this page is part of what’s known as an FBI “sub file.” This document is part of a larger investigative file of a subject.

5. The case ID includes “333,” which is an FBI classification code for legal advice and opinions, and the “WF” that follows it refers to the Washington Field Office. That makes sense since this sub file notes that an FBI agent in the Command and Tactical Operations Center was subpoenaed, demanding the production of documents in Palfrey’s criminal case. But in what amounts to a new revelation, the file goes on to note that the FBI “is not one of the investigative agencies involved in this prosecution” and therefore the bureau should not have to produce any documents.

6. But it appears that this sub file was part of the file the FBI had on Palfrey in relation to her threats against the Navy officer, who, in addition to the Postal Inspection Service, had also contacted the FBI about the matter.

So the only document the FBI appears to have had was a January 15, 1987, complaint form involving the Navy officer. The officer had called the FBI and said “he had been receiving slanderous letters” from Palfrey, marking the first time that Palfrey came to the FBI’s attention.

7. According to the complaint, the Navy officer said Palfrey sent letters to his wife, his Company Wing Commander, and his Wing Admiral, and that she was charging him with adultery. The FBI does not appear to have ever opened a formal investigation into Palfrey, and what became of this matter remains unknown.

In April 2008, a jury in the US District Court for DC convicted Palfrey of federal racketeering, money laundering, and two counts of using the mail for illegal purposes pertaining to her escort service. She was 52 years old.

I met with Palfrey before her sentencing, and I spoke with her by phone several times. She had reached out to me, and she claimed that in addition to phone numbers of CIA officials who used her service, she had top-secret documents implicating a CIA officer in a kickback scheme that involved government contracts awarded to his friends. Palfrey never came through with the documents, and I’m not sure she ever had what she claimed.

Her last words to me during a telephone conversation were, “Jason, they’ll never take me alive.”

On May 1, 2008, two weeks after her conviction, Palfrey was found hanging by a metal bar in the shed near her mother’s home in Tampa, Florida. She left two suicide notes. Palfrey, who referred to her prosecution by the government in one suicide note as a “modern-day lynching,” wrote that she could not spend “6–8 years behind bars.”

To finish up this first part I want to put out something that I find very interesting. Does anyone find the comparisons between Palfre and Epstein. They both had a lot of dirt on the DC elite and they supposedly both committed suicide. And finally none of the names of their clients ever came out and none were prosecuted either. Now with Matt Gaetz becoming the AG, maybe we will find out what really happened.

What Happened to Anthony Bourdain and how was he Associated with Adam Schiff?

Celebrity chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain died by suicide in his hotel room in Kaysersberg, France on June 8, 2018: 

• How he was foundBourdain’s friend and frequent collaborator Éric Ripert found him after Bourdain missed breakfast and dinner. Bourdain’s body showed no signs of violence, and toxicology results were negative for narcotics. 
• Where he wasBourdain was in Kaysersberg while working on an episode of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown in Strasbourg. 
• How he was laid to restBourdain’s body was cremated in France and his ashes were returned to the United States to his brother, Christopher. 

The circumstances of Bourdain’s death have been the subject of some controversy and discussion: 

• Relationship with Asia ArgentoJournalist Charles Leerhsen’s book Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain examines Bourdain’s relationship with Italian actor Asia Argento, the daughter of an Italian horror film director. The book has been controversial, with some criticizing it for being a slur on Bourdain’s memory. 
• Unauthorized biographyAn unauthorized biography of Bourdain includes intimate details of his life, including his relationship with Argento. The book has drawn criticism from some of Bourdain’s friends and family. 

Anthony Michael Bourdain (/bɔːrˈdeɪn/ bor-DAYN; June 25, 1956 – June 8, 2018) was an American celebrity chef, author, and travel documentarian. He starred in programs focusing on the exploration of international culture, cuisine, and the human condition.

Bourdain was a 1978 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of many professional kitchens during his career, which included several years spent as an executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in Manhattan. In the late 1990s Bourdain wrote an essay about the ugly secrets of a Manhattan restaurant, but he was having difficulty getting it published. According to the New York Times, his mother Gladys—then an editor and writer at the paper—handed her son’s essay to friend and fellow editor Esther B. Fein, the wife of David Remnick, editor of the magazine The New Yorker. Remnick ran Bourdain’s essay in the magazine, kickstarting Bourdain’s career and legitimizing the point-blank tone that would become his trademark. The success of the article was followed just a year later by the publication of a New York Times best-selling book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000).

Bourdain became a media darling almost overnight. His first food and world-travel television show A Cook’s Tour ran for 35 episodes on the Food Network in 2002 and 2003. In 2005, he began hosting the Travel Channel‘s culinary and cultural adventure programs Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (2005–2012) and The Layover (2011–2013). In 2013, he began a three-season run as a judge on The Taste and consequently switched his travelogue programming to CNN to host Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Although best known for his culinary writings and television presentations, along with several books on food and cooking and travel adventures, Bourdain also wrote both fiction and historical nonfiction. On June 8, 2018, Bourdain died while on location in France, filming for Parts Unknown, of suicide by hanging.

Early life

Anthony Michael Bourdain was born in Manhattan on June 25, 1956. His father, Pierre (1929–1987), was a classical music recording industry executive. His mother, Gladys (née Sacksman; 1934–2020), was a New York Times editor. Anthony’s younger brother, Christopher, was born a few years after him. Anthony grew up living with both of his parents and described his childhood in one of his books: “I did not want for love or attention. My parents loved me. Neither of them drank to excess. Nobody beat me. God was never mentioned so I was annoyed by neither church nor any notion of sin or damnation.” His father was Catholic of French descent and his mother was Jewish. Bourdain stated that, although he was considered Jewish by halacha‘s definition, “I’ve never been in a synagogue. I don’t believe in a higher power. But that doesn’t make me any less Jewish, I don’t think”. His family was not religious either. At the time of Bourdain’s birth, Pierre was a salesman at a New York City camera store, as well as a floor manager at a record store. He later became an executive for Columbia Records, and Gladys was a staff editor at The New York Times.

Bourdain’s paternal grandparents were French (his great-grandfather Aurélien Bourdain was born in Brazil to French parents); his paternal grandfather Pierre Michel Bourdain (1905–1932) emigrated from Arcachon to New York following World War I. Bourdain’s father spent summers in France as a boy and grew up speaking French. Bourdain spent most of his childhood in Leonia, New Jersey. He felt jealous of the lack of parental supervision of his classmates and the freedom they had in their homes. In his youth, Bourdain was a member of the Boy Scouts of America.

Culinary training and career

Bourdain’s love of food was kindled in his youth while on a family vacation in France when he tried his first oyster from a fisherman’s boat. He graduated from the Dwight-Englewood School—an independent coeducational college-preparatory day school in Englewood, New Jersey—in 1973, then enrolled at Vassar College but dropped out after two years. He worked at seafood restaurants in Provincetown, Massachusetts, including the Lobster Pot, while attending Vassar, which inspired his decision to pursue cooking as a career.

Bourdain attended the Culinary Institute of America, graduating in 1978. From there he went on to run various restaurant kitchens in New York City, including the Supper Club, One Fifth Avenue and Sullivan’s.

In 1998, Bourdain became an executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles. Based in Manhattan, at the time the brand had additional restaurants in Miami, Washington, D.C., and Tokyo. Bourdain remained an executive chef there for many years and even when no longer formally employed at Les Halles, he maintained a relationship with the restaurant, which described him in January 2014 as their “chef at large”. Les Halles closed in 2017 after filing for bankruptcy.

Media career

Writing

In the mid-1980s, Bourdain began submitting unsolicited work for publication to Between C & D, a literary magazine of the Lower East Side. The magazine eventually published a piece that Bourdain had written about a chef who was trying to purchase heroin in the Lower East Side. In 1985, Bourdain signed up for a writing workshop with Gordon Lish. In 1990, Bourdain received a small book advance from Random House, after meeting a Random House editor.

His first book, a culinary mystery called Bone in the Throat, was published in 1995. He paid for his own book tour, but he did not find success. His second mystery book, Gone Bamboo, also performed poorly in sales.

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, a 2000 New York Times bestseller, was an expansion of his 1999 New Yorker article “Don’t Eat Before Reading This”.

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

In 2010, he published Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, a memoir and follow-up to the book Kitchen Confidential.

A Cook’s Tour

He wrote two more bestselling nonfiction books: A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines (2001), an account of his food and travel exploits around the world, written in conjunction with his first television series of the same title.

The Nasty Bits

In 2006, Bourdain published The Nasty Bits, a collection of 37 exotic, provocative, and humorous anecdotes and essays, many of them centered around food, and organized into sections named for each of the five traditional flavors, followed by a 30-page fiction piece (“A Chef’s Christmas”).

Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical

Bourdain published a hypothetical historical investigation, Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical,^[43] about Mary Mallon, an Irish-born cook believed to have infected 53 people with typhoid fever between 1907 and 1938.

No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach

In 2007, Bourdain published No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach, covering the experiences of filming and photographs of the first three seasons of the show and his crew at work while filming the series.

His articles and essays appeared in many publications, including in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Times of the Los Angeles Times, The Observer, Gourmet, Maxim, and Esquire. Scotland on Sunday, The Face, Food Arts, Limb by Limb, BlackBook, The Independent, Best Life, the Financial Times, and Town & Country. His blog for the third season of Top Chef was nominated for a Webby Award for Best Blog (in the Cultural/Personal category) in 2008.

In 2012, Bourdain co-wrote the graphic novel Get Jiro! with Joel Rose, with art by Langdon Foss. It will receive an adult animated series adaptation produced by Warner Bros. Animation for Adult Swim.

In 2015, Bourdain joined the travel, food, and politics publication Roads & Kingdoms, as the site’s sole investor and editor-at-large. Over the next few years, Bourdain contributed to the site and edited the Dispatched By Bourdain series. Bourdain and Roads & Kingdoms also partnered on the digital series Explore Parts Unknown, which launched in 2017 and won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction or Reality Series in 2018.

Television

As series host

Bourdain hosted many food and travel series, including his first show, A Cook’s Tour (2002 to 2003). He worked for The Travel Channel from 2005 to 2013. He also worked for CNN from 2013 to 2018. Bourdain described the concept as, “I travel around the world, eat a lot of shit, and basically do whatever the fuck I want.” Nigella Lawson noted that Bourdain had an “incredibly beautiful style when he talks that ranges from erudite to brilliantly slangy”.

Cook’s Tour (2002–2003)

The acclaim surrounding Bourdain’s memoir Kitchen Confidential led to an offer by the Food Network for him to host his own food and world-travel show, A Cook’s Tour, which premiered in January 2002. It ran for 35 episodes, through 2003.

No Reservations (2005–2012)

In July 2005, he premiered a new, somewhat similar television series, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, on the Travel Channel. As a further result of the immense popularity of Kitchen Confidential, the Fox sitcom Kitchen Confidential aired in 2005, in which the character Jack Bourdain is based loosely on Anthony Bourdain’s biography and persona.

In July 2006, he and his crew were in Beirut filming an episode of No Reservations when the Israel–Lebanon conflict broke out unexpectedly after the crew had filmed only a few hours of footage. His producers compiled behind-the-scenes footage of him and his production staff, including not only their initial attempts to film the episode, but also their firsthand encounters with Hezbollah supporters, their days of waiting for news with other expatriates in a Beirut hotel, and their eventual escape aided by a fixer (unseen in the footage), whom Bourdain dubbed Mr. Wolf after Harvey Keitel‘s character in Pulp Fiction. Bourdain and his crew were finally evacuated with other American citizens, on the morning of July 20, by the United States Marine Corps. The Beirut No Reservations episode, which aired on August 21, 2006, was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2007.

The Layover (2011–2013)

In July 2011, the Travel Channel announced adding a second one-hour, 10-episode Bourdain show to be titled The Layover, which premiered November 21, 2011.Each episode featured an exploration of a city that can be undertaken within an air travel layover of 24 to 48 hours. The series ran for 20 episodes, through February 2013. Bourdain executive produced a similar show hosted by celebrities called The Getaway, which lasted two seasons on Esquire Network.

Parts Unknown (2013–2018)

In May 2012, Bourdain announced that he was leaving the Travel Channel. In December, he explained on his blog that his departure was due to his frustration with the channel’s new ownership using his voice and image to make it seem as if he were endorsing a car brand, and the channel’s creating three “special episodes” consisting solely of clips from the seven official episodes of that season. He went on to host Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown for CNN. The program focused on other cuisines, cultures and politics and premiered on April 14, 2013.

President Barack Obama was featured on the program in an episode filmed in Vietnam that aired in September 2016; the two talked over a beer and bun cha at a small restaurant in Hanoi. The show was filmed and is set in places as diverse as Libya, Tokyo, the Punjab region, Jamaica, Turkey, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Far West Texas and Armenia.

The Mind of a Chef

Between 2012 and 2017, he served as narrator and executive producer for several episodes of the award-winning PBS series The Mind of a Chef; it aired on the last months of each year. The series moved from PBS to Facebook Watch in 2017.

Appearances as judge, mentor and guest

The Taste

From 2013 to 2015 he was an executive producer and appeared as a judge and mentor in ABC‘s cooking-competition show The Taste. He earned an Emmy nomination for each season.

Top Chef

Bourdain appeared five times as guest judge on Bravo‘s Top Chef reality cooking competition program.

His first appearance was in “Thanksgiving” recorded in November 2006 episode of Season 2.

His second appearance was in the first episode of Season 3 in June 2007 judging the “exotic surf and turf” competition that featured ingredients including abalone, alligator, black chicken, geoduck and eel.

His third appearance was also in Season 3, as an expert on air travel, judging the competitors’ airplane meals. He also wrote weekly blog commentaries for many of the Season 3 episodes, filling in as a guest blogger while Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio was busy opening a new restaurant.

He next appeared as a guest judge for the opening episode of Season 4, in which pairs of chefs competed head-to-head in the preparation of various classic dishes, and again in the Season 4 Restaurant Wars episode, temporarily taking the place of head judge Tom Colicchio, who was at a charity event. He appeared as a guest judge in episode 12 of Top Chef: D.C. (Season 7), where he judged the cheftestants’ meals they made for NASA.

He was also one of the main judges on Top Chef All-Stars (Top Chef, Season 8).

He made a guest appearance on the August 6, 2007, New York City episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, and Zimmern himself appeared as a guest on the New York City episode of Bourdain’s No Reservations airing the same day. On October 20, 2008, Bourdain hosted a special, At the Table with Anthony Bourdain, on the Travel Channel.

Miami Ink

Bourdain appeared in an episode of TLC‘s reality show Miami Ink, aired on August 28, 2006, in which artist Chris Garver tattooed a skull on his right shoulder. Bourdain, who noted it was his fourth tattoo, said that one reason for the skull was that he wished to balance the ouroboros tattoo he had inked on his opposite shoulder in Malaysia, while filming Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.

Other appearances

Bourdain was a consultant and writer for the television series Treme.

In 2010, he appeared on Nick Jr. Channel‘s Yo Gabba Gabba! as Dr. Tony, part of which was included in the movie Roadrunner.

In 2011, he voiced himself in a cameo on an episode of The Simpsons titled “The Food Wife“, in which Marge, Lisa, and Bart start a food blog called The Three Mouthkateers.

He appeared in a 2013 episode of the animated series Archer, voicing chef Lance Casteau, a parody of himself. In 2015, he voiced a fictionalized version of himself on an episode of Sanjay and Craig titled “Snake Parts Unknown”.

From 2015 to 2017, Bourdain hosted Raw Craft, a series of short videos released on YouTube. The series followed Bourdain as he visited various artisans who produce various craft items by hand, including iron skillets, suits, saxophones, and kitchen knives. The series was produced by William Grant & Sons to promote their Balvenie distillery‘s products.

Publishing

In September 2011, Ecco Press announced that Bourdain would have his own publishing line, Anthony Bourdain Books, which included acquiring between three and five titles per year that “reflect his remarkably eclectic tastes”. The first books that the imprint published, released in 2013, include L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food by Roy Choi, Tien Nguyen, and Natasha Phan, Prophets of Smoked Meat by Daniel Vaughn, Pain Don’t Hurt by Mark Miller, and Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 128 Reviews by Marilyn Hagerty.

In describing the line, he said, “This will be a line of books for people with strong voices who are good at something—who speak with authority. Discern nothing from this initial list—other than a general affection for people who cook food and like food. The ability to kick people in the head is just as compelling to us—as long as that’s coupled with an ability to vividly describe the experience. We are just as intent on crossing genres as we are enthusiastic about our first three authors. It only gets weirder from here.”

Shortly after Bourdain’s death, HarperCollins announced that the publishing line would be shut down after the remaining works under contract were published.

Film

Bourdain appeared as himself in the 2015 film The Big Short, in which he used seafood stew as an analogy for a collateralized debt obligation. He also produced and starred in Wasted! The Story of Food Waste.

Public persona

Drew Magary, in a column for GQ published on the day of Bourdain’s death, reflected that Bourdain was heir in spirit to Hunter S. Thompson. Smithsonian magazine declared Bourdain “the original rock star” of the culinary world,while his public persona was characterized by Gothamist as “culinary bad boy”. Due to his liberal use of profanity and sexual references in his television show No Reservations, the network added viewer-discretion advisories to each episode.

Bourdain was known for consuming exotic local specialty dishes, having eaten black-colored blood sausages called mustamakkara (lit. “black sausage”) in Finland and also “sheep testicles in Morocco, ant eggs in Puebla, Mexico, a raw seal eyeball as part of a traditional Inuit seal hunt, and an entire cobra—beating heart, blood, bile, and meat—in Vietnam”. Bourdain was quoted as saying that a Chicken McNugget was the most disgusting thing he ever ate, but he was fond of Popeyes chicken. He also declared that the unwashed warthog rectum he ate in Namibia was “the worst meal of [his] life”, along with the fermented shark he ate in Iceland.

Bourdain was noted for his put-downs of celebrity chefs, such as Paula Deen, Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, Sandra Lee, and Rachael Ray, and appeared irritated by both the overt commercialism of the celebrity cooking industry and its lack of culinary authenticity. He voiced a “serious disdain for food demigods like Alan Richman, Alice Waters, and Alain Ducasse.” Bourdain recognized the irony of his transformation into a celebrity chef and began to qualify his insults; in the 2007 New Orleans episode of No Reservations, he reconciled with Emeril Lagasse, whom he had previously disparaged in Kitchen Confidential. He later wrote more favourably of Lagasse in the preface of the 2013 edition. He was outspoken in his praise for chefs he admired, particularly Ferran Adrià, Juan Mari Arzak, Fergus Henderson, José Andrés, Thomas Keller, Martin Picard, Éric Ripert, and Marco Pierre White, as well as his former protégé and colleagues at Brasserie Les Halles. He spoke very highly of Julia Child‘s influence on him.

Bourdain was known for his sarcastic comments about vegan and vegetarian activists, considering their lifestyle “rude” to the inhabitants of many countries he visited. He considered vegetarianism, except in the case of religious exemptions, a “First World luxury”. However, he also believed that Americans eat too much meat, and admired vegetarians and vegans who put aside their beliefs when visiting different cultures in order to be respectful of their hosts.

Bourdain’s book The Nasty Bits is dedicated to “Joey, Johnny, and Dee Dee” of the Ramones. He declared fond appreciation for their music, as well that of other early punk bands such as Dead Boys and The Voidoids. He said that the playing of music by Billy Joel, Elton John, or Grateful Dead in his kitchen was grounds for firing. Joel was a fan of Bourdain’s, and visited the restaurant.

On No Reservations and Parts Unknown, he dined with and interviewed many musicians, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, with a special focus on glam and various rockers such as Alice Cooper, David Johansen, Marky Ramone and Iggy Pop. He featured contemporary band Queens of the Stone Age on No Reservations several times, and they composed and performed the theme song for Parts Unknown.

Personal life

In the 1970s, while attending high school at Dwight-Englewood School, Bourdain dated Nancy Putkoski. He described her as “a bad girl”, older than he was and “part of a druggy crowd”. She was a year above him, and Bourdain graduated one year early in order to follow Putkoski to Vassar College since they had just started admitting men. He studied there between the ages of 17 and 19. He then attended the Culinary Institute of America, a 15-minute drive from Vassar. The couple married in 1985, and remained together for two decades, divorcing in 2005.

On April 20, 2007, he married Ottavia Busia, who later became a mixed martial artist. The couple’s daughter, Ariane, was born in 2007. Bourdain said having to be away from his family for 250 days a year working on his television shows put a strain on the relationship. Busia appeared in several episodes of No Reservations, notably the ones in Tuscany, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Naples, and her birthplace of Sardinia. The couple separated in 2016.

Bourdain met Italian actress Asia Argento in 2016 while filming the Rome episode of Parts Unknown. In October 2017, Argento said in an article in The New Yorker that she had been sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein in the 1990s. After being criticised for her account in Italian media and politics, Argento moved to Germany to escape what she described as a culture of “victim blaming” in Italy. Argento delivered a speech on May 20, 2018, following the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, calling the festival Weinstein’s “hunting ground”, alleging that she was raped by Weinstein in Cannes when she was 21. She added, “And even tonight, sitting among you, there are those who still have to be held accountable for their conduct against women.” Bourdain supported her during that period. On June 3, 2018, Bourdain tweeted a video where the team was celebrating during the production of the show with Argento as director, him and Chris Doyle.

Bourdain practiced the martial art Brazilian jiu-jitsu, earning a blue belt in August 2015. He won gold at the IBJJF New York Spring International Open Championship in 2016, in the Middleweight Master 5 (age 51 and older) division.

Bourdain was known to be a heavy smoker. In a nod to Bourdain’s two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, Thomas Keller once served him a 20-course tasting menu which included a mid-meal “coffee and cigarette”, a coffee custard infused with tobacco, with a foie gras mousse. Bourdain stopped smoking in 2007 for his daughter, but restarted towards the end of his life.

A former user of cocaine and heroin, Bourdain wrote in Kitchen Confidential of his experience in a SoHo restaurant in 1981, where he and his friends were often high. Bourdain said drugs influenced his decisions, and that he would send a busboy to Alphabet City to obtain cannabis, methaqualone, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, secobarbital, tuinal, amphetamine, codeine, and heroin.

Death

In early June 2018, Bourdain was working on an episode of Parts Unknown in Strasbourg, with his frequent collaborator and friend Éric Ripert. On June 8, Ripert became worried when Bourdain had missed dinner and breakfast. He subsequently found Bourdain dead by suicide in his room at Le Chambard hotel in Kaysersberg near Colmar.

Bourdain’s body bore no signs of violence and the suicide appeared to be an impulsive act. Rocquigny du Fayel disclosed that Bourdain’s toxicology results were negative for narcotics, showing only a trace of a therapeutic non-narcotic medication. Bourdain’s body was cremated in France on June 13, 2018, and his ashes were returned to the United States two days later and given to his only brother, Christopher.

Reactions and tributes

Bourdain’s mother, Gladys Bourdain, told The New York Times, “He is absolutely the last person in the world I would have ever dreamed would do something like this.”^[

Following the news of Bourdain’s death, various celebrity chefs and other public figures expressed sentiments of condolence. Among them were fellow chefs Andrew Zimmern and Gordon Ramsay, former astronaut Scott Kelly, and then-U.S. president Donald Trump. CNN issued a statement, saying that Bourdain’s “talents never ceased to amaze us and we will miss him very much.” Former U.S. president Barack Obama, who dined with Bourdain in Vietnam on an episode of Parts Unknown, wrote on Twitter: “He taught us about food—but more importantly, about its ability to bring us together. To make us a little less afraid of the unknown.” On the day of Bourdain’s death, CNN aired Remembering Anthony Bourdain, a tribute program.

In the days following Bourdain’s death, fans paid tribute to him outside his now-closed former place of employment, Brasserie Les Halles. Cooks and restaurant owners gathered together and held tribute dinners and memorials and donated net sales to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

In August 2018, CNN announced a final, posthumous season of Parts Unknown, completing its remaining episodes using narration and additional interviews from featured guests, and two retrospective episodes paying tribute to the series and Bourdain’s legacy.

In June 2019, Éric Ripert and José Andrés announced the first Bourdain Day as a tribute to Bourdain. In the same month, the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) established a scholarship in Bourdain’s honor.

A collection of Bourdain’s personal items were sold at auction in October 2019, raising $1.8 million, part of which is to support the Anthony Bourdain Legacy Scholarship at his alma mater, the Culinary Institute of America. The most expensive item sold was his custom Bob Kramer Steel and Meteorite Chef’s knife, selling at a record $231,250.

In June 2021, a documentary film directed by Morgan Neville and produced by CNN Films and HBO Max titled Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was released by Focus Features on July 16, 2021.^[152]

In October 2022, Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain, an unauthorized biography of Bourdain, was published.

In August 2024, a biopic of Bourdain titled Tony was announced, with A24 in negotiations to acquire the film. Dominic Sessa is attached to star as Bourdain.

Interests and advocacy

In an assessment of Bourdain’s life for The Nation, David Klion wrote that, “Bourdain understood that the point of journalism is to tell the truth, to challenge the powerful, to expose wrongdoing. But his unique gift was to make doing all that look fun rather than grim or tedious.” According to Klion, Bourdain’s shows “made it possible to believe that social justice and earthly delights weren’t mutually exclusive, and he pursued both with the same earnest reverence”.

Bourdain advocated for communicating the value of traditional or peasant foods, including all of the varietal bits and unused animal parts not usually eaten by affluent, 21st-century Americans. He also praised the quality of freshly prepared street food in other countries—especially developing countries—compared to fast-food chains in the U.S. Regarding Western moral criticism of cuisine in developing countries, Bourdain stated: “Let’s call this criticism what it is: racism. There are a lot of practices from the developing world that I find personally repellent, from my privileged Western point of view. But I don’t feel like I have such a moral high ground that I can walk around lecturing people in developing nations on how they should live their lives.”

With regard to criticism of the Chinese, Bourdain stated: “The way in which people dismiss whole centuries-old cultures—often older than their own and usually non-white—with just utter contempt aggravates me. People who suggest I shouldn’t go to a country like China, look at or film it, because some people eat dog there, I find that racist, frankly. Understand people first: their economic, living situation.” Regarding the myth that monosodium glutamate in Chinese food is unhealthy, Bourdain said: “It’s a lie. You know what causes Chinese restaurant syndrome? Racism. ‘Ooh I have a headache; it must have been the Chinese guy.'”

In an acceptance speech for an award given by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Bourdain stated, “The world has visited many terrible things on the Palestinian people, none more shameful than robbing them of their basic humanity.” He opened the episode of Parts Unknown on Jerusalem with the prediction that “By the end of this hour, I’ll be seen by many as a terrorist sympathizer, a Zionist tool, a self-hating Jew, an apologist for American imperialism, an Orientalist, socialist, a fascist, CIA agent, and worse.”

He championed industrious Spanish-speaking immigrants—from Mexico, Ecuador, and other Central and South American countries—who are cooks and chefs in many United States restaurants, including upscale establishments, regardless of cuisine. He considered them talented chefs and invaluable cooks, underpaid and unrecognized even though they have become the backbone of the U.S. restaurant industry.

In 2017, Bourdain became a vocal advocate against sexual harassment in the restaurant industry, speaking out about celebrity chefs Mario Batali and John Besh, and in Hollywood, particularly following his then-girlfriend Asia Argento‘s sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein. Bourdain accused Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino of “complicity” in the Weinstein sex scandal.

Following the death of Elizabeth II, a 2018 video resurfaced on Twitter showing Bourdain refusing to complete a toast to the Queen, saying “I hate the aristocracy.”

More Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain was born on June 25, 1956, in New York City. His mother Gladys Sackman was a New York Times staff editor, and his father, Pierre Bourdain was a Columbia Records executive. The chef graduated from The Culinary Institute of America in 1978 and began his career as a dishwasher. Gradually, working his way up through preparation, line cook, sous chef, and finally becoming a chef. He worked at Supper Club, One-Fifth Avenue, and Sullivan’s in New York for years. After years of perfecting his craft, he finally got the position of executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, in 1998.

“Then, I was able to swan around the kitchen, taking credit for other people’s work.” Anthony mastered the art of charisma throughout his life and was able to laugh at himself and make those around him feel better about themselves. Wherever he went, he made friends and left good memories with those who had the pleasure of meeting him. Anthony published his first book “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly” back in 2000. The success of his literary debut opened many doors for the seasoned cook, especially after “Bon Appetit” magazine named him the Food Writer of the Year in 2001.

Anthony Bourdain was more than a famous chef turned writer as he became a household name and cultural icon due to his gift to people. The success of his bestseller led to many offers, among them several to become a TV host for a food and travel show. A dream job on paper, imagine getting paid to travel and eat delicious food. The man would repeat the formula on several networks, the last one being “Parts Unknown” under the production of CNN.

Strange circumstances

The dream would die abruptly, as Anthony Bourdain ALLEGEDLY hung himself on June 8, 2018. He was on location to record his acclaimed show Parts Unknown, in Haut-Rhin, France. Anthony was 61 years old when he was found hanging from his bathrobe belt. Fellow celebrity chef and close friend Eric Ripert discovered the body, as he was also staying at the luxury hotel “Le Chambard.” The latter became worried when Anthony missed dinner and breakfast, “it was unusual for him to miss supper.”

Ripert wasn’t new to Parts Unknown as he already participated in an episode in 2017. During that show, Ripert bets Anthony $1,000 that he is incapable of milking a cow, but he loses. The show ends with the violent simulated death of both chefs by random occurrences. The mainstream media alleges: “Anthony Bourdain suffered depression since divorcing his first wife in 2005.” But the reality is, nobody close to him made similar statements.

His mom, Glady’s Bourdain, believed there was no reason for him to commit suicide. “He is absolutely the last person in the world I would have ever dreamed would do something like this as he had everything.” Anthony Bourdain had a taste for chemicals, but his toxicology results were negative for narcotics. The results show a small trace of therapeutic non-narcotic medication. There are no drugs or suicide letters, very odd for a recovering addict and prolific writer. Statistics support the notion recovering addicts tend to fall off the wagon before checking out, chasing that last high.

When logic checks out

Anthony Bourdain was a moderate drinker and a marihuana enthusiast who balanced his travels with martial arts and healthy nutrition. He was in great shape for his age and lifestyle. Whoever took Anthony down knew what he was doing and most likely didn’t do it alone. Anthony was a man more than capable of defending himself. How plausible is it for a 6’4” tall man to hang himself from a doorknob placed about 3’4” from the floor? Does it make sense to you?

It struck many as odd that hanging from a doorknob has replaced the more popular methods. Pill overdoses (women) or self-inflicted gunshot wounds (men) are the preferred ways for opting out. Christian de Rocquigny du Fayel, the public prosecutor for Colmar, said: “Anthony’s body bore no signs of violence and the suicide appeared to be an impulsive act.” The crime scene strikes a very suspicious similarity with those of Inés Zorreguieta (June 9) and Kate Spade (June 5), which happened the same week. Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington also perished similarly (May 17, and July 20 2017).

What did they have in common besides the fact all of them were hanging from doorknobs? It seems they knew about elite child trafficking rings involving trigger-happy people. I have first-hand knowledge of what Inés uncovered thanks to my sources in Argentina. There is second-hand knowledge of what Anthony Bourdain witnessed and denounced thanks to an FBI informant. I hear rumors about Kate that can’t be confirmed with a source so far. Anthony wasn’t depressed or suicidal. He was a smart, successful guy who struggled with relationships, just like most of us.

Le Chateau Marmont

Anthony Bourdain went after dangerous people all the time: Adam Schiff, Henry Kissinger, The Clintons, and Harvey Weinstein. Color me shocked whenever a critic of the Clintons or Israel and its genocidal policies towards the Palestinians suddenly dies. However, a credible testimony came out by an FBI-recognized whistleblower pointing to Schiff. Alias “JohnHereToHelp,” said: Anthony Bourdain was staying in a bungalow next to Adam Schiff as he was raping an underage boy at André Balasz (Standard Hotel) owned Le Chateau Marmont.

Schiff is a U.S. Representative for California’s 28th congressional district since 2013. As you can see, he is very fond of Mossad despite their criminality. The hotels owned by André Balazs, are known hotbeds for human trafficking and general elitist debauchery. Coincidentally, Balazs has connections to Jeffrey Epstein and his cronies, and he also dated top-level procurer Naomi Campbell. It’s a small world after all among the elites. Anthony Bourdain befriended staff at the Chateau throughout the years and was able to confirm what he witnessed.

He gave a declaration about the incident to the LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department), but unfortunately, Schiff got the notice. The testimony is shocking and horrifying. The witness saw the cleaning crew taking care of the crime scene, hotel crew? DNC crew? Mossad crew? Everything is on film according to the whistleblower, as the rooms are hot-wired. Schiff’s close friendship with convicted pedophile killer Ed Buck just adds credibility to the case.

Blatant child sex trafficking

It’s safe to say André Balasz has full knowledge of what happens on his property. It’s also worth noting these hotels being complicit in child sex trafficking is not shocking. Given the blatant association, Balasz holds with Rachel Chandler (100x worse than Allison Mack from NXIVM according to military intelligence). Chandler = C. Handler = Child Handler. Just look at those pictures, these kids are not happy, and they look unkempt and disturbed.

How is it possible in this day and age people can promote such filth so blatantly without consequences? We are fools in believing slavery is a thing of the past, and that human trafficking involves thugs and prostitutes only. The horrors of children sold for sex and worst continue, hidden from the general public. But coincidences continue: The owner of Pink Taco, Harry Morton, passed away on November 23, 2019. He knew about the secret underground tunnels used to smuggle children to the hotels owned by Balazs. The guy was just 38 years old, and allegedly he died of heart failure or a drug overdose.

Was he testifying as well? Morton knew Anthony Bourdain, and he was a healthy young man in his prime. The FBI recently unsealed documents admitting there was a coverup to hide the underground tunnels used by The Finders cult and the McMartin preschool pedophile ring. The declassified documents point out these sick bastards were working together. I think it is time you start considering everything we know is a lie. Kids were trafficked from their school via underground tunnels, and the authorities protected the perps! People who weren’t wealthy or famous! Get it yet?

Simple kind of life

The TV host was an avid Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, earning a blue belt in August 2015. The blue belt is awarded only after competing proficiently for two years. Anthony Bourdain won gold at the IBJJF New York Spring International Open Championship in 2016, in the Middleweight Master 5 (age 51+ division). He was known to be a heavy smoker but stopped in 2007 for his daughter. That doesn’t sound like a man who would abandon his child by committing suicide.

Anthony’s love life was pretty stable, considering his notoriety and career path. In 1985 he married his high school sweetheart Nancy Putkoskim, and they divorced in 2005. He married MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter Ottavia Busia in 2007, and they had a daughter – Ariane was born on April 9, 2007. They separated in 2016 but never divorced. Unfortunately, in 2016 he started dating Italian actress Asia Argento after meeting on his show Parts Unknown in Rome.

Asia was known for a while as the #MeToo movement leader. She alleged Harvey Weinstein abused her after a Cannes award show. While working as an actress, singer, model, and director, she met the disgraced producer, and after the abuse happened, she also dated him for a while. Asia is best known for the role of Yelena in the action film XXX, along with deceased actor Paul Walker. A pretty calm love life until Asia came into the fold, it seems.

Here comes the handler

Asia’s posts on social media are very telling, as she seems to follow an occult-based religion that worships the Baphomet. No huge mystery there as admitted being a red witch herself. Asia had her first child with Italian rock and roll musician Marco Castoldi, Anna Lou, born in 2001. She later married film director Michele Civetta in 2008, and her second child, Nicola Giovanni, was born in Rome. The couple divorced in 2013.

Asia’s relationship with Anthony caused some concern among his friends. “Like a teenage boy, (he was) just absolutely lovestruck. He would have done anything for her.” It doesn’t mean he killed himself after finding out she cheated on him in public, though. And why would she do that? Why would she make sure every photographer in Rome was alerted she was hot and steamy with someone else? That’s not optimal public relations unless you are trying to cover for something else, of course.

According to the always-shady TMZ: “Anthony and Asia seemed as tight as ever just last week, but it appears something changed within the last few days.” While Anthony was in France with Eric, Asia was back in Rome, strolling around with French reporter Hugo Clement. There were photos of them all over each other. Take everything TMZ publishes with a grain of salt, as they are bought, and paid for. David Geffen pulls the strings of the gossip media platform, conveniently.

Dark by design

“Asia’s grandma, Yvonne Müller Loeb, was sent away as a girl to a boarding school where Black Magic was common practice. Nicolodi and Argento took a trip through various European cities where she recalled the story. As she told Dario about the family tale, he had a creative rush, and the idea for Suspiria was born.” Suspiria is Argento’s most renowned film – An American ballet student who transfers to a prestigious dance academy in Germany just to repent. She realizes, after a series of brutal murders, that the academy is a front for a supernatural conspiracy.

Asia comes from a long line of people dabbling in the occult, born into it. Her father, Dario Argento, has a reputation as a horror filmmaker, but Daria Nicolodi’s side is more drenched in secret societies and witchcraft. Sources claim Asia targeted Anthony, aimed to date him, and nest as his handler. Some point at Anthony’s occult posts on social media, but few seem to mention it all came with Asia. A woman whose purpose was nefarious, to begin with.

Her last-minute cheating was blatant as it seemed like she wanted to get caught. Again, why the total lack of privacy? Unless she was trying to hurt Anthony, there’s no reason to do what she did. Asia’s Instagram story posted around three hours before Anthony’s death became public, was a photo of herself wearing a ripped t-shirt. The shirt portrayed Sid Vicious (Bass player from the Sex Pistols, Anthony’s favorite). The post read: “FUCK EVERYONE” – “You know who you are.” Not shady or irrational at all.

A female predator no less

Asia’s most infamous mishap: Sleeping with Jimmy Bennett, an actor she met when she was 29, and he was 9. She portrayed the actor’s mom in the 2004 film “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things,” a film she produced and directed. The film also casts shock-rock singer Marilyn Manson, also a known pedophile. It appears Asia groomed Bennett for years as evidence proves from their social media exchanges.

Asia reached a deal to pay $380,000 to actor Jimmy Bennett who accused her of sexually assaulting him in a California hotel. The incident happened when he was 17 years old (California’s age of consent is 18). Asia denies the claim but admits her late boyfriend paid off the blackmail. Soon after, photos and texts emerged that contradicted Asia’s statements. Eventually, actress Rose McGowan revealed Asia sent the texts to her then-boyfriend, and they decided to come forward.

Rain Dove, a model and activist decided to turn the messages over to the police. All in all, Anthony paid $200,000 to Bennett, only for her to repay him by cheating with Clément. According to sources, the death was supposed to be a double hit (murder-suicide) planned by Weinstein via Mossad/Black Cube. This version collides with the Adam Schiff testimony, or does it? It’s also important to note that Anthony was fearless and went after numerous people. People who are known associates themselves. It’s all rotten to the core. 

Continuing where we left off in Anthony Bourdain PART I. You can argue that these high-profile hits are often a joint effort, a consensus by many people. The Clintons, Henry Kissinger, Harvey Weinstein, and Adam Schiff = All work for the same NWO (New World Order) goals and pray to the same demonic entities (Moloch, Baphomet, Lucifer, Osiris, or Horus). If these people rape children, I guess they plan murders over brunch as casually as you and I discuss the workday.

Asia Argento said Harvey Weinstein raped her after he invited her to a party. She arrived to find him alone in a hotel room, wearing just a bathrobe. He forced her to give him a massage and then forcibly performed oral sex on her. She was terrified by the horrible trauma, “He was so big. It wouldn’t stop. It was a nightmare. I was not willing. I said, ‘No, no, no!’ It’s twisted. A scary fairytale.” These declarations sound weird when you realize Asia started dating Weinstein two weeks later, a relationship that would last for more than two years. 

More than eighty women came forward to accuse Weinstein of sex crimes. It took a while, but Weinstein did end up in jail. The real question now is, will he survive prison? Worth noting is that Weinstein did reach an agreement with some of the victims, including Asia. Was that the plan all along? Was Asia in on it? At the very least, she was an opportunist as she dated Weinstein for career favors. We know Asia targeted Anthony directly to date him, why? Under whose direction?

Like reading a script

Anthony was becoming a concern with his frontal and honest journalism. It’s plausible to say some people felt he needed to hold back. Weinstein hired the services of Black Cube, run by former Israeli intelligence officers of Mossad and Kroll, the biggest global corporate intelligence firm in the world. Invoices reveal he agreed to pay $600,000 for information that could stop the press from publishing allegations against him. Weinstein used former Mossad agents to spy on actresses and journalists, even threatening them. 

Is this why the mainstream media failed to report his many sexual assaults for decades? Who can say he didn’t hire assassins to go after Anthony and others? Who can say he didn’t refer them to Adam Schiff? Another man with Zionist ideology and lots to hide. Asia used her speech at the finale of the Cannes Film Festival to denounce her abuser, describing Cannes as Weinstein’s hunting ground. Anthony 100% empowered and supported Asia to take on the Hollywood elite on their turf. 

He gushed over every display of defiance, and his public support, fiercely stated many times. The worst part? There are hundreds of women and underage girls victimized by Weinstein that never saw justice. The most notorious celebrities deflected all the attention, sadly, some did it precisely with that intention. A common bait and switch to gatekeep the social movements, and divert from worst crimes. Every time they fear the darker stuff may get exposed, they concoct a plan to deflect. They select a sacrificial lamb, and they all assume a part in the script.

Why is Mossad suspect?

Mossad has a brutal reputation regarding murders for hire. Probably, their most public assassination was the poisoning of PLO leader Yasser Arafat – A crime verified by French authorities. Lots of Mossad agents act as freelance mercenaries, the agency itself feeds with similar men as long as they swear allegiance to Zionism. Note I say Zionism and not Israel. These are two very different things despite the efforts by some to merge the terms as a deflection method.

Chris Cornell’s bodyguard, Martin Kirsten, is a man who fits the profile of the Mossad recruiting corps. The South African Army veteran has the size, the will, and the killer resumé needed to succeed at the Kidon Elite Assassin division. Anthony had a vast history of criticizing the Zionist regime, meaning he was most likely considered an enemy of Israel by Mossad. That, coupled with the fact that Weinstein, Schiff, and Mossad are in cahoots, should cause suspicion.

Anthony traveled to the West Bank region to showcase Palestinian and Israeli food on his show in 2013. While filming, he fell in love with Palestine, its people, and its culture. He was shocked as he witnessed the brutality of the military occupation by Israeli forces, and he wasn’t shy about it on social media. Is it so hard to imagine Anthony pissed off all these people simultaneously, and they vouched to take him out?

Siding with the underdogs

Anthony was very touched by Armenian history, more specifically the genocide carried out by the Turks. He talked about putting out a TV production, exposing the facts as they weren’t before. Supported by the Armenian people themselves, Anthony hoped to expose the massacre perpetrated by the Turks and their allies, with no reservations. The Syrian War plan was modeled after the genocide, casually involving the same villains. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., the U.K., and various elements within the worldwide Zionist movement joined in the effort.

Anthony met with musicians Chris Cornell (Soundgarden) and Serj Tankian (System of a Down) to discuss the project. Serj is Armenian, and Chris gave his music to The Promise, a film denouncing the genocide. Anthony met with Chris a few months before he died, also staged as suicide via hanging. On Parts Unknown S3E6 in Moscow, Anthony dines with Boris Nemtsov – The man who was Vladimir Putin’s political nemesis in Russia at the time. “Bad things seem to happen to critics of Vladimir Putin. Journalists, activists, even powerful oligarchs once seemingly untouchable are now fair game if they displease The Leader.”

Some time passed until an unidentified attacker shot Mr. Nemtsov four times in the back as he crossed a bridge close to the Kremlin. He died hours after appealing for support for a march against the war in Crimea, Ukraine. The episode ends with a defeated Anthony describing, in voiceover, how Russia recently annexed Crimea. “The world has done nothing. The world will do nothing. As Vladimir well knew” said Bourdain. Anthony didn’t have anything nice to say about the Russian leader.

A loud voice for the voiceless

Anthony became increasingly political on social media as he began challenging the war agenda of the global elites. He posted very provocative comments on Twitter, like what he wrote about Henry Kissinger after filming in Cambodia. Check out his Tweets going hard after Weinstein, the British monarchy, the military-industrial complex, Rudy Giuliani, the Clintons, and Donald Trump. He went after a lot of people CNN is known to protect, and he worked for them, after all.

Anthony was insanely influential, he wasn’t known as the most prolific chef, but he certainly was the most iconic. Chances are some of the people who were getting exposed could not risk further disclosure. He had 1.8+ million followers on Facebook, 2.6+ million on Instagram, and 7.5+ million on Twitter. Some people questioned his friendship with Barack Obama, but there wasn’t one. The show they recorded together in Vietnam was a PR stunt planned by CNN. However, there seems to be a message inside that episode according to this great researcher’s video.

Never shy about politics, he told TMZ about his disdain for Kim-Jong Un, the North Korean leader. “There’s nothing they are going to let you see in North Korea. It’s an unpleasant government. Most of the population is starving. Don’t you think that would be in kind of bad taste?” he said. When asked about their leader: “He’s a chubby little evil fuck. Nobody else eats.” Later, the reporter asked what he would serve at a summit between Trump and Kim. “Hemlock,” Bourdain said, pissing a lot of people off.

Feuding with the Clintons

Anthony was harassed and threatened by Hillary Clinton operatives weeks before he was found dead in an apparent suicide. According to investigators, Anthony was planning to expose pedophile rings connected to Hollywood and D.C. shortly before his death. After the recent revelations about Adam Schiff at Le Chateau Marmont, it seems this was right. Hillary Clinton has never been great at admitting mistakes, and she told Zakaria she was not aware of Weinstein’s actions. 

“I certainly didn’t, and I don’t know who did. But I can only speak for myself, and I think I speak for many others who knew him, primarily through politics.” Anthony visited Haiti, a country destroyed by the Clinton Foundation. During his trip, he met with Sean Penn in the tent city built by his relief group. During his LAST interview, Anthony revealed his thoughts about both ex-president Bill and ex-secretary of state Hillary Clinton. 

“Bill Clinton, look, the bimbo eruptions—it was fucking monstrous. That would not have flown today. A piece of shit. Entitled, rapey, gropey, grabby, disgusting, and the way that he—and she—destroyed these women and the way that everyone went along, and, and are blind to this! Screamingly apparent hypocrisy and venality. How can you howl at the moon about all these other predators, and not at least look back? OK, let’s say, well, it was all consensual: powerful men, starstruck women, okay fine, let’s accept it at its most charitable interpretation. Fine. He is a very charming man, I met him, he’s fucking magnetic.”

The Silent Children

To continue with the parallels, Anthony was part of Luminary Lane, a charity started by Chris Cornell. The initiative was supported by Chester Bennington, Brad Pitt, and Rick Rubin as well. Anthony, Chris, and Chester died by hanging: The ones alive today are part of the club. Coincidence? It is rumored Chris, Chester, Anthony, Avicii, and Leroi Moore collaborated on a documentary called “The Silent Children”. The film, directed by Lisa Beane (Moore’s fiancee) aimed to expose elite human and organ trafficking rings worldwide.

Countries like Turkey, Romania, Thailand, and Cambodia are featured in the official trailer. However, the consultant for the film states the men weren’t part of the project in any capacity. The murders of Anthony, Chris, and Chester meant to do one thing: Send a strong message. “Going rogue will NOT be tolerated, either line up or lose it all.” His girlfriend, Asia Argento, got the Illuminati warning to stay quiet. So did Brad Pitt and others close to Chris and Chester.

Strangulation is a favorite execution method for the Illuminati, it aims to warn others and expose traitors. The ritual murder goes back to when Julius Caesar strangled Vincengetorix, and took his place as the Roman Emperor. It’s a Saturnian Cult sacrifice ritual, and when they hang you from a doorknob, it’s an obvious tell. Anthony was ready to denounce child sex trafficking and was killed “in 3’s” after Inés Zorreguieta and Kate Spade. These murders are all connected, that much is obvious by now.

What is Project 2025?

If you were on Twitter or TikTok over the weekend, you might have seen people talking about Project 2025.

Led by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a presidential transition operation—basically a government-in-waiting if former President Donald Trump returns to office on Jan. 20, 2025. The $22 million effort does not say it is specifically intended for Trump, but that it wants a conservative as the next commander-in-chief.

The project, published in 2023, includes a nearly 1,000-page handbook that detailed a conservative agenda for the next president. Project 2025 said on its website that the handbook is “the next conservative President’s last opportunity to save our republic.”

“It is not enough for conservatives to win elections,” Project 2025 said on its website. “If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration. That is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project.”

“With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government,” the project continued.

Dozens of conservative organizations are behind the effort. Part of the plan includes firing federal employees that conservatives believe are preventing right-wing policies from being implemented and replacing them with their own picks, the Associated Press reported.

The handbook detailed “a top-to-bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice and putting an end to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) efforts to curb the spread of misinformation. The handbook said that “the FBI have absolutely no business policing speech.”

The agenda also included a crackdown on abortion pills, which it called “the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post-Roe world.” The handbook urged the Food and Drug Administration to reverse the approval of the pills, claiming that the approval process was “politicized” and “illegal” (more than 100 scientific studies over decades have found that both mifepristone and misoprostol, the two abortion-inducing drugs, are safe).

The Associated Press previously called the handbook’s language “apocalyptic.” The handbook encouraged the next presidential administration to “reexamine the balance between media demands and space constraints on the White House premises,” saying that there is “no legal entitlement” for the press corps to have permanent space on the premises.

Many critics have labeled Project 2025 as “authoritarian.” The project relies on what legal scholars call the unitary executive theory, which dismisses the idea that there are three separate branches of government for checks and balances, The New York Times reported. Rather, proponents of the theory argue that Article 2 of the Constitution allows the president to have total authority over the executive branch.

“Some of these visions, they do start to just bleed into some kind of authoritarian fantasies where the president won the election, so he’s in charge, so everyone has to do what he says—and that’s just not the system the government we live under,” Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the separation of powers in the U.S., previously told the Associated Press.

The Truth About Project 2025

The Left has spent millions fearmongering about Project 2025, because they’re terrified of losing their power. And they should be. Project 2025 offers a menu of solutions to the border crisis, inflation, a stagnant economy, and rampant crime. It shows how we can take on China, fix our schools, and support families. But most importantly, it dismantles the unaccountable Deep State, taking power away from Leftist elites and giving it back to the American people.

Project 2025 is a historic movement, brought together by over 100 respected organizations from across the conservative movement, to abolish the Deep State and return government to the people. Project 2025 is not partisan, nor is it secret. Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign, in any capacity. It was stood up in 2022, before any major candidate announced a campaign, to assist the next conservative president. 

Project 2025’s policy book is nothing new. Mandate for Leadership has been published regularly since the 1980s. In it, respected conservative authors espouse conservative policy ideas for incoming administrations to consider. Progressive organizations do the same thing. As just one example, the far-left Center for American Progress prepares policy recommendations for liberal presidents, including President Obama in 2008. We will not stop offering ideas to reverse America’s decline. Our aim is to restore American democracy “of, by, and for the people,” not of, by, and for the elites who currently control Washington. 

Why did Canada slow down their Immigration Policy?

What Is Canada’s Immigration Policy?

Introduction

Canada has built a reputation over the last half century for welcoming immigrants and valuing multiculturalism. Foreign-born people make up almost one-quarter of Canada’s population—the largest share in more than 150 years and one of the highest ratios for industrialized Western nations. Immigrants have helped the country counter aging demographics and fuel economic growth, though some Canadians have expressed concern about the increasing strain on housing and social services. 

Canada became an even more attractive destination for immigrants within the last decade after policies enacted under U.S. President Donald Trump severely restricted access to the United States. While President Joe Biden has largely reversed those policies, his administration has worked with the Canadian government to limit the number of refugees and asylum seekers who cross over the northern U.S. border and into Canada. Meanwhile, Canada is also experiencing a prolonged labor shortage exacerbated by a dearth of skilled workers. Its immigration system faces an array of other challenges as well, including a surge in asylum claims, rising deportations, and labor abuses against temporary-visa holders. 

What role has immigration played in Canada historically?

As in the United States, immigration has significantly shaped Canadian society and culture. Following its independence from the United Kingdom in 1867, Canada used immigration to help develop vast tracts of land. Government-sponsored information campaigns and recruiters encouraged immigrants of that era to settle in rural, frontier areas.

But not all immigrants were welcome. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century policies prevented or discouraged immigration by select groups, including certain people of non-European and non-Christian backgrounds, as well as the poor, ill, and disabled. Canada’s immigration calculus changed during the postwar period as refugees and others fled Europe, public attitudes toward outsiders softened, and economic growth demanded a larger workforce. Cold War tensions also influenced Canadian policy, with preferences established for anti-Communist and Soviet-bloc immigrants.

Legislation in the 1960s and 1970s laid the groundwork for the immigration regime Canada has today, which embraces multiculturalism. In 1967, Ottawa introduced a points-based system for evaluating applicants, after which Canada saw a jump in immigration from Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. A 1971 policy first articulated the government’s support for cultural diversity, and legislation in 1976 explicitly codified Canada’s commitment to refugees, mandating that federal and provincial officials develop immigration targets together. It also cast immigration as a tool for meeting the country’s cultural, economic, and social objectives.

Immigration has long played a vital role in Canada’s economy, providing a relatively young stream of workers. Immigrants have become increasingly important as the native-born labor force ages and the fertility rate remains low, at roughly 1.3 births per woman, far below the global average of 2.4. However, Canada continues to suffer a significant shortage of skilled labor across all industries, though the issue had eased slightly as of mid-2023. 

How do Canadians view immigration?

The Canadian public has held favorable views of immigration for decades, though they have soured somewhat in recent years as migration levels have increased, stoking affordability and housing concerns. In a 2023 survey [PDF] by the Toronto-based Environics Institute, 44 percent of Canadians felt there was too much immigration to Canada, up from 27 percent the previous year. Generally, however, Canadians continue to view both immigrants and their country’s immigration system more positively than their counterparts in the United States. This is due in part to the Canadian government’s efforts to promote and embrace a policy of multiculturalism and make diversity part of the national identity. Canada also does not have large-scale unauthorized migration, a challenge that has fueled backlash against immigrants in many other countries, including the United States. Still, some research suggests public support for immigration could slip easily, as it did during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Who immigrates to Canada, and where do they settle?

Canada granted more than 437,000 foreigners permanent residency in 2022. (Preliminary data for 2023 shows that this figure surpassed 471,000, the most new foreigners ever accepted in a single year.) The greatest share of new Canadian permanent residents in 2022 came from India, followed by China, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and the Philippines. The current government plans to continue steadily increasing immigration levels, with the goal of accepting five hundred thousand new permanent residents into the country each year by 2025, after which Ottawa would aim to stabilize immigration targets.

How does the Canadian immigration process work?

Canada admits new permanent residents under four main categories. In 2022, 58 percent of immigrants were admitted through economic pathways, 22 percent through family sponsorship, 17 percent as refugees and protected persons, and 2 percent for humanitarian or other reasons.

Economic. Canada’s economic immigration process has been touted as a model for other countries. The federal government offers several economic programs, the majority of which are managed through a point-management system known as Express Entry. The system gives preference to younger candidates with job offers and high levels of education, experience, and language proficiency (i.e., English and French). Approximately every two weeks, the government invites top-ranking individuals to apply for permanent residency, an expensive and comprehensive process that includes language testing and biometric screening. Most applicants receive a decision within six months. Due to changes made during the pandemic, the Express Entry program now accepts migrants who receive a minimum score of sixty-seven, down from the previous record low of seventy-five.

Other immigration pathways include various regional economic programs, including the Provincial Nominee Program, which accounted for roughly 35 percent of economic admissions in 2022. Through this process—as well as similar, Quebec-specific programs—people apply to individual provinces, which choose candidates who fill their economic needs. The federal government must still approve provincially supported immigrants, but it grants most permanent residency.

Family. This class of immigrants includes spouses, partners, and children joining family members already living in Canada. Under this program, legal permanent residents apply to sponsor their relatives, who must also apply for permanent residency. Canada recognizes same-sex couples for this immigration category, even if they are not legally married, although a couple must provide proof of a long-standing relationship. The government has sometimes implemented priority processing for family reunification applications that sponsor nationals of certain conflict-afflicted countries, such as Afghanistan and Ukraine.

Refugees and protected persons. In 2022, Canada resettled the most refugees of any country for the fourth consecutive year. (It overtook the United States in 2018.) The government welcomed more than 47,000 refugees in 2022, mostly from Africa and the Middle East—a 133 percent increase from the previous year, when pandemic-related restrictions continued to slow resettlement processing. 

There are two main types of resettled refugees: government-assisted and privately sponsored. Government-assisted refugees are referred by the UN refugee agency based on their location and vulnerability, and receive government assistance during their transition. Privately sponsored refugees, who accounted for close to half [PDF] of resettled refugees in 2022, are brought to Canada by government-approved citizens and organizations that assume legal and financial responsibility for them. Refugees cannot apply directly to be resettled in Canada. All refugees undergo rigorous screening by Canadian officials and generally have permanent resident status when they arrive.

Humanitarian and other. Canada grants permanent residency to a small number of people for other reasons. These include broadly defined humanitarian and compassionate grounds, such as specific hardships that applicants would face if they were to return to their home countries. Individuals must receive permission to apply. Officials consider various factors when adjudicating cases, such as applicants’ connections to Canada and the circumstances they face if they are not admitted.

What is Canada’s policy on asylum seekers?

Canada is also known for its relative openness to asylum seekers. They often come to Canada for similar reasons as resettled refugees, but they differ from the latter in that they have not obtained government approval before arriving.

Migrants can make an asylum claim at any border crossing or airport, as well as certain government offices inside Canada. In 2022, nearly forty thousand asylum seekers entered the country between official ports of entry without authorization. That number was roughly nine times that of the previous year, likely due to worsening conditions in many migrants’ home countries and the easing of pandemic-related travel and border restrictions. It can take officials up to two years to decide whether to grant an applicant protected status. Once that status is granted, most asylum seekers are immediately eligible to apply for permanent residency. In limited circumstances, some unsuccessful asylum seekers may qualify for permanent residency under the humanitarian category.

Some critics, including immigrants who have entered the country via normal channels, claim that Canada allows asylum seekers to “jump the queue” and enter through “backdoor immigration.” While officials consider their cases, asylum seekers receive health care and, potentially, housing assistance, social welfare, and work rights. Moreover, the government tends not to deport failed asylum claimants, and some remain in Canada illegally. However, deportations still occur; in 2022, the Canadian government deported more than 8,500 people, an average of 23 people per day.

How do immigrants adjust to life in Canada?

Canada goes to comparatively great lengths to help immigrants assimilate by providing them with orientation programs, skills training, social services, and pathways to citizenship. In recent years, roughly three-quarters [PDF] of the federal immigration agency’s budget has gone toward settlement programs. This level of support has helped make Canada one of the most sought-after destinations for immigrants, with generally high rates of immigrant satisfaction and naturalization. Immigrants have risen to prominent positions within Canadian society, including the prime minister’s cabinet.

d felt the government’s target of five hundred thousand immigrants a year is too high, while 75 percent of respondents expressed concern that more immigration will result in excess demand for housing and social services. Nonetheless, several Canadian cities have sanctuary-city and “access without fear” policies that limit police cooperation with immigration authorities and guarantee undocumented people public services. Officials also rarely enforce a law banning Canadian companies from hiring undocumented workers.

How have U.S. policies affected Canada’s immigration system?

The United States and Canada have long collaborated to control the movement of people and goods across their shared, mostly unguarded border—the longest in the world at more than five thousand miles.

In 2011, the governments announced a “Beyond the Border” strategy to enhance security cooperation and promote lawful travel and trade. Under the plan, the two countries began sharing information about visa applicants and border crossers. More broadly, the bilateral framework has fostered a healthy working relationship between Canada and the United States, which some analysts say is likely to last for years to come. “The Beyond the Border agreement and all of the subsequent actions under it have institutionalized a level of Canada-U.S. border cooperation that is deep enough…to survive changes in political leadership in both countries,” says Theresa Cardinal Brown, an immigration expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The Trump administration’s immigration actions placed strains on Canada’s system. In 2017, when Trump took office, Canada received roughly fifty thousand asylum claims, double the previous year’s. Experts linked this to a number of Trump policies, including asylum and travel restrictions, heightened immigration enforcement, and the decision not to renew Haitians’ temporary protected status (TPS). The surge overwhelmed Canadian authorities, prompting officials to tighten border security, modify the asylum screening process, and even visit the United States to deter would-be migrants. 

Still, the immigration pressures continued. In 2020, a Canadian court ruled that a 2002 U.S.-Canada deal, also known as a “safe third country” agreement, that manages refugee claimants at the border was unconstitutional. Human rights organizations similarly argued that it endangered asylum seekers. However, the ruling was overturned in April 2021, and the deal remains in effect.

Yet, some of Trump’s immigration actions were a boon for Canada’s economy. For example, in June 2020, his administration suspended the issuing of visas for highly skilled workers. Meanwhile, Canada made it easier for foreign workers to acquire jobs on its territory, giving qualified professionals—many applying from the United States—work permits within two weeks. This has led some U.S. companies to expand their presence in Canada. In light of Canada’s success in managing migrant flows, Trump proposed a merit-based plan modeled after Canada’s points-based system in which preference would be given to highly skilled migrants, though it failed to make headway in Congress.

President Biden’s immigration policies have varied. He reversed many of Trump’s actions, such as the freeze on green cards enacted in late 2020. In addition, his administration has reinstated TPS for Haitians; extended benefits to several other countries, including Afghanistan and Ukraine; and raised the annual refugee admissions cap to 125,000 for fiscal years 2022, 2023, and 2024. However, Biden has also modified the two countries’ “safe third country” agreement—making it easier for border authorities to turn away asylum seekers—and imposed stricter requirements on crossings at the southern U.S. border by proposing new asylum restrictions.

It appears that Canada has not entirely “slowed down” its immigration policy, but rather, the government has implemented a transitional levels plan to pause population growth in the short term to achieve well-managed, sustainable growth in the long term.

In October 2024, the Honourable Marc Miller, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, announced the 2025-2027 Immigration Levels Plan, which includes:

1. Transitioning more temporary residents who are already in Canada as students and workers to permanent residents.
2. Focusing on long-term economic growth and key labour market sectors, such as health and trades.
3. Representing more than 40% of overall permanent resident admissions in 2025, these residents are skilled, educated, and integrated into Canadian society.

This plan aims to alleviate pressures on housing, infrastructure, and social services, allowing for sustainable population growth. The government is also promoting Francophone immigration to help minority communities thrive.

Experts and economists argue that targeting immigration broadly won’t bring the cost of housing down, as other factors such as high interest rates, increasing building costs, and red tape at the municipal level contribute to the housing shortage. They suggest that a more nuanced approach is needed to address the issue.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has proposed linking immigration numbers to the number of houses built, but experts caution that this approach oversimplifies the issue and ignores the complexities of household formation and housing needs among immigrants.

In summary, Canada has not slowed down its immigration policy, but rather, the government has implemented a plan to manage population growth sustainably, focusing on long-term economic growth and key labour market sectors. The debate surrounding immigration and housing continues, with experts advocating for a more nuanced approach to address the issue.

How Canada soured on immigration

For decades, Canada has cast itself as a country open to newcomers, with immigration policies tailored to boost its population, fill labour gaps and settle refugees fleeing conflict from around the world.

But in recent months, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he intends to significantly cut the number of immigrants allowed in Canada as public concern grows over inaccessible social services, high costs of living and unaffordable housing.

It is a major shift for both the country and Trudeau, who ran in 2015 on a platform of embracing multiculturalism as a key part of Canadian identity.

His government has relied on ambitious immigration targets to fuel economic growth.

In the face of criticism and plummeting approval ratings, the prime minister now says that his government miscalculated, and that Canada needs to “stabilise” its population growth so that public infrastructure can keep up.

On Thursday, Trudeau and Immigration Minister Marc Miller presented their most stringent immigration cutbacks yet – a 21% reduction of permanent residents accepted into the country in 2025.

The announcement follows other cuts to Canada’s temporary resident programmes, which include temporary foreign workers and international students.

Explaining his shift in policy, Trudeau maintained that “Canadians are justifiably proud” of their immigration system.

“It has made our economy the envy of the world,” he said. “It’s how we build strong, diverse communities.”

But Trudeau admitted that his government “didn’t get the balance quite right” when it admitted a record number of temporary residents after the Covid-19 pandemic to ease labour shortages, and that there is now a need to “stabilise” Canada’s immigration system.

His announcement comes at the heels of dwindling public support for immigration in Canada.

Trudeau announces sharp cuts to Canada’s immigration targets

Canada has announced a sharp cut in the number of immigrants it allows into the country in an effort to “pause population growth”, marking a notable shift in policy for the Justin Trudeau government.

As part of the changes, Canada will reduce the number of permanent residents in 2025 from a previous target of 500,000 to 395,000 – a 21% drop.

Prime Minister Trudeau said his government “didn’t get the balance quite right” when it bolstered immigration post-pandemic to address labour shortages.

Public support for immigration in Canada has been waning, with opinion polls suggesting rising concern over the growing numbers and its impact on housing and social services.

The move comes on the heels of already announced reduced targets for both international students and temporary foreign workers.

On Thursday, Trudeau and Canada’s immigration minister Marc Miller announced further cuts, this time to the number of new permanent residents.

The goal, Miller said, is to set a smaller target of 365,000 new permanent residents by 2027.

This reduction will pause population growth in Canada over the next two years, Trudeau said, giving provinces time to catch up on bolstering their healthcare programmes and housing stock.

The prime minister said that “Canadians are justifiably proud” of their welcoming immigration system, which he said had helped bolster the country’s economy and build diverse communities.

“Our immigration system has always been responsible and it has always been flexible,” Trudeau said. “We are acting today because of the tumultuous times as we emerged from the pandemic, between addressing labor needs and maintaining population growth, we didn’t get the balance quite right.”

The vast majority of Canada’s population growth last year – about 97% – was driven by immigration, according to federal data.

At the same time, Canada’s unemployment rate has increased to 6.5% and stands at over 14% for young people.

The move marks a departure from decades of open immigration policies in Canada, which has relied on newcomers to meet population targets and to fill labour gaps.

Since Trudeau was elected in 2015, his government has raised annual permanent resident targets from 272,000 to 485,000 this year. The biggest jump was seen in 2021 after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trudeau and his government have been criticised for increasing immigration without bolstering services or housing construction, and economists have warned that Canada’s rapidly growing population has put a strain on housing and public services like healthcare.

Earlier this month, a poll by the Environics Institute, which has tracked Canadians’ attitudes towards immigration since 1977, revealed that 58% of Canadians now feel that immigration levels were too high.

The institute said the findings suggest that public opinion on immigration levels has “effectively flipped from being acceptable (if not valuable) to problematic”.

The cuts to immigration targets have been criticised by advocacy groups like the Migrant Rights Network, who wrote in an open letter to Trudeau and Miller that migrants are being unfairly blamed for Canada’s affordability crisis.

“Migrants are not responsible for Canada’s housing crisis, lack of jobs, or inadequate healthcare or other public services,” they said.

The group added that these issues are rather a result of “decades of federal and provincial policies that have underfunded and privatized public services”.

Justin Trudeau’s sinking popularity puts him on shaky ground

In late August, a tense exchange was caught on camera between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a local steel worker in northern Ontario.

As Trudeau reached out for a handshake, the worker refused it, confronting the prime minister instead about his struggle to make ends meet despite having a steady job.

Trudeau responded by listing things his Liberal government has done to help working families, including a national dental care programme and a tariff on Chinese steel that is designed to protect Canadian workers.

“I don’t believe you for a second,” the steel worker replied, after telling the prime minister: “I think you are only here for another year.”

The clip, viewed millions of times on the internet, and has been described by the Toronto Globe and Mail as “a perfect miniature of the moment” in Canadian politics, encapsulating the fatigue and frustration that Trudeau is facing from the public.

In his ninth year as prime minister, Trudeau’s approval rate has plummeted from 63% when he was first elected to 28% in June of this year, according to one poll tracker.

This sinking popularity has already brought consequences to Trudeau’s governing Liberal Party. In a recent by-election, the party lost a Toronto federal seat that it had held for 30 years to the opposition Conservative Party – a major sign of trouble.

On Monday, Trudeau and the Liberals face another set of tests – a crucial by-election in a Liberal stronghold in Montreal, Quebec, and the resumption of parliament, where Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has vowed to table a motion of no-confidence as early as possible in an attempt to bring down the minority government.

If Poilievre is successful, Canadians could head to the ballot box.

And if current polls are any indication on how they might vote, the next federal election may mark the end of the Trudeau era.

Darrell Bricker, a political scientist and pollster with Ipsos, compared the current moment in Canadian politics to this summer’s historic defeat of the UK Tories, who lost 251 seats in British parliament.

“It’s basically over,” said Mr Bricker of Trudeau’s government in an interview with the BBC.

“All that is happening is sands sliding out of the sand dial, and we’re working our way towards an inevitable conclusion.”

It is a dramatic reversal of fortune for Trudeau, the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who was enthusiastically elected in 2015 by Canadians on a message of positivity, change and strengthening the middle class.

In his first years as prime minister, Trudeau became a global progressive icon. He appeared in Vogue and on the cover of Rolling Stone, which carried the headline “Why Can’t He Be Our President?”

But in recent years, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Canadians say they have noticed a downward shift in their country. Homes are becoming unaffordable, grocery prices have skyrocketed, crime has become more visible, and Canada’s public healthcare system is struggling.

While many of these issues do not fall squarely on the shoulders of the federal government – healthcare, for example, is largely overseen by the provinces – Canadians seem to have mostly directed their frustration at Trudeau.

In an August opinion piece published in Canada’s national newspaper the Globe and Mail, author and lawyer Omer Aziz wrote that the country is “witnessing a systemic political failure” and, more broadly, the decline of the “Canadian dream”.

Mr Aziz, who previously worked as a policy advisor under Trudeau’s government, told the BBC that Canadians feel the prime minister has failed to deliver on his promises.

He recalled the jubilation of Liberal supporters when Trudeau was first elected. “People were cheering on the streets, and I saw a new era,” he said.

But after three terms under Trudeau, that progress “hasn’t come to pass,” Mr Aziz said.

“There is a sense that political leaders, the prime minister and the government, have been unwilling or unable to respond to these concerns that have been building for a number of years,” he said.

“People now are looking anywhere else for an alternative.”

Following June’s by-election defeat in Toronto, Trudeau has faced pressure to quit from members of his own party.

The Liberals’ campaign manager, Jeremy Broadhurst, later resigned in September, after reportedly telling Trudeau that he did not believe he could win the next election.

The prime minister has held on, making various stops at events across the country this summer.

At those appearances, Trudeau has presented his government’s solutions to Canada’s problems, like a plan to build nearly four million new homes by 2031 to increase the housing supply, or a cap on immigration to ease the stress on public resources.

He has also sought to draw a sharp contrast between himself and his Conservative opponent, saying that his party believes in “investing in Canadians” while Poilievre wants to “cut programmes Canadians are relying on”.

“That’s the choice that people are going to make next year,” Trudeau told reporters last week.

None of this seems to have bought the Liberal Party and Trudeau any goodwill.

The gap between the Liberals and the leading Conservatives among decided voters has grown wider since the beginning of this year, according to a number of opinion surveys.

“I think people have made up their minds now, and anything that they’re doing now is too little, too late,” Mr Aziz said. “It should have been done years ago.”

Canada’s progressive New Democratic Party (NDP) also recently withdrew from a supply-and-confidence agreement that kept Trudeau in power in exchange for assurances on key progressive policy pieces.

Announcing the end of the agreement, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said “the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people”.

That deal was supposed to be in place until next June, with an election scheduled for October 2025.

With that support gone, “every day in parliament is going to be consequential”, Mr Bricker noted.

“It’s going to be a very difficult autumn for the Liberals,” he added.

A September poll by Environics Institute, which has tracked Canadians’ attitudes towards immigration since 1977, revealed that for the first time in a quarter century, a majority now say there is too much immigration.

The institute said these shifting attitudes are primarily driven by concerns over limited housing. But the economy, over-population, and how the immigration system is being managed were also cited as big factors.

In an October newsletter, Abacus Data pollster David Coletto said that the idea that “consensus around immigration is cracking is an understatement”.

“I think that consensus is now broken and expect it to be one of the most salient issues in federal and provincial politics over the next year.”

Canada has been largely welcoming to immigrants. Data shows it is a global leader in refugee resettlement, and the country has built a reputation in the last 50 years as one that values newcomers.

The Canadian Multiculturalism Act, passed in 1988, recognises diversity as an integral part of Canada’s identity. Its multicultural heritage is also protected in the constitution.

“Since the late 1990s or so, Canadian attitudes have been broadly pro-immigration,” Michael Donnelly, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto, told the BBC.

In 2019, a Pew Research report indicated that of 10 top migrant destination countries, Canada had the most positive view of immigration.

Professor Donnelly said that immigrants make up a large part of Canada’s electorate, which deters major political parties from adopting an anti-immigration stance.

Canada has also rarely faced troubles experienced elsewhere with uncontrolled migration – a benefit of its geography, being surrounded by three oceans and the US to the south – and its immigration system was seen by the public as open and well-regulated.

But these positive sentiments have changed in the last few years, Professor Donnelly said.

One reason is the unprecedented spike in temporary residents coming to Canada.

The number of international students grew nearly 30% from 2022 to 2023, according to the Canadian Bureau for International Education. Meanwhile, government data shows that the number of temporary foreign workers in Canada has doubled in the last five years.

Another factor is a growing sense that Canada’s immigration system has lost its integrity, Professor Donnelly said, partly due to miscalculations by the Canadian government.

Asylum claims spiked after Canada removed visa requirements for tourists from Mexico in 2016, forcing Canada to reimpose visa restrictions earlier this year.

Canadian media has also reported that some international students were using their temporary visa to claim permanent asylum in the country – a trend that Minister Miller called “alarming”.

Professor Donnelly said these incidents and others “have made people think that the government has lost control of the flow of immigration”.

All of these concerns, he added, are underlined by a housing crisis that has affected Canadians across the country, where a shortage of available homes has driven both rent and home prices up for many.

“People are going to see large numbers of (newcomers) coming in and housing shortages, and conclude that’s directly causal,” he said.

Professor Donnelly noted that while Canada has seen some racist rhetoric around immigration, Canadians’ changing attitudes are not primarily driven by the sentiments seen in European countries or in the neighbouring United States.

Rather, it is fuelled by people’s desire to reign in Canada’s immigration system.

“The Trudeau government is clearly trying to give an image of ‘we have this under control’,” Prof Donnelly said.

Why is England Arresting People for Posting on Facebook?

It appears that England has been arresting individuals for posting offensive, hateful, or inciting content on social media platforms, particularly Facebook, in the context of recent far-right riots and violent disorder. Here are some key points:

1. Inciting racial hatred: Two men, Jordan Parlour and Tyler Kay, were jailed for posting criminal messages online that stirred up racial hatred and violence. Their Facebook posts encouraged attacks on hotels housing asylum seekers and refugees.
2. Threats and hate speech: Daffron Williams, a 41-year-old former soldier, was sentenced to two years in prison for distributing written material intended to stir up racial hatred on Facebook. His posts were linked to the widespread disorder that occurred across the UK in the summer of 2024.
3. Misuse of public communications: A 64-year-old man was arrested and detained for posting offensive comments on Facebook, which caused fear and offense to others.
4. Rise in arrests: According to The Times, more than 3,300 people were detained and questioned in 2017 for so-called “trolling” on social media and other online forums, a rise of nearly 50% in two years.
5. Prosecution of hate speech: The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has been actively prosecuting individuals for hate speech and inciting violence on social media, with over 120 people charged as of August 2024.

These cases demonstrate that England is taking a stance against hate speech and inciting violence on social media, particularly in the context of recent far-right riots and violent disorder. The authorities are holding individuals accountable for spreading harmful and offensive content online, which can contribute to a toxic and dangerous environment.

It’s worth noting that the exact numbers of arrests and prosecutions may vary depending on the source and time frame. However, the overall trend suggests a growing effort to combat hate speech and inciting violence on social media in England.

They were arrested for posting during the riots – will it change anything?

For Tyler Kay and Jordan Parlour, justice for what they posted on social media has come fast and heavy.

Kay, 26, and Parlour, 28, have been sentenced to 38 months and 20 months in prison respectively for stirring up racial hatred online during the summer riots.

Charges in the aftermath of the disorder felt like a significant moment, in which people had to face real-life consequences for what they said and did online.

There was widespread recognition that false claims and online hate contributed to the violence and racism on British streets in August. In their wake, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said social media “carries responsibility” for tackling misinformation.

More than 30 people found themselves arrested over social media posts. From what I’ve found, at least 17 of those have been charged.

The police will have deemed that some of those investigated did not meet the threshold for criminality. And in plenty of cases, the legal system could be the wrong way to deal with social media posts.

But some posts that did not cross the line into criminality may still have had real-life consequences. So for those who made them, no day of reckoning.

And nor, it seems, for the social media giants whose algorithms, time and time again, are accused of prioritising engagement over safety, pushing content regardless of the reaction it can provoke.

At the time of the riots, I had wondered whether this could be the moment that finally changed the online landscape.

Now, though, I’m not so sure.

To make sense of the role of the social media giants in all this, it’s useful to start by looking at the cases of a dad in Pakistan and a businesswoman from Chester.

On X (formerly known as Twitter) a pseudo-news website called Channel3Now posted a false name of the 17-year-old charged over the murders of three girls in Southport. This false name was then widely quoted by others.

Another poster who shared the false name on X was Bernadette Spofforth, a 55-year-old from Chester with more than 50,000 followers. She had previously shared posts raising questions about lockdown and net-zero climate change measures.

The posts from Channel3Now and Ms Spofforth also wrongly suggested the 17-year-old was an asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK by boat.

All this, combined with further untrue claims from other sources that the attacker was a Muslim, was widely blamed for contributing to the riots – some of which targeted mosques and asylum seekers.

I found that Channel3Now was connected to a man named Farhan Asif in Pakistan, as well as a hockey player in Nova Scotia and someone who claimed to be called Kevin. The site appeared to be a commercial operation looking to increase views and sell adverts.

At the time, a person claiming to be from Channel3Now’s management told me that the publication of the false name “was an error, not intentional” and denied being the origin of that name.

And Ms Spofforth told me she deleted her untrue post about the suspect as soon as she realised it was false. She also strongly denied she had made the name up.

Farhan Asif and Bernadette Spofforth were both arrested over these posts not long after I spoke to them.

Charges, however, were dropped. Authorities in Pakistan said they could not find evidence that Mr Asif was the originator of the fake name. Cheshire police also decided not to charge Ms Spofforth due to “insufficient evidence”.

Mr Farhan seems to have gone to ground. The Channel3Now site and several connected social media pages have been removed.

Bernadette Spofforth, however, is now back posting regularly on X. This week alone she’s had more than one million views across her posts.

She says she has become an advocate for freedom of expression since her arrest. She says: “As has now been shown, the idea that one single tweet could be the catalyst for the riots which followed the atrocities in Southport is simply not true.”

Focusing on these individual cases can offer a valuable insight into who shares this kind of content and why.

But to get to the heart of the problem, it’s necessary to take a further step back.

While people are responsible for their own posts, I’ve found time and time again this is fundamentally about how different social media sites work.

Decisions made under the tenure of Elon Musk, the owner of X, are also part of the story. These decisions include the ability to purchase blue ticks, which afford your posts greater prominence, and a new approach to moderation that favours freedom of expression above all else.

The UK’s head of counter-terror policing, Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes, told me for the BBC’s Newscast that “X was an enormous driver” of posts that contributed to the summer’s disorder.

A team he oversees called the Internet Referral Unit noticed “the disproportionate effect of certain platforms”, he said.

He says there were about 1,200 referrals – posts flagged to police by members of the public – alone in relation to the riots. For him that was “just the tip of the iceberg”. The unit saw 13 times more referrals in relation to X than TikTok.

Acting on content that is illegal and in breach of terror laws is, in one sense, the easy bit. Harder to tackle are those posts that fall into what Mr Jukes calls the “lawful but awful” category.

The unit flags such material to sites it was posted on when it thinks it breaches their terms and conditions.

But Mr Jukes found Telegram, host of several large groups in which disorder was organised and hate and disinformation were shared, hard to deal with.

In Mr Jukes’s view, Telegram has a “cast-iron determination to not engage” with the authorities.

Elon Musk has accused law enforcement in the UK of trying to police opinions about issues such as immigration and there have been accusations that action taken against individuals posters has been disproportionate.

Mr Jukes responds: “I would say this to Elon Musk if he was here, we were not arresting people for having opinions on immigration. [Police] went and arrested people for threatening to, or inciting others to, burn down mosques or hotels.”

But while accountability has been felt at “the very sharp end” by those who participated in the disorder and posted hateful content online, Mr Jukes said “the people who make billions from providing those opportunities” to post harmful content on social media “have not really paid any price at all”.

He wants the Online Safety Act that comes into effect at the start of 2025 bolstered so it can better deal with content that is “lawful but awful”.

The real story of the news website accused of fuelling riots

What connects a dad living in Lahore in Pakistan, an amateur hockey player from Nova Scotia – and a man named Kevin from Houston, Texas?

They’re all linked to Channel3Now – a website whose story giving a false name for the 17-year-old charged over the Southport attack was widely quoted in viral posts on X. Channel3Now also wrongly suggested the attacker was an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK by boat last year.

This, combined with untrue claims the attacker was a Muslim from other sources, has been widely blamed for contributing to riots across the UK – some of which have targeted mosques and Muslim communities.

The BBC has tracked down several people linked to Channel3Now, spoken to their friends and colleagues, who have corroborated that they are real people, and questioned a person who claims to be the “management” at the site.

What I found appears to be a commercial operation attempting to aggregate crime news while making money on social media. I did not find any evidence to substantiate claims that Channel3Now’s misinformation could be linked to the Russian state.

The person claiming to be from Channel3Now’s management told me that the publication of the false name “shouldn’t have happened, but it was an error, not intentional”.

The false article did not have a named byline, and it is unclear exactly who wrote it.

———

A Nova Scotia amateur hockey player called James is the first person I track down linked to Channel3Now. His name appears as a rare byline on the site on a different article, and an image of him pops up on a related LinkedIn page.

A Facebook account linked to James has just four friends, one of whom is named Farhan. His Facebook profile says he’s a journalist for the site.

I message dozens of their followers. A social media account for the school where James played hockey, and one of his friends, confirm to me he is a real person who graduated four years ago. When I get in touch, his friend says James wants to know “what would his involvement be about in the article?”. After I respond, there is no denial James is affiliated with the site – and his friend stops replying.

Former colleagues of Farhan, several based in Pakistan, confirm his identity. On his social media profiles he posts about his Islamic faith and his children. His name is not featured on the false article.

Not long after I message, Farhan blocks me on Instagram, but I finally hear back from Channel3Now’s official email.

The person who gets in touch says he is called Kevin, and that he is based in Houston, Texas. He declines to share his surname and it is unclear if Kevin is actually who he says he is, but he agrees to answer questions over email.

Kevin says he is speaking to me from the site’s “main office” in the US – which fits with both the timings of the social media posts on some of the site’s social media profiles, and the times Kevin replies to my emails.

He signs off initially as “the editor-in-chief” before he tells me he is actually the “verification producer”. He refuses to share the name of the owner of the site who he says is worried “not only about himself but also about everyone working for him”.

Kevin claims there are “more than 30” people in the US, UK, Pakistan and India who work for the site, usually recruited from sites for freelancers – including Farhan and James. He says how Farhan in particular was not involved in the false Southport story, which the site has publicly apologised for, and blamed “our UK-based team”.

In the aftermath of the false claims shared by Channel3Now, it was accused of being linked to the Russian state on the basis of old videos on its YouTube channel in Russian.

Kevin says the site purchased a former Russian-language YouTube channel which focused on car rallies “many years ago” and later changed its name.

There were no videos posted to the account for around six years before it began uploading content related to Pakistan – where Farhan is based and where the site admits to having writers.

“Just because we purchased a YouTube channel from a Russian seller doesn’t mean we have any affiliations,” Kevin says.

“We are an independent digital news media website covering news from around the world.”

It is possible to buy and re-purpose a channel that has already been monetised by YouTube. It can be a quick way to build an audience, enabling the account to start making money right away.

‘As many stories as possible’

Although I’ve found no evidence to back up these claims of Russian links to Channel3Now, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels did reshare and amplify the site’s false posts. This is a tactic they often use.

Kevin said the site is a commercial operation and “covering as many stories as possible” helps it generate income. The majority of its stories are accurate – seemingly drawing from reliable sources about shootings and car accidents in the US. However, the site has shared further false speculation about the Southport attacker and also the person who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump.

Following the false Southport story and media coverage about Channel3Now, Kevin says its YouTube channel and almost all of its “multiple Facebook pages” have been suspended, but not its X accounts. A Facebook page exclusively re-sharing content from the site called the Daily Felon also remains live.

Kevin says that the blame for social media storm relating to the Southport suspect and the subsequent riots cannot be laid squarely on a “small Twitter account” making “a mistake”.

To some extent, he is right. Channel3Now’s incorrect story did become a source cited by lots of social media accounts which made the false accusations go viral.

Several of these were based in the UK and the US, and have a track record of posting disinformation about subjects such as the pandemic, vaccines and climate change. These profiles have been able to amass sizeable followings, and push their content out to more people, following changes Elon Musk made after buying Twitter.

One profile – belonging to a woman called Bernadette Spofforth – has been accused of making the first post featuring the false name of the Southport attacker. She denied being its source, saying she saw the name online in another post that has since been deleted.

​​Speaking to the BBC on the phone, she said she was “horrified” about the attack but deleted her post as soon as she realised it was false. She said she was “not motivated by making money” on her account.

​​“Why on earth would I make something up like that? I have nothing to gain and everything to lose,” she said. ​​She condemned the recent violence.

Ms Spofforth had previously shared posts raising questions about lockdown and net-zero climate change measures. However, her profile was temporarily removed by Twitter back in 2021 following allegations she was promoting misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine and the pandemic. She disputed the claims and said she believed Covid is real.

​​Since Mr Musk’s takeover, her posts have received more than a million views fairly regularly.

The false claim that Ms Spofforth posted about the Southport attacker was quickly re-shared and picked up by a loose group of conspiracy theory influencers and profiles with a history of sharing anti-immigration and far-right ideas.

Many of them have purchased blue ticks, which since Mr Musk took over Twitter has meant their posts have greater prominence.

Another of Mr Musk’s changes to X has meant promoting these ideas can be profitable, both for conspiracy theory accounts and for accounts with a commercial focus such as Channel3Now.

Millions of views

Some profiles like this have racked up millions of views over the past week posting about the Southport attacks and subsequent riots. X’s “ads revenue sharing” means that blue-tick users can earn a share of revenue from the ads in their replies.

Estimates from users with fewer than half a million followers who have generated income in this way say that accounts can make $10-20 per million views or impressions on X. Some of these accounts sharing disinformation are racking up more than a million impressions almost every post, and sharing posts several times a day.

Other social media companies – aside from X – also allow users to make money from views. But YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook have previously de-monetised or suspended some profiles posting content that break their guidelines on misinformation. Apart from rules against faked AI content, X does not have guidelines on misinformation.

While there have been calls from politicians for social media companies to do more in the wake of the riots, the UK’s recently enacted Online Safety Bill does not currently legislate against disinformation, after concerns that that could limit freedom of expression.

Plus, as I found tracking down the writers for Channel3Now, the people involved in posting false information are often based abroad, making it a lot trickier to take action against them.

Instead, the power to deal with this kind of content right now lies with the social media companies themselves. X has not responded to the BBC’s request for comment.

Why is Elon Musk Working so Closely with Trump?

Elon Musk, as one of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump‘s highest profile supporters, has earned praise from the former president. He “is a once-in-a-generation industry leader, and our broken federal bureaucracy could certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency,” Trump told Newsweek.

But this mutual respect and admiration has not always prevailed. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk endorsed Trump as his choice for the next U.S. president as late as July 13. The former Democrat switched sides, pouring millions into his pro-Trump committee America PAC.

As recently as 2022, Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he had “strongly supported Obama for President” in 2007, having donated thousands of dollars to both Obama and fellow Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton that year. Additional donations to Clinton came during her 2015 campaign, and Musk criticized Trump’s character in a 2016 interview with CNBC.

Having said he voted for Biden in 2020, his donations since have been to Republican organizations; although Musk said in 2021 that he “would prefer to stay out of politics.”

Musk’s more vocal support for a Republican agenda seems to have surfaced around the same time as his Twitter takeover in November 2022, posting on November 7: “I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic.”

Before his official endorsement of Trump in July, Musk’s support for the Republican presidential nominee began to publicly surface on X in March, 2024, when he referred to Trump’s critics as having “Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS)”.

So, why has Musk thrown so much money and effort behind a potential Trump presidency? From similar approaches to deregulation to aligning views on gender ideology and transgender rights, the Tesla CEO may feel his multi-billion investment on supporting a Trump win in November will pay off.

Newsweek reached out to Elon Musk via email for comment. Comments will be included as soon as there are any updates.

Musk on Deregulation and Space Policy

Elon Musk’s support for Donald Trump in the 2024 U.S. presidential election appears closely tied to his desire for significant government deregulation, particularly in the realm of space exploration. Musk has on several occasions argued that excessive regulations hinder innovation and impede what he sees as progress toward becoming a multiplanetary species—a central goal of his company, SpaceX.

In a series of posts on X, Musk has expressed his concerns about the impact of overregulation on America’s future in space. “Voting for Trump is voting for Mars! Unless we stop the slow strangulation by overregulation happening in America, we will never become a multiplanetary civilization,” he said.

Musk’s posts on this issue seem to stem from regulatory obstacles SpaceX has encountered in the past. These include delays in launch approvals and restrictions imposed by various federal agencies.

He believes that many of these regulations are outdated or unnecessarily burdensome, slowing down innovation within his companies and elsewhere. “Unless there is significant government reform, laws & regulations will keep getting worse every year until every great endeavor, from high-speed rail between our cities to making life multiplanetary, is effectively illegal,” Musk claimed.

Trump’s platform of reducing government oversight appears to align with Musk’s vision.

Musk has proposed the creation of a “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE (a joking reference to Dogecoin, which Musk supports). Musk suggested such a department would audit federal agencies to identify and eliminate redundant regulations. Musk’s potential role in this initiative could provide him with the influence to reshape regulatory frameworks that currently affect SpaceX.

“With Trump in office, Musk may expect a more favorable regulatory environment for his ventures, including Tesla and SpaceX. Like many Silicon Valley billionaires, Musk resists any limitations on what he perceives as his personal freedom,” Dr. Michael Breen, associate professor at the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University, Ireland, told Newsweek.

Tax Cuts and Government Role

The alignment between Musk’s ambitions and Trump’s policy proposals is further highlighted by Trump’s suggestion to appoint Musk as the “secretary of cost-cutting.” “He’s dying to do this,” Trump said during a recent Fox News appearance.

Such a role could make Musk eligible for a special tax benefit worth tens of billions of dollars. According to a report by Rolling Stone, a provision buried in the tax code could allow Musk to reap one of the largest personalized tax breaks in American history if Trump wins the 2024 election and appoints Musk to this proposed government post.

According to tax and ethics experts who spoke to the outlet, a little-known provision in the tax code could allow Musk to indefinitely defer capital gains taxes on any assets he would need to divest to comply with government ethics rules.

This special tax benefit, available only to federal officials, would come in addition to significant tax breaks Musk could gain if a new Trump administration further reduces income and other taxes for billionaires.

So Musk, currently the world’s wealthiest person with a net worth of $243.4 billion, could potentially be worth billions more if he were to take a government position in a Trump administration.

Democratic candidate Kamala Harris might not suit Musk as much. During her 2019 presidential campaign, Harris advocated for raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 35 percent. While Harris supported President Biden’s more moderate proposal for a 28 percent rate, she pushed for a steeper increase.

Later, when accepting the Democratic nomination for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Harris pledged to deliver tax relief to middle class Americans, promising her tax cut would help “more than 100 million Americans.”

Gender Ideology and Transgender Rights

Musk has a personal connection to transgender issues through his estranged daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson.

In an interview with NBC News in July 2024, Wilson said that Musk was largely absent from her childhood and would berate her for displaying feminine traits. According to Wilson, on one occasion Musk “was constantly yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high.”

Musk has spoken about his daughter, deadnaming her, or calling her by her birthname instead of preferred name. In a July 2022 interview with conservative media commentator Jordan Peterson, Musk claimed his daughter was “killed” by what he termed the “woke mind virus,” vowing to “destroy” it.

Breen said: “It’s not just about business—Musk’s political views also play a role [in his support for Trump]. He’s been vocal in his opposition to what he sees as government overreach, particularly around censorship and gender identity laws.”

Trump has pledged to reverse the Biden administration’s Title IX expansion that protects transgender students’ rights to use bathrooms, locker rooms, and pronouns matching their gender identity.

In January 2024, he announced plans to push for a federal ban on gender-affirming care for minors and proposed restricting doctors who provide such care from Medicare and Medicaid participation.

This contrasts with Harris’ view on access to the care that it is “a decision that doctors will make in terms of what is medically necessary.”

Musk consistently uses his platform on X to criticize transgender rights. He has called gender-affirming care for minors “pure evil”; said that “sex/gender is literally true down to the bone”; argued that young children “cannot understand the concept of ‘gender’, and rolled back X’s protections for transgender users after acquiring the platform.

His stance, aligning with Trump’s position, comes despite his daughter’s testimony that gender-affirming care was “lifesaving” in her case.

Wilson directly contradicted Musk’s claim that he was “tricked” into authorizing her treatment, saying to NBC News: “He was not by any means tricked. He knew the full side effects.”

Censorship and Free Speech

Since acquiring Twitter (now X) in 2022, Musk has positioned himself as a “free speech absolutist” and has made significant changes to the platform’s content moderation policies.

Musk rolled back the app’s protections for various groups and eliminated much of the platform’s trust and safety teams. This has led to what critics describe as an increase in hate speech and unchecked misinformation on the platform.

Musk has also tied in his views on free speech with America PAC. The pro-Trump political action group has been promoting a petition that pledges support for the First and Second Amendments.

The petition is targeted exclusively at registered voters in seven swing states: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, and the PAC is running a daily $1 million prize for one lucky petition signer, running from October 19 until Election Day.

During his presidency, Donald Trump frequently criticized what he viewed as censorship (particularly of conservative content) by social media companies and mainstream media outlets. This culminated in his executive order in May 2020 that sought to limit Section 230 protections for social media companies.

After being banned from X (then Twitter) following January 6, 2021, Trump launched his own social media platform, Truth Social, where he recently shared another user’s crude suggestions about Harris. Trump was reinstated on X by Musk in 2023.

Most recently, Trump has been claiming that Google is censoring “good stories” about him, only showing results for “bad stories.”

“Both Trump and Musk use outrage to juice engagement, both lean into conspiracy lies, both use communication as a way of gaining and keeping power, neither are concerned with the ethics of responsible communication,” Dr. Jennifer R. Mercieca, professor at the Department of Communication & Journalism at Texas A & M University, told Newsweek.

“There’s a clear business rationale behind Musk’s support of Trump. His media company thrives on the attention and engagement that polarizing figures like Trump generate,” added Breen.

Because He Can?

As the world’s richest person, and in control of a popular social media platform, Musk arguably has the financial means and reach to fund and spread whatever message he chooses. This power may be a driving factor in throwing weight behind a presidential candidate.

“On the margins, Musk’s belief in free speech, more stringent border controls, decreased economic regulation, and less progressive stance on trans issues may all factor into his decision to support Trump,” Dr Thomas Gift, Associate Professor in Political Science and founding Director of the Centre on U.S. Politics (CUSP) at University College London, told Newsweek.

“Yet while it may not be the most satisfying answer, why Musk is willing to invest so much money and energy into a Trump win may simply boil down to ‘because he can.’ Musk clearly revels in being a contrarian, and nothing is more contrarian in elite circles than going full-on MAGA,” he added.

Why is Elon Musk becoming Donald Trump’s efficiency tsar?

Billionaire Elon Musk has been tasked with leading incoming President Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

In a statement on social media, the US president-elect said Musk – along with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy – would “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.

It is a role that the tech entrepreneur has arguably prepared for through his business leadership, and one he has spent months pushing for.

But it is also one that is expected to garner him influence over government policy – and the regulatory environment facing his enterprises.

Musk told a Trump rally in October that he believed the US government’s budget could be cut by “at least” $2tn from about $6.5tn. He has also frequently suggested the number of government employees could be significantly reduced.

Ramaswamy, meanwhile, has put forward plans to scrap a number of federal departments including the Department of Education, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI.

Railing against regulation

Musk has cast his plans to optimise government efficiency in heroic terms, pointing to his hopes of one day colonising Mars, while arguing that the feat would only be possible “so long as it is not smothered by bureaucracy”.

At the time, he said creating the new Doge was “the only path to extending life beyond Earth”.

Any major cuts to government agencies could also have potentially significant implications for his business interests, which are closely entwined with the government.

Rocket firm SpaceX alone has more than $8bn-worth of ongoing contracts with the US government, according to public contracting sites, and could stand to benefit further from closer government ties.

Meanwhile, his electric car company Tesla is facing investigations from numerous government agencies over issues such as the safety of its self-driving features. His desire to cut regulation could affect such probes.

In recent years, Musk has repeatedly accused regulators of launching trivial probes and standing in the way of his companies.

In September he threatened to sue the Federal Aviation Administration over its plans to fine his SpaceX company $633,000 for alleged licence infringements related to some of its rocket launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida. He accused the agency of “regulatory overreach”.

Musk “stands to benefit personally from a lot of the deregulation that he touts,” says Christopher Phelps, a professor of modern US political history, adding: “I think putting someone who is a billionaire and runs major corporations in charge of a federal project of deregulation is innately full of conflicts of interest.”

Others said Musk, who has long described himself as having a libertarian bent, appeared to be a true believer in the benefits of smaller government.

“There’s no doubt that Musk has significant vested interests in the US regulatory landscape as a result of his many business enterprises,” says Thomas Gift, a political science professor and director of the Centre on US Politics at University College London.

“At the same time, it’s hard to make the case that this is the only impetus driving him.

“Musk has undertaken huge personal and political risks in coming out for Trump, and many of his activities and rhetoric seem to reflect an individual ideologically committed to causes he believes in.”

“Clearly he has got skin in the game and there’s a self-interest, but equally you can have a sincere belief that there is too much government regulation and too much government bureaucracy,” says Alex Waddan, a professor of US politics at the University of Leicester.

Reward for loyalty

For years, Musk did not play a big role in politics, despite his large fortune, now worth more than $300bn, according to Forbes estimates.

But he spoke out against the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. His criticism of the Biden administration mounted after the White House did not invite Tesla to an electric car summit in 2021.

He formally endorsed Trump this year after an assassination attempt, ultimately donating more than $100m (£79m) to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and appearing at numerous rallies.

Prof Phelps describes Musk’s relationship with Trump as “transactional”, adding that the new role “gives him a lot of symbolic clout – and possibly the clout to get the things that matter most to him done”.

As the South African-born billionaire is not a US citizen by birth, Musk cannot become president – something that has frustrated other famous faces who became involved in politics in the past.

But he can have an influence on US policy, and Trump will have a sympathetic adviser to call upon.

“Trump is looking to surround himself with loyalists in his new administration, and there’s no-one who’s been more loyal than Musk since he announced his endorsement for Trump,” says Prof Gift.

“Not only did Musk go ‘all in’ in supporting Trump personally and financially during the campaign, but he’s also evolved into a trusted adviser on topics as diverse as technology policy to the war in Ukraine.”

In an early sign of the influence the tech entrepreneur may be rewarded with for his loyalty, Musk was party to a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following the election. The war in Ukraine will be a major foreign policy concern when Trump takes office.

“That is actually quite extraordinary,” says Prof Waddan. “Normally, even your biggest donors wouldn’t get that kind of access.”

What is the Department of Government Efficiency?

Musk first raised the idea of a cost-cutting effort while hosting Trump on X this summer. The official name is a winking reference to a meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog, which then gave its name to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, a favourite of Musk that has seen its value soar since the election.

Prof Phelps says the name is “a nod to crypto deregulation being part of what they’ll do”.

But it is not clear how much of Musk’s talk of cutting might actually become reality.

For one thing, the new department will not have an official role, but provide “advice and guidance from outside government”, according to the announcement.

Experts have also warned that cuts of the scale discussed could be enormously disruptive – and face pushback in Congress – depending on how rapidly they are implemented.

Musk himself acknowledged the risks, saying Americans should be ready to stomach temporary hardship for long-run gain.

The way he has run his own firms may hint at what Americans can expect.

After his October 2022 takeover of the social media platform Twitter – which he branded as X – Musk introduced radical changes, including the reduction X’s workforce from around 8,000 to 1,500 in a matter of weeks.

“His idea of efficiency was to let a lot of people go,” says Alex Waddan, a professor of US politics at the University of Leicester.

Musk also loosened content moderation, stopped verifying accounts and welcomed users back to the platform who had been banned for violating its rules on hate speech and disinformation.

Among the users he reinstated was Trump, who had been banned following the Capitol riot in January 2021 after continuing to claim the 2020 election had been rigged against him.

Critics argue his changes have given prominence to hate-speech and misinformation – though Musk maintains the site is politically neutral.

The overhaul also prompted an exodus of advertisers – the main way the site has made money. Though Musk has introduced new ways to raise revenue, such as paid subscriptions, the company today is worth far less than the $44bn Musk paid for it just two years ago.

His record at his other big companies – Tesla and SpaceX – is stronger.

Among car companies, Tesla stands out for making electric vehicles at a large profit, thanks in part to streamlined operations. His rocket firm SpaceX is credited with enabling rocket launches at significantly lower cost.

“As a serial entrepreneur, Musk has been relentless in trying to improve institutional efficiency at his own enterprises,” Prof Gift says.

He adds that though Musk’s primary role will be “slashing through the thicket of red tape that is the US federal government”, his position will also give him influence in the new administration.

“While his role in the Department of Government Efficiency will be a more informal one, there’s no doubt that he’s got Trump’s ear – at least for the moment.”

What Elon Musk could gain from Trump’s presidency

Donald Trump’s return to the White House also looks set to be a win for one of his most visible supporters: Elon Musk.

Mr Musk, the world’s richest man, spent election night with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

“The people of America gave @realDonaldTrump a crystal clear mandate for change tonight,” Mr Musk wrote on the social media platform X, which he owns.

Trump also singled-out Mr Musk in his victory speech, spending several minutes praising his rocket firm, Space X.

Mr Musk’s association with the president-elect also boosted the share price of his electric car maker Tesla – and, with it, his net worth, which now stands at an estimated $290bn.

Mr Musk threw his support behind the Republican almost immediately after the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvaniain July.

He had previously described himself as “politically moderate”, but said in the run-up to the 2024 Presidential Election that he felt no choice but to support Trump as the Republican candidate.

He has frequently voiced concerns over the Biden administration’s approach to immigration and the economy, and claimed free speech would be at risk with another Democrat presidency.

As one of the president-elect’s most important backers, the tech billionaire donated more than $119m (£92m) to fund a Super PAC aimed at re-electing Trump.

He also spent the last weeks before election day running a get-out-the-vote effort in the battleground states, which included a daily giveaway of $1m to voters in those states.

The giveaway became the subject of a legal challenge, though a judge later ruled they could go ahead.

After throwing his name, money, and platform behind Trump, Mr Musk has plenty to gain from Trump’s re-election.

The president-elect has said that in a second term, he would invite Mr Musk into his administration to eliminate government waste.

Mr Musk has referred to the potential effort as the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, the name of a meme and cryptocurrency that he has popularised.

The businessman could also benefit from Trump’s presidency through his ownership of SpaceX, which already dominates the business of sending government satellites to space.

With a close ally in the White House, Mr Musk could seek to further capitalise on those government ties.

Mr Musk has criticised rivals including Boeing for the structure of their government contracts, which he says disincentive finishing projects on budget and on time.

SpaceX has also moved into building spy satellites just as the Pentagon and American spy agencies appear poised to invest billions of dollars into them.

Tesla could meanwhile reap gains from an administration that Trump has said would be defined by “the lowest regulatory burden.”

Tesla’s share price jumped by more than 12% on Wednesday following news of Trump’s victory.

Just last month, the US agency in charge of regulating road safety revealed it was probing Tesla’s self-driving software systems.

Mr Musk has also come under fire for allegedly seeking to block Tesla workers from unionising. The United Auto Workers filed unfair labour practice charges against both Trump and Musk after the two talked about Musk supposedly firing striking workers during a conversation on X.

Trump has also pledged to lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

That’s another promise Mr Musk is likely hoping he will keep.

How the Press is Ruining our Country?

It speaks volumes about the state of political communication in the U.S. that only 9% of Americans believe that campaign messages are usually based on facts, one telltale finding of a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Opinion Research and USAFacts survey.

Just 14% think policy decisions are often or always fact-based or that Americans’ voting decisions are rooted in facts, and only about two in 10 Americans believe media reporting is often or always based on facts.

Unless the huge majority of Americans are exceedingly cynical, political communication has become so untrustworthy that it poses a serious threat to our nation’s political stability.

Unfortunately, I believe the industry from which I recently retired shares a notable part of the blame for that overwhelming public cynicism.

Spinning the facts

Like politicians, most “alternative media” and popular cable news stars, political talk radio hosts don’t report the news, we spin the news. We take one side of an argument and promote the narrative that supports that side. I cannot deny that I did the same thing during my 20 years as a radio talk show host after 20 years as a broadcast journalist.

In my defense, I did and do believe everything I said, and I tried to search for the whole truth about important matters, but my stalwart belief in the positive power of free markets and libertarian rights, coupled with personal accountability always influenced my conclusions, and the hosts’ conclusions are what attracts the audience that butters everyone’s bread in talk radio.

Fewer and fewer Americans are getting their political and public policy news from fact-finding journalism that tries to tell the whole truth about political matters without regard for which political party or politician it benefits or harms in the process or how large an audience it pleases. The recent entry of social media and podcasting to compete for political news audiences has further divided the already fractured targeted audiences, requiring fewer and fewer pieces of the whole truth to attract the desired audience.

Where is the informed voter?

The product is an American population incapable of informed voting, let alone participating in deliberations regarding public policy issues that will determine the future security, prosperity and liberty of the U.S. and its citizens.

If I played a part in creating this political communications monster that is attacking our democratic republic, I apologize. That was not my intent. When I chose “radio talk show host” as my career goal after the Air Force and college, I envisioned talk radio as America’s 24/7 countrywide town hall, where all Americans, through radio, would have access to facts and informed opinions about public policy issues, thereby enhancing the public knowledge necessary for civic-minded voters to be a productive part of the democratic process.

But in the 20 years I spent as a broadcast journalist, prior to getting my first job as a talk-show host, the talk radio industry had changed dramatically, from delivering news and public affairs interviews, to the Rush Limbaugh model, centered on hosts who could attract an audience with their skill in delivering opinions that validated those of a targeted audience.  Limbaugh himself has openly and repeatedly attributed his unprecedented success and wealth as a talk radio host to his talent (“on loan from God”) for validating his audience’s opinions.

Nearly any talk radio host in the country would be first in his or her radio market with an audience share of 9% of the market. With 14 or 20%, he or she would be a radio legend.

But when only 9% of the population can vouch for the integrity of those to whom we entrust the keys to the nation’s castle, we are nearing a point of political instability that should and does worry the rest of the world.

A dangerous investment

Investment brokers are honor bound to warn clients about investing in some parts of the world because of “political risks” that can affect markets in countries that lack political stability. If I were still using my Series 7 license, I would feel honor bound to include those warnings in the purchase of U.S. stocks and bonds today.

The attempted impeachment of President Donald Trump is but one glaring symptom of a much deeper problem that is not unique to Trump and will plague the population long after he’s gone.

The United States is devolving into a tribal society, in large part because of the proliferation of targeted communication. If that doesn’t change, we’re not going to like the rest of the story.

The mainstream press is failing America – and people are understandably upset

The first thing to say about the hate and scorn currently directed at the mainstream US media is that they worked hard to earn it. They’ve done so by failing, repeatedly, determinedly, spectacularly to do their job, which is to maintain their independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power. While the left has long had reasons to dismiss centrist media, and the right has loathed it most when it did do its job well, the moderates who are furious at it now seem to be something new – and a host of former editors, media experts and independent journalists have been going after them hard this summer.

Longtime journalist James Fallows declares that three institutions – the Republican party, the supreme court, and the mainstream political press – “have catastrophically failed to ‘meet the moment’ under pressure of [the] Trump era”. Centrist political reformer and columnist Norm Ornstein states that these news institutions “have had no reflection, no willingness to think through how irresponsible and reckless so much of our mainstream press and so many of our journalists have been and continue to be”.

Most voters, he says, “have no clue what a second Trump term would actually be like. Instead, we get the same insipid focus on the horse race and the polls, while normalizing abnormal behavior and treating this like a typical presidential election, not one that is an existential threat to democracy.”

Lamenting the state of the media recently on X, Jeff Jarvis, another former editor and newspaper columnist, said: “What ‘press’? The broken and vindictive Times? The newly Murdochian Post? Hedge-fund newspaper husks? Rudderless CNN or NPR? Murdoch’s fascist media?”

These critics are responding to how the behemoths of the industry seem intent on bending the facts to fit their frameworks and agendas. In pursuit of clickbait content centered on conflicts and personalities, they follow each other into informational stampedes and confirmation bubbles.

They pursue the appearance of fairness and balance by treating the true and the false, the normal and the outrageous, as equally valid and by normalizing Republicans, especially Donald Trump, whose gibberish gets translated into English and whose past crimes and present-day lies and threats get glossed over. They neglect, again and again, important stories with real consequences. This is not entirely new – in a scathing analysis of 2016 election coverage, the Columbia Journalism Review noted that “in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election” – but it’s gotten worse, and a lot of insiders have gotten sick of it.

In July, ordinary people on social media decided to share information about the rightwing Project 2025 and did a superb job of raising public awareness about it, while the press obsessed about Joe Biden’s age and health. NBC did report on this grassroots education effort, but did so using the “both sides are equally valid” framework often deployed by mainstream media, saying the agenda is “championed by some creators as a guide to less government oversight and slammed by others as a road map to an authoritarian takeover of America”. There is no valid case it brings less government oversight.

In an even more outrageous case, the New York Times ran a story comparing the Democratic and Republican plans to increase the housing supply – which treated Trump’s plans for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants as just another housing-supply strategy that might work or might not. (That it would create massive human rights violations and likely lead to huge civil disturbances was one overlooked factor, though the fact that some of these immigrants are key to the building trades was mentioned.)

Other stories of pressing concern are either picked up and dropped or just neglected overall, as with Trump’s threats to dismantle a huge portion of the climate legislation that is both the Biden administration’s signal achievement and crucial for the fate of the planet. The Washington Post editorial board did offer this risibly feeble critique on 17 August: “It would no doubt be better for the climate if the US president acknowledged the reality of global warming – rather than calling it a scam, as Mr Trump has.”

While the press blamed Biden for failing to communicate his achievements, which is part of his job, it’s their whole job to do so. The Climate Jobs National Resource Center reports that the Inflation Reduction Act has created “a combined potential of over $2tn in investment, 1,091,966 megawatts of clean power, and approximately 3,947,670 jobs”, but few Americans have any sense of what the bill has achieved or even that the economy is by many measures strong.

Last winter, the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has a Nobel prize in economics, told Greg Sargent on the latter’s Daily Blast podcast that when he writes positive pieces about the Biden economy, his editor asks “don’t you want to qualify” it; “aren’t people upset by X, Y and Z and shouldn’t you be acknowledging that?”

Meanwhile in an accusatory piece about Kamala Harris headlined When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?, a Washington Post columnist declares in another case of bothsiderism: “Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.” The evidence that corporations have jacked up prices and are reaping huge profits is easy to find, but facts don’t matter much in this kind of opining.

It’s hard to gloat over the decline of these dinosaurs of American media, when a free press and a well-informed electorate are both crucial to democracy. The alternatives to the major news outlets simply don’t reach enough readers and listeners, though the non-profit investigative outfit ProPublica and progressive magazines such as the New Republic and Mother Jones, are doing a lot of the best reporting and commentary.

Earlier this year, when Alabama senator Katie Britt gave her loopy rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address, it was an independent journalist, Jonathan Katz, who broke the story on TikTok that her claims about a victim of sex trafficking contained significant falsehoods. The big news outlets picked up the scoop from him, making me wonder what their staffs of hundreds were doing that night.

A host of brilliant journalists young and old, have started independent newsletters, covering tech, the state of the media, politics, climate, reproductive rights and virtually everything else, but their reach is too modest to make them a replacement for the big newspapers and networks. The great exception might be historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose newsletter and Facebook followers give her a readership not much smaller than that of the Washington Post. The tremendous success of her sober, historically grounded (and footnoted!) news summaries and reflections bespeaks a hunger for real news.

Is America’s media divide destroying democracy?

Sometimes it seems as if the deepest divide in American politics is not so much between Republicans and Democrats as between voters who watch Fox News, and those who don’t.

For instance, 84% of Fox-viewing Republicans support President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a border wall, according to a March Navigator Research survey. But among the rest of America – including members of the GOP who don’t watch Fox – only 21 percent think the emergency is a good idea.

Splits like this have led to a lot of recent critical examination of Fox’s role in the modern U.S media ecosystem. Critics have called it “state TV” for the Trump era, and traced the entwining relationships between Fox executives and on-air stars and administration officials and government regulators.

But focusing on the role of one outlet, however big and influential, ignores the larger context of an entire American media ecosystem increasingly divided between an insular conservative wing, and a center-left wing derided and praised as the “MSM” (mainstream media).

It’s a partition that produces not so much dual echo chambers as different realities. It’s not just that the two media spheres have divergent attitudes toward the same stories. Often, they chase different stories entirely – which the other side barely hears about at all.

One of the defining aspects of modern politics is that the base voters of the Republican and Democratic parties are consuming entirely different diets of news. 

This reality isn’t a phenomenon born in the Age of Trump. Conservative activists have worked with varying degrees of success to create print and broadcast outlets that explicitly promote their beliefs since the 1950s. Their big breakthrough came with the rise of Ronald Reagan. Now they have a powerful sphere of influence that features TV and talk radio stars and increasingly aggressive online sites.

“I would not say it is just Fox News. It is that entire conservative media bubble that matters,” says Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs and author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.”

‘Go back to Puerto Rico!’

To see how America’s media division can lead to misunderstanding – and perhaps worse – let’s take a look at a specific incident that happened on the floor of the House of Representatives in January.

It was in the midst of the government shutdown. Tensions between the parties were high. The House had already adjourned for the week, so C-SPAN cameras were off. Groups of Republicans and Democrats were milling about, and Rep. Tony Cardenas, a California Democrat of Mexican heritage, was waiting to speak.

“Go back to Puerto Rico!” yelled a Republican, later identified as Rep. Jason Smith from Missouri.

Congressman Cardenas and his fellow Democrats were shocked. They thought it was an ethnically tinged slur hurled at a lawmaker who happened to look Hispanic. It was the kind of insult he’d heard as a kid, said Mr. Cardenas.

But that was not the case, Congressman Smith said later in an apology. His barb had been aimed at all the Democrats – 30 of whom had spent the previous weekend on a fundraising jaunt in San Juan organized by an arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

The trip had been heavily covered by conservative media, with the general theme of “Democrats leave Washington for a tropical boondoggle during the government shutdown.” But it was barely mentioned on non-conservative outlets – and as a result the Democratic lawmakers hadn’t gotten the reference. (As part of his apology, Mr. Smith said that he and Mr. Cardenas should get to know each other better.)

“That people need this explained suggests that the ‘Dems partied in Puerto Rico’ stuff didn’t reach escape velocity out of Fox News,” tweeted Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel at the time.

It’s far from the only story that didn’t cross the partisan barrier. “Uranium One,” a story involving then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s alleged involvement in the sale of American uranium reserves to the Russian state nuclear company was heavily discussed on Fox News, Rush Limbaugh’s show, and other conservative outlets in 2017. It received much less attention on non-conservative media. Mr. Limbaugh and others saw this as evidence of overt liberal bias. The MSM explanation was that the pieces of the purported conspiracy didn’t add up.

The Seth Rich murder received similar bifurcated treatment. Mr. Rich, an employee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), was killed near his Washington apartment on July 10, 2016. Online conspiracy theorists quickly began whispering, without evidence, that the young Democratic operative, not Russia, had leaked a trove of DNC emails to WikiLeaks and paid with his life.

In the spring of 2017 the story exploded onto Fox News, which picked up a piece from a local D.C. affiliate alleging that Mr. Rich had contacted WikiLeaks and that law enforcement was covering up the trail. Popular host Sean Hannity ran numerous prime time segments on this false theory.

But the Rich story soon fell apart in a tangle of recanting sources and false claims. Fox officially retracted it a few days after it first ran. Non-conservative media focused heavily on the case’s collapse – the liberal-leaning Vox site, for instance, ran a post headlined “The Bonkers Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory – Explained.”

Two separate spheres 

What do the courses run by these stories say about the structure of American media today?

What they illustrate is that there is not one media ecosystem, but two separate spheres that respond to different incentives and operate in very different manners, says Yochai Benkler, a professor at Harvard Law School and co-author of “Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization of American Politics.”

One of these spheres is comprised of right-leaning media, from Fox News to Breitbart and talk radio hosts such as Mr. Limbaugh. The other is a center-left composite of everything else, from the legacy newscasts of the old broadcast networks to most daily newspapers and new liberal internet sites.

To find out how news moves through these spheres, Professor Benkler and his co-authors used data analysis tools to study hyperlink connections, Facebook shares, and other marking aspects of some 4 million stories from the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the first year of the Trump presidency. Their study showed that right-leaning audiences concentrated to a large extent on right-leaning outlets insulated from the rest of the media. Center and left-leaning audiences spread their attention more broadly and focused in particular on what is often labeled the MSM.

This disparity is driven in part by the fact that the center-left in U.S. politics is a broad spectrum that includes ideological, racial, and ethnic diversity. The right is more ideologically focused and remains predominantly white and Christian.

“You just don’t have the same obvious coherence on the left. That’s the shape of political identity in America,” says Professor Benkler.

Both sides like to hear news that reaffirms their deeply held beliefs and identities. That’s just human nature, perhaps unfortunately. Many committed Democrats gravitate toward stories online that promise to expose GOP hypocrisy. Many conservatives chuckle at talk radio hosts who say the “Democrat Party” would institute socialism in America – if they could only figure out what it is.

On the center-left, such stories are vetted and constrained by the structure of the system. Center-left readers and viewers tend to be exposed to a fairly wide range of outlets, many with strong traditional fact-checking mechanisms.

But on the right, says Professor Benkler, those barriers are weaker or even nonexistent. Smaller, more radical conservative media outlets compete to see who can be more ideologically pure and define the accepted political narrative. The result is what he calls a “propaganda feedback loop” – an insular dynamic in which false information and outright conspiracy theories can thrive.

“We’re looking at the present state of a system that has really been developing for 40 years,” he says.

Bias that’s invisible to liberals 

To conservatives, the defining feature of U.S. media is not “feedback loops” – but left-leaning bias so pervasive that it’s invisible to liberals.

They’ve felt that way since the early development years of American conservative media in the wake of World War II. By the early 1950s, the nation’s nascent right wing was frustrated and angry with the political status quo in general and the media in particular. The Cold War foreign policy consensus, in which most Democrats and Republicans backed a steady containment of international communism, was weak-kneed, in the conservative view. Why not push for actual victory?

Conservatives of the time were also staunchly anti-union and religious, and they felt neither position received enough attention and support from establishment newspapers and radio networks. Some believed the creation of right-leaning media organizations – not just PR efforts – was the answer.

“There was a real belief that their ideas just weren’t in circulation, and that if the ideas got out there, they could trigger conservatism,” says Dr. Hemmer of the University of Virginia.

Broadcaster Clarence Manion, book publisher Henry Regnery, and magazine publisher William Rusher emerged as new conservative leaders. With their radio shows and book clubs and the newsletter Human Events, they were organizing a movement as much as spreading a doctrine to the larger public.

Along the way, they established some ideological tenets that remain foundational for conservative media today. First, and perhaps most importantly, they insisted that existing media were not just ignoring their concerns about particular issues, but were wearing masks of “objectivity.” They crafted and popularized the idea of liberal media bias, writes Dr. Hemmer in “Messengers of the Right.”

“This concept – that established media were not neutral but slanted towards liberalism – not only shaped the [conservative] movement but remade American journalism,” she writes.

It may be hard to believe today, but in the 1950s this was a radical idea. The media reflected the bipartisan approach to the times, a sort of economic liberalism combined with right-leaning foreign policy, that historian Arthur Schlesinger described in his influential book “The Vital Center.” Dispassionate neutrality was supposed to be a feature of the American system.

In its infancy, conservative media also gathered together into a self-referential and mutually supportive network. If the National Review was opposing a new highway program, for instance, it would point to a piece in Human Events that drew in turn on a person who had appeared on Manion’s radio program. 

This built like-minded audiences and provided intellectual underpinning. It also fostered an alternative, exclusionary media environment in which the truth of an assertion was judged on where it came from as much as by what it said.

“They’re building up a separate political reality, a conversation that increasingly does not reference outside sources,” says Dr. Hemmer of the movement’s early years.

Fast forward to 1985. Messengers of the right had entered the halls of political power. President Ronald Reagan was the keynote speaker at a Plaza Hotel gala in New York honoring the National Review’s 30th anniversary. President Reagan told the crowd he’d been a Democrat until he sneaked a look at his first issue of N.R. “in a plain brown wrapper.”

In 1988, radio personality Rush Limbaugh’s political talk show went national. It was a new kind of ideological communication, that was “meant to provoke as much as proselytize,” Hemmer writes. It proved explosively popular. By 1992, Mr. Limbaugh was so important a voice in Republican politics that when he arrived at the White House for a short visit, President George H.W. Bush carried his bag inside.

In 1996, media mogul Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News, following a failed attempt to buy CNN. Though Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow conservative talk show hosts remained popular (and remain so today), Fox rose to become the dominant voice on the right, thanks in large part to its prime time lineup of sharp-edged opinion hosts.

In 2018, Fox was the most watched cable network in America. In prime time it draws about 2.4 million viewers on average, depending on the flow of news and the identity of the on-air host.

Fox’s dominance among Republicans – and its isolation from Democrats – can be seen in a few statistics from the 2016 presidential election. Fox was the main source of campaign news by far among Trump voters, according to Pew Research Center data. Forty percent of Trump backers named it as their chief resource for political information, with no other outlet coming even close. But Clinton voters spread their news diet widely among news sources like NPR and CNN and newspapers like The New York Times and others, with none of them individually dominant. Only 3% of Clinton supporters named Fox News as their primary source.

Narrow but deep  

It’s easy to bemoan the split nature of news and news consumption in America. For those of us who consume a lot of news, it’s in our face every day. Sometimes Fox News and CNN seem to be covering different Americas. “Why didn’t The New York Times cover [story X] on page one?” is a common complaint from conservatives. “Why did Fox ignore [this thing President Trump did],” liberals retort.

But the talk about Americans trapped in news echo bubbles may also be exaggerated. That’s because the people who routinely bemoan the other side’s “fake news” are also the ones most prone to seek out information that reaffirms their own beliefs.

“Echo chambers are narrow but deep – most people aren’t in them, but the ones who are, [are] disproportionately politically active and influential,” says Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist and professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, in an email.

Dr. Nyhan was co-author of the 2018 Knight Foundation report “Avoiding the echo chamber about echo chambers: Why selective exposure to like-minded political news is less prevalent than you think.”

Media outlets with a significant partisan slant simply do not reach most of the U.S. population, according to the Knight report.

MSNBC, on the liberal side, comes close to Fox’s 2.4 million viewership with its most popular programs, while lagging behind Fox overall in the ratings.

But taken together, the old warhorses of the MSM – the CBS, NBC, and ABC nightly news broadcasts – reached some 24 million viewers a night in 2018. The Sunday morning political talk shows reached a total of about 10 million.

Meanwhile, top entertainment shows such as HBO’s “Game of Thrones” can hit 17 million viewers or more per episode, even in today’s fragmented world of networks, cable, and streaming video choices. Political programming is a niche, not a main course.

The same pattern holds for online news and information consumption.

Yet this doesn’t mean biased or distorted information has little effect. The biggest impact of echo chambers comes from what media scholars call “two-step flow” – others might just call it “talking to friends, relatives, and colleagues”.

Step One: Political junkies hear something within their preferred media sphere that confirms their partisan beliefs. Step Two: They talk about it, repeatedly, to people who have much less news context and are not themselves big news consumers. Result: biased, distorted, or outright false information can spread far beyond the audience of its initial source.

This process applies to the opinion shows on Fox News where hosts often engage in fiery polemics, says Dr. Nyhan. “The Fox audience is relatively small, but it plays a key role in funneling misinformation to the Republican base and to GOP activists, elites, and elected officials, including most importantly the President of the United States,” he writes in an email.

Consider the case of the flatulent cows. Democratic pollster Celinda Lake recently said that when she interviews likely 2020 swing voters, a surprising number will repeat a false statement made by Mr. Trump and GOP allies that the Democrats’ “Green New Deal” proposes shutting down dairy farms and beef production because cattle generate large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas.

The Green New Deal proposes no such thing. But a supporting document put out by the office of liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., made a joke about the problem of cow flatulence. From this, conservative web sites and Fox commentators spun the narrative of a “cow ban,” and injected it into right-wing political conversation.

Dedicated Fox viewer Mr. Trump picked up this assertion and repeated it for his supporters. At a rally in El Paso, Texas, in February he said that under the Green New Deal “you’re not allowed to own cows anymore.” 

That’s not true, reported the Associated Press in a fact-check story on the rally. “[Mr.] Trump chose to ignore the actual provisions of the plan,” the AP wrote.

It’s just one more example of the challenge a bifurcated media creates for American politics and unity. The different spheres convey not just different views, but different identities, different realities, different emotional worlds.

“At the end of the day, if one side most trusts Fox News, Hannity, Limbaugh, and Beck, and the other side most trusts NPR, the BBC, PBS, and The New York Times, one cannot expect both sides to be equally informed or equally capable of telling truth from identity-confirming fiction,” write Professor Benkler and his co-authors in “Network Propaganda.”

How can Trump get his Cabinet Picks Despite the Resistance of Congress?

Recess appointments eyed to speed up confirmation of Trump cabinet picks

Donald Trump is facing opposition in some corners over key hires he has announced ahead of his return to the White House.

Though some of the Republican president-elect’s personnel decisions are immediate, many must go through further vetting.

Several of the posts require a Senate hearing and a majority of the chamber’s approval.

But Trump is reportedly looking into a clause in the US Constitution that allows a president to unilaterally appoint nominees if the Senate is not in session.

Senate vetting: How does it work?

More than 1,000 positions – including the 15 officials chosen to lead executive departments, known as the Cabinet – typically require Senate approval. This also includes ambassadors and even some lower-level positions.

But many members of Trump’s team, including those who work in the White House or posts like the national security adviser, don’t require Senate approval. They still are vetted, however, by the administration and could face intensive FBI background checks.

On Thursday, incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Fox News that he does not anticipate a smooth road for each nominee.

‘None of this is gonna be easy,’ he said.

The FBI says members who are subject to vetting include presidential appointees, White House staff, positions requiring Senate confirmation, and other national security positions requiring security clearance.

The FBI says it “does not adjudicate or render an opinion on the results of the background investigation”, which are then sent to the office of the president-elect or the office of White House Counsel for their use “as deemed appropriate”.

It also is responsible for focusing “on character and conduct” and completing its investigation “as expeditiously as possible.”

But the president-elect’s transition team is bypassing FBI background checks for some cabinet picks, according to anonymous sources, CNN reported. It also has considered turning to private vetting companies. BBC has not independently verified this.

The Senate approval process requires nominees to submit financial disclosure forms, fill out a questionnaire – which differs based on the role – and testify before a Senate committee.

These hearings can sometimes be contentious. They allow members from both political parties to question nominees about their backgrounds and plans for the post.

After the hearing, the committee votes on the nomination. If it approves the candidate, the full Senate then votes on the nominee.

Historically, the upper chamber has approved cabinet positions quickly – sometimes with little or no debate. But “political and partisan conflicts between the president and senators have at times produced dramatic fights over cabinet nominees and led to their ultimate withdrawal or rejection”, the Senate’s historical website notes.

Bitter political brawls over Trump’s picks could be limited somewhat because Republicans will control both chambers of Congress when the president-elect takes office in January.

But some Republicans already have questioned at least one Trump choice, Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, the nominee for post of attorney general, or top prosecutor in the US.

What are recess appointments?

The vetting and approval process for nominees can be lengthy, but it was included in the US Constitution to provide a check on presidential power. It is also designed to rule out corrupt or unqualified nominees.

There is, however, an exception to this process – recess appointments – which Trump appears intent to use to ensure his appointments are able to take office.

Basically, the process says that when Congress is in recess – meaning it’s not in session for a duration of time – the president can make appointments temporarily without congressional approval or vetting.

Sen Thune warned on Fox that while recess appointments are an option for nominees, it is also not a certainty. First, all senators would need to vote to recess, he said, adding that the same senators with concerns about a nominee might also oppose a recess.

The recess process was created when Congress didn’t meet as often as it does today, and was to be used in emergencies so presidents would be able to fill positions without delay.

It is also supposed to be a temporaryappointment and expires at the end of a congressional session – so at most, one year.

Trump recently said the Senate “must agree” to recess appointments, otherwise “we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner”. He noted that in his past administration, some of his nominees took multiple years to be confirmed.

Trump’s plan to use recess appointments, along with the announcement that Republican senators’ support bypassing the Senate vetting process, is not without precedent.

Some past presidents have employed the method liberally, often as a way of circumventing political divides that would slow nominations.

George W Bush made 171 recess appointments, Bill Clinton made 139 and Barack Obama made at least 32, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

This method of getting nominees into office was virtually stopped after the Supreme Court ruled against Obama in 2014, striking down multiple recess appointments and calling them unconstitutional.

Josh Chafetz, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University, says recess appointments are “not meant to be a mechanism for circumventing Senate consent”.

While other presidents have used them, Prof Chafetz says: “I can’t think of an instance in which the Senate majority has triggered a recess simply so that a president could make recess appointments.”

When can Trump make recess appointments?

According to Professor Chafetz, there are two paths Trump could take to making recess appointments.

The first would involve the Senate agreeing to recess for 10 days or more by majority vote.

The second would involve the House voting for a longer recess than the Senate, which would allow Trump to invoke a never-used constitutional power to adjourn both chambers of Congress.

According to the US Constitution, “in Case of Disagreement” a president can adjourn both chambers of Congress until “such Time as he shall think proper” – which would then provide Trump an opportunity to make recess appointments.

Trump previously threatened to use this power when he was in the White House.

In 2020, during a pandemic briefing, Trump said that he would “exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress” to make recess appointments if his nominees before Congress were not approved.

Professor Chafetz stressed that this route has never been used before in US history, and so “no-one is quite sure how it would work”.

He added that Trump cannot make any recess appointments until he is president. His inauguration is scheduled for 20 January.

If Trump wishes for the Senate to recess for a period longer than 10 days, he would require the unanimous consent of all 100 lawmakers.

But the chamber includes 47 Democrats, all or most of whom will vote to block the change.

In order to override that blockade, Republicans need a 60-vote majority, which means winning support from all 53 of their members and at least seven Democrats.

With Republicans unlikely to reach that threshold, they will be faced with rolling back a procedural tool known as the filibuster. Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, like his predecessor Mitch McConnell, has already indicated he does not support setting such a precedent.

What are recess appointments and can Trump confirm nominees that way?

Senate Republicans must soon consider several of Donald Trump’s cabinet picks whose nominations were met with intense criticism: Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Matt Gaetz as attorney general, Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense and Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of health and human services.

Each of those cabinet announcements landed with somewhat of a thud on Capitol Hill, raising questions about whether the nominees will be able to muster the majority-level support needed in the Senate to get confirmed.

But the president-elect has proposed an archaic and in recent years little-used mechanism to get his nominees installed without Senate confirmation: recess appointments.

“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” Trump said earlier this month. “We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY!”

If Trump pursues a strategy of recess appointments, it could severely curtail the Senate’s power to serve as a check on the new president’s nominations and allow controversial picks to move forward.

Here’s everything to know about recess appointments:

What does the constitution say about Senate confirmation of presidential nominations?

Article 2, section 2 of the US constitution states that the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States”.

Hundreds of senior officials in the federal government, including all members of the president’s cabinet, are subject to Senate approval, meaning they need the support of a majority of the 100-member upper chamber to be confirmed.

How do recess appointments allow a president to circumvent the Senate confirmation process?

Although the US constitution outlines how the Senate serves as a check on presidential nominations, it also provides an alternate route for installing officials who are usually subject to the confirmation process.

Article 2, section 2 further states that the president “shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session”.

This allows the president to install nominees in posts that might otherwise go vacant while the Senate is out of session. If Trump were to utilize recess appointments at the start of his term, those appointees could stay in their posts until the end of the next Senate session, or until the end of 2026.

Why do recess appointments exist?

Recess appointments have been criticized as an anachronism dating back to the country’s founding, when Congress was in session much less frequently than it is now and correspondence over an important vacancy in the federal government could take weeks.

Today, when instant communication and air travel are the norm, the idea that the president may need to rely on recess appointments to fill key government posts appears absurd, sparking criticism of the practice in recent years.

Have other recent presidents relied on recess appointments?

According to the Congressional Research Service, Bill Clinton made 139 recess appointments, while George W Bush made 171 recess appointments. But Barack Obama only made 32 recess appointments, as the supreme court issued a critical ruling on the practice during his presidency.

In its 2014 decision of NLRB v Noel Canning, the court ruled that several of Obama’s recess appointments had violated the constitution because the Senate was not out of session long enough to merit those appointments. The court noted that a Senate recess of at least 10 days is required to allow for recess appointments.

Would Senate Republicans allow Trump to use recess appointments for his cabinet nominees?

That remains unclear, although the newly elected Senate majority leader, Republican John Thune of South Dakota, has suggested he is open to the idea.

“We must act quickly and decisively to get the president’s nominees in place as soon as possible, [and] all options are on the table to make that happen, including recess appointments,” Thune said. “We cannot let Schumer and Senate [Democrats] block the will of the American people.”

That being said, Thune acknowledged that it might be difficult to recess the chamber if a substantial number of Republican senators oppose a particular nomination.

“You have to have all Republicans vote to recess as well,” Thune told Fox News last week. “So the same Republicans … that might have a problem voting for somebody under regular order probably also have a problem voting to put the Senate into recess.”

Another complication is the role of the House in the recess process, as the constitution stipulates that neither the House nor the Senate can adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other chamber. But the House speaker, the Republican Mike Johnson, has suggested he is open to a recess.

“I believe in the principle of the president being able to choose his team,” Johnson told Fox News on Sunday. “If this thing bogs down, it would be a great detriment to the country, to the American people.”

Senate Democrats could attempt to at least slow the recess appointment process by holding a vote-a-rama, a tedious and lengthy procedure that could force the chamber to stay in session, but such tactics are unlikely to change the final outcome when Republicans hold a 53-47 majority.

If Republicans did clear the way for recess appointments, they could significantly damage one of the Senate’s most important functions at a time when their party has just won a governing trifecta in Washington. Such a decision would only further underscore the iron grip Trump has over the Republican party.

How does Senate confirmation process work? What to know as Trump makes Cabinet picks

Ahead of his inauguration in January, President-elect Donald Trump has begun assembling his Cabinet and other key members of his administration.

So far, Trump has announced around a half dozen Cabinet picks, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state, Fox News host Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

He’s also tapped South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for homeland security secretary, former Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe for CIA director and former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, among others.

But, before they can take their posts, many of these individuals must first receive the Senate’s seal of approval.

HOW SENATE CONFIRMATION WORKS

The U.S. Constitution stipulates that the Senate must approve of a number of presidential appointments, including ambassadors and Supreme Court justices.

“All of the Cabinet officers — other than the vice president — are considered principal officers under the Constitution, which means that they require the consent of the Senate,” Josh Chafetz, a professor of law and politics at the Georgetown University Law Center, told McClatchy News.

The Senate, according to longstanding practice, begins a nominee’s confirmation process by holding a hearing.

The hearing is held “in the committee that has jurisdiction over the department to which the nominee has been nominated,” Chafetz said.

So, for example, in 2021, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a confirmation hearing for Antony Blinken, President Joe Biden’s pick for secretary of state. And, the same year, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing for Janet Yellen, Biden’s nominee for secretary of the treasury.

In these hearings, which can last for hours, committee members are given the opportunity to question a nominee — often about their background and policy positions.

Blinken, for example, was asked for his opinion on the Trump administration’s decision to kill Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in 2020.

The nominees are also asked to fill out financial disclosure forms and to subject themselves to background investigations, according to the Center for Presidential Transition.

This process culminates in a vote by the committee, followed by a Senate-wide vote, Chafetz said.

A simple majority of senators present at the time of the vote is necessary to approve the nominee, according to the center.

Throughout history, just a small number of cabinet picks have been voted down by the Senate, Chafetz said.

“However, the number is so small only because most nominees who would fail on the floor withdraw from consideration before that happens,” he noted.

Several of Trump’s cabinet picks during his first term withdrew themselves from consideration, including Patrick Shanahan, a nominee for secretary of defense, and Andrew Puzder, a nominee for labor secretary.

Ahead of his second term, though, Trump has signaled his desire to circumvent the Senate confirmation process using recess appointments — which temporarily allows the president to fill vacancies.

“We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump test limits of Republican-led Congress with controversial Cabinet picks

After a resounding election victory, delivering what President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans said is a mandate to govern, an uneasy political question is emerging: Will there be any room for dissent in the U.S. Congress?

Trump is laying down a gauntlet even before taking office challenging the Senate, in particular, to dare defy him over the nominations of Matt Gaetz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other controversial choices for his Cabinet and administration positions.

The promise of unified government, with the Republican Party’s sweep of the White House and GOP majorities in the House and Senate, is making way for a more complicated political reality as congressional leaders confront anew what it means to line up with Trump’s agenda.

“This is going to be a red alert moment for American democracy,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said on CNN after Trump tapped Gaetz for attorney general.

Trump is returning to the White House at the height of his political power, having won both the Electoral College and the popular vote for his party for the first time in decades. The trifecta in Washington offers a tantalizing political opportunity for Republicans, opening up a universe of political and policy priorities — from tax cuts to mass deportations to the gutting of the regulatory and federal bureaucracy, along with Trump’s vows to seek vengeance and prosecution of his perceived enemies and pardon those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But for Congress, it’s also a potentially existential moment, one that is testing whether its status as a co-equal branch of U.S. government can withstand a second Trump administration.

“One of the possible futures for Congress is that it becomes a rubber stamp,” said Phillip Wallach, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who writes extensively about Congress.

Wallach said the threat to Congress has been on his mind, but he also believes it would be more pronounced if Republicans had won larger majorities. The House, in fact, may end up with slimmer numbers, and the Senate’s 53-seat advantage, while more than the simple majority needed to confirm nominees, can hardly be seen as mandates.

Besides, “they’re not wimps,” he said of elected lawmakers. “There’s no reason for them to just turn themselves into a doormat.”

It’s a changed Washington from Trump’s first term. Congress has been purged of his strongest critics. At the same time, the Supreme Court has shifted dramatically rightward, with three Trump-appointed justices, and a majority decision over the summer that granted the president broad immunity from prosecution.

Trump’s Cabinet picks are posing the biggest early test for Congress.

While Trump’s choice of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for secretary of state is expected to have somewhat broad support, including from Democrats, others like Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Pete Hegseth as defense secretary are raising more scrutiny.

The choice of Gaetz, a fierce Trump loyalist who talks about the wholesale upheaval of the Justice Department, is all the more troubling for senators because of a House ethics probe over alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. He denies the allegations but submitted his resignation from Congress as soon as he was nominated, effectively shutting down the probe.

Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would consider the Gaetz nomination, called on the House to “preserve and share their report” with the panel.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican member of the Judiciary committee, said he expects “any and all” information on the nominees will be made available.

Other Republicans in the House and Senate stood with Gaetz, supporting his effort to take on the Justice Department over what they see as perceived bias, particularly over its prosecutions of Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election ahead of the Capitol attack and for hoarding classified documents.

“I know the Democrats are clutching their pearls right now, and they’re very, very upset about everything,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., on Fox News.

“But if you think about how they have weaponized the DOJ, this is a situation that needs serious reform,” he said. “It’s President Trump’s prerogative to choose who he wants to nominate.”

Incoming Senate GOP Leader John Thune said confirming Trump’s nominations will be a priority next year and senators “should expect an aggressive schedule until his nominees are confirmed.”

Complicating the matter for senators is the Trump campaign’s decision to not engage, so far, in the traditional transition process, having declined to sign agreements with the federal government that would launch FBI background checks of nominees, among other standard steps before confirmation hearings.

Senators may be forced to consider nominees that have not been vetted in the traditional ways.

Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., a former member of the House Intelligence Committee, worried Americans may be left in the dark about their top officials. “People have a right to know who’s leading critical aspects of their government,” he said.

Intensifying his demands on the Senate, Trump suggested it should consider so-called recess appointments of his nominees — a highly unorthodox request that essentially asks the Senate to drop its constitutional advise-and-consent role and allow his nominees to be installed without a vote.

Wallach said if senators chose that route it would be “an act of extreme institutional self-sabotage.”

Congress has been here before, in the first Trump administration, when the White House tested the limits of its executive power.

One of the most significant confrontations of that earlier Trump era was over his promised border wall, when the White House tried to poach congressionally approved funds for military base construction projects and repurpose them for the wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

Congress largely won that round, after long fights, but it’s about to be tested in new ways.

Trump is planning a series of executive orders on Day One of the new administration to launch his mass deportations and other priorities.

Trump allies, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and influential commentator Charlie Kirk, have warned of consequences in the form of primary challenges to senators who fail to confirm nominees.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the on-again-off-again Trump ally, said he typically confirms a president’s nominees, regardless of party, and intends to be a yes vote again.

“I consider this matter closed,” he said.

Why Does Mitch McConnell hate Trump?

The Morning: Mitch McConnell hates Donald Trump

A new biography of Mitch McConnell is out later this month — and we got the first look at the excerpts from it this morning.

Here’s a taste:

Mitch McConnell said after the 2020 election that then-President Donald Trump was “stupid as well as being ill-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist,” according to excerpts from a new biography of the Senate Republican leader that will be released this month….

….Publicly, McConnell had congratulated Biden after the Electoral College certified the presidential vote and the senator warned his fellow Republicans not to challenge the results. But he did not say much else. Privately, he said in his oral history that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump left office, and that Trump’s behavior “only underscores the good judgment of the American people. They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him.”

While we’ve never heard McConnell speak in such blunt terms about Trump, we’ve known for a long time of the animosity between the two men. Trump has repeatedly attacked McConnell as an “old crow” (so, so weird) and falsely suggested that McConnell’s wife, former Trump Cabinet Secretary Elaine Chao, has ties to the Chinese.

What’s truly depressing to me in reading the excerpts from the McConnell book is that it reinforces that the top Republican in the Senate knew how dangerous Trump was — to the party and the country — and chose to do nothing about it.

McConnell signaled his openness to voting to convict Trump after the January 6 insurrection but then backed off — citing a technicality (Trump was no longer president) to keep from engaging with the former president’s actual behavior after the 2020 election. Had McConnell said he was going to to vote to convict, I think he would have brought a number of Senate GOPers with him.

In retrospect, that was the last, best chance Republicans had to move on from Trump. Had the Senate convicted him and barred him for seeking office again, the GOP would not be where it is today.

But, McConnell took the politically expedient way out. And continues to do so — saying that he plans to vote for Trump in November despite his obvious issues with the former president.

When establishment Republicans look at how Trump has fundamentally transformed their party — win or lose this November — they should put a significant chunk of that blame at the feet of McConnell.

He knew — and knows — better. But he’s not willing to do anything about it.

McConnell privately slammed Trump as ‘stupid’ and ‘despicable’ after 2020 election

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) privately slammed former President Trump as “stupid,” “ill-tempered” and “a despicable human being” after the 2020 election, according to a biography of the senator set to be released later this month.

McConnell, who publicly feuded with Trump for much of the past four years, also criticized the former president as a “narcissist” and admitted after the 2020 election that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until he left office.

The long-serving GOP leader made his comments as part of a series of personal oral histories that were provided to Michael Tackett, The Associated Press’s deputy Washington bureau chief.

Tackett included the details in his biography of McConnell, “The Price of Power: How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America, and Lost His Party,” which will be released later this month. The AP reported on excerpts of the book Thursday.

McConnell made his scathing comments about the former president in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when Trump was trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

He and Trump split publicly after McConnell recognized then-candidate Joe Biden as the winner of the election following the vote of the Electoral College in mid-December 2020.

McConnell strongly denounced Trump’s actions in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 riots, declaring on the Senate floor at the end of the former president’s second impeachment trial that he was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”

And he called Trump’s actions preceding the riot “a disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

Republican senators have told The Hill that members of their conference also viewed Trump as largely responsible for the loss of their Senate majority because he harshly criticized the fairness of the election process in Georgia — depressing GOP voter turnout — ahead of a crucial runoff election in which Democrats defeated Sens. David Perdue (R) and Kelly Loeffler (R).

McConnell did not speak to Trump for years after that falling out and they didn’t meet again in person until this June, when the GOP presidential nominee met with Republican senators at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill.

McConnell shook Trump’s hand at that event. The Senate minority leader also endorsed Trump for president earlier this year, explaining that he always said he would support the Republican nominee for president in 2024, even if it was Trump.

Trump made it abundantly clear after the 2020 election that he did not like McConnell and accused him at times of foiling his agenda in Congress, even though McConnell helped pass the former president’s signature tax reform package and confirm three of his conservative nominees to the Supreme Court.

In a statement released by his PAC in February 2021, Trump declared: “The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm.”

He fumed that “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling hack, and if Republicans are going to stay with him, they will not win again.”

McConnell offered a gesture toward making amends in March when he endorsed Trump for president.

“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for president of the United States,” he said in a statement at the time. “It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

Mitch McConnell loathes Trump more than most, but he’s been his top enabler

The convergence on 28 February of Mitch McConnell’s retirement announcement as the Republican Senate leader with the supreme court’s order to accept Donald Trump’s appeal to consider his immunity from prosecution was a bitter irony for McConnell and triumph for Trump. It is a telltale subplot in Trump’s theater of humiliation in which the supreme court is playing a starring role as his best supporting actor.

On 4 March came another supreme court-delivered victory for Trump. “A big win for America,” tweeted Trump. In a spray of divided opinion the court’s overturning of the state of Colorado’s ruling that Trump was disqualified from the ballot for being an insurrectionist under the 14th amendment section 3 enhanced his impunity and encouraged his grasp for absolute power.

McConnell, the partisan architect of the partisan supreme court majority, could, if he wished to boast, rightly claim credit for those justices staging the timely rescue of his nemesis. Putting in place justice after justice, breaking precedent after precedent, he is the father of this court’s majority. He considers it his greatest accomplishment.

McConnell’s cold arrangement with Trump was strictly business: McConnell protected Trump in exchange for Trump packing the court. While few truly deeply loathe Trump more than McConnell, nobody has been a more consequential enabler or fatally miscalculated the spread of his stain. But their unholy alliance cannot be mistaken for a Faustian bargain; neither was selling his soul.

McConnell made plain the purely transactional basis of the relationship when he endorsed Trump after Super Tuesday, citing how “we worked together to accomplish great things for the American people … a generational change of our federal judiciary – most importantly, the supreme court”.

***

In the Trump disqualification case, a conservative majority of five on the supreme court effectively engaged in a nullification of the 14th amendment. The court ignored or warped the history of the 14th amendment, which was conceived and enacted to prevent insurrectionists from holding federal offices. To defend Trump, the conservative majority threw overboard originalism and textualism, the alpha and omega of its contrived legal ideology, as an obstacle to the desired result. Through a bizarre concatenation of historical falsehoods and legal contrivances, they refused to define whether Trump is an insurrectionist, or mention the word, which is the essence of the relevant section 3.

Instead they went to an extreme edge to justify maintaining Trump’s place on the ballot, inventing a remedy that will never be applied, that only congressional legislation can determine disqualification of a person for federal office. In short, they granted Trump immunity from disqualification for attempting to overthrow the government of the United States.

Unanimity was a thin illusion of consensus. Justice Amy Coney Barrett uncomfortably filed her own opinion to dissent from the other conservatives’ overreaching. The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in their separate concurrence, systematically knocked down every specious claim in the majority opinion – the false precedents cited, the false notion that disqualification is not self-executing, the bowdlerized quotes to achieve a false conclusion – yet signed on to avoid “a chaotic state-by-state patchwork, at odds with our Nation’s federalism principles”, though that supposition is both narrow and vague.

Then they flayed the majority for straying from the “fundamental principle of judicial restraint [that] is practically as old as our Republic”.

They stated that by resolving “many unsettled questions about Section 3 the majority goes beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oathbreaking insurrectionist from becoming President”. But their opinion did not stop there. They charged that “the majority attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office”. The category of “all alleged insurrectionists” encompasses the Republican members of the Congress who were involved in Trump’s coup attempt. The reference to “future challenges” applies first and foremost to Donald Trump. The liberal concurrence is a fierce dissent from the majority’s manufacture of an insurrectionist protection act. The decision has exposed a splintered court and left to the immunity case the outstanding issue of “an oathbreaking insurrectionist … becoming President”.

In the immunity case the court has declined to let it go forward after a three federal judge panel ruled on all the questions at its heart and special counsel Jack Smith urged deliberate speed. Instead, the court scheduled to hold a hearing during the week of 22 April, in the full knowledge that every delay makes Trump’s escape from justice more possible and that postponement serves Trump’s strategy.

The January 6 case will not reach trial, if there is one, until months after the court’s eventual ruling on whether a president is an absolute dictator. Given the calendar, it appears highly unlikely the trial will be concluded by election day. The court’s charade of taking on the decision as a matter of prudence is a transparent stalling tactic to deny the voters the test of the evidence in a court of law so they could make a fully informed decision of their own. Slow-walking the January 6 prosecution of Trump, the court has granted him de facto immunity for the course of the campaign. Tick, tock.

With its aid and comfort to Trump in both the disqualification and immunity cases, the Roberts court (or, if one prefers, the Thomas court) has shown itself to be the most politically driven since the Taney court that decided the Dred Scott case (or, if one prefers, the Rehnquist/Scalia court that brutally decided Bush v Gore).

On the disqualification case, Trump skates scot-free. On the immunity case, the court kicks the can as far into the future as it benefits him. For these gifts from this court, Trump owes a debt of ultimate gratitude to Mitch McConnell.

---

McConnell had many reasons for declaring he has reached the twilight of his career, even though the Republicans may gain control of the Senate after the election and he would be leader again. His health, after all, is fragile. He froze speechless twice in press conferences. He has suffered a terrible personal tragedy, the accidental drowning of his wife’s sister. But approaching the promised land once more, which might be his culmination, he restrained himself from entering. He announced he would relinquish the enormous power he has accumulated over a lifetime because he could see it ebbing away to his worst enemy. That very worst enemy is not Joe Biden, who he likes and would destroy out of cold partisanship, but Trump, who he hates with a white-hot passion, but whom he has safeguarded and would help become “dictator for a day”.

“Believe me, I know the politics within my party at this particular time,” said McConnell in his Senate speech announcing his retirement. “I have many faults. Misunderstanding politics is not one of them.” Believe him, he can count.

On 13 February, two weeks earlier, he helped engineer Senate passage of a compromise bill wrapping a package of policies on the border and immigration with funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. He was particularly intent on providing aid to beleaguered Ukraine, where he has traveled to express his support directly to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The bill passed with 71 votes, clearing the hurdle of an obstructionist filibuster, McConnell’s blunt instrument of choice. Yet he could muster only 22 Republican votes. It was his pyrrhic victory. He lost a majority of his conference, nearly all those elected since 2018 and under 55 years old. His iron grip faltered from Trump’s pressure.

McConnell’s bleak persona had no popular appeal. His influence has always been achieved through cash. As party boss, like party bosses of the past, he rewarded regularity from his members. He was shocked to discover the cult of personality that altered the base of the party. “Things are changing just not fast enough,” tweeted Senator Eric Schmitt, a Trump zealot explaining his and others’ vote against the omnibus bill as a vote of no confidence in McConnell’s leadership. He had always assumed that dark money talks and senators walk. But he now encountered a greater motivating fear.

McConnell’s enforcement of the party line made him appear like Senate leaders before him. His acolytes praise him as an “institutionalist”. He basks in presenting himself as a “constitutionalist”. But to build his power McConnell has subverted constitutional norms and standards, corroded and corrupted checks and balances, and drastically weakened the Senate through his explosive abuse of filibusters to transfer power to the federal courts, which he stuffed with Federalist Society cadres. He has been more than a great anti-institutionalist; he has been an anti-constitutionalist.

McConnell’s great crusade was to tear down the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (the so-called McCain-Feingold bill) and open the sluice gates for dark money. The year after its passage he filed his opposition in a case that made its way to the supreme court, McConnell v Federal Election Commission, which he lost in a 5-4 ruling upholding the bill. Still, he persisted.

In 2006, far-right Samuel Alito was nominated to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the court. She was a moderate Republican of the old school, who upheld abortion rights and campaign finance reform. When 25 Democrats attempted a symbolic filibuster against Alito, McConnell took the floor to denounce the effort as unconstitutional: “Mr President, we stand today on the brink of a new and reckless effort by a few to deny the rights of many to exercise our constitutional duty to advise and consent, to give this man the simple up-or-down vote he deserves. The Senate should repudiate this tactic.”

In 2010, with Alito on the court, it ruled 5-4 in Citizens United v FEC that restrictions on independent campaign funds – dark money – violated free speech. “So, all Citizens United did was to level the playing field for corporate speech,” said McConnell. It was his emancipation proclamation; he freed the dark money.

In 2014, McConnell filed an amicus brief in McCutcheon, et al v FEC, a case he inspired that was backed by the Republican National Committee, challenging aggregate limits on campaign contributions as “a severe infringement on the rights of speech.” The supreme court ruled for McCutcheon in a 5-4 decision.

With the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, McConnell laid down the Republican line. “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” he ordered. His tactic was the filibuster that he had decried. During the Obama presidency, McConnell held up 517 Senate debates through filibusters. The Senate Republicans successfully filibustered 79 Obama federal judicial nominees during his first five years, compared with 68 in the entirety of previous history. After the Republicans gained control of the Senate in 2015, they blocked 50 of 70 nominations to federal judgeships.

Through dark money and filibusters, servicing corporate interests, McConnell built a new political machine at the expense of paralyzing and diminishing the Senate. He capped his obstructions after the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. If Obama were to succeed in seating his appointment on the supreme court the majority would tilt 5-4 against the conservatives.

McConnell refused to allow even a single committee hearing for Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, a highly regarded judge of the most moderate temperament on the DC district court. McConnell asserted a novel doctrine that a nomination to the supreme court could not be considered in a president’s last year and that the vacancy must be filled by the next president. He dubbed his gambit “a constitutional right”. “One of my proudest moments,” he said after killing the Garland nomination, “was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and I said, ‘Mr President, you will not fill the supreme court vacancy.’” When Sean Hannity later asked McConnell why Obama left so many vacancies on the federal courts, McConnell replied: “I’ll tell you why. I was in charge of what we did the last two years of the Obama administration.”

In the 2016 campaign, McConnell backed Senator Marco Rubio, of Florida, an acolyte, in the primaries. After Trump bulldozed his way to the nomination, McConnell expected him to be a dead weight on Republican Senate candidates. He suggested that they could separate themselves by running negatives ads against him. “We’ll drop him like a hot rock,” he said.

McConnell remained complacent that he was the enduring Republican standard and Trump the blip. “My view is that Trump will not change the Republican party,” he said. “If he brings in new followers, that’s great, and well worth the effort, but he will not change the Republican party … I think he’d be fine.” He added as an additional note of reassurance that the constitution “constrains all of us, members of Congress and the president as well”.

Watching Trump’s win on election night, McConnell said: “The first thing that came to my mind was the supreme court.” He was soon in touch with Leonard Leo, chairman of the Federalist Society, who described McConnell as his “vigilant and irrepressible” partner in gaining control of the federal courts. Leo was an octopus of dark money operations, his tentacles reaching far and wide. After Citizens United, he sat atop hundreds of millions and then billions of dollars to promote his causes and McConnell’s candidates.

A week after the election, Leo carried a list of court nominees into a meeting with Trump at Trump Tower. Trump’s first supreme court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was on the list. His second and third nominees, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, were on Leo’s next list. Leo sent more lists to the White House, rubber-stamped by the White House counsel Don McGahn, a Federalist Society stalwart, and McConnell would process them through the Senate. Eighty-five per cent of Trump’s court appointees were Federalist Society members. He was entrenching conservative power in the courts for a generation to come. Trump remarked privately, “Mitch McConnell. Judges. Judges. Judges. The only thing he wants is judges.” McConnell told Trump: “MrPresident, when are you going to thank me for that?”

---

Six weeks before election day, on 18 September 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. As soon as McConnell heard the news he called Trump: “First, I’m going to put out a statement that says we’re going to fill the vacancy. Second, you’ve got to nominate Amy Coney Barrett.” McConnell’s doctrine that a president could not fill a supreme court vacancy in an election year suddenly evaporated. “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.” Barrett was sworn in on 26 October. McConnell’s relationship with Trump got him what he wanted. The conservative majority on the court was now six to three.

Then, on January 6, McConnell hid in a corner of the Capitol, fearing for his life and quaking with rage. He recovered his equanimity within hours when he thought the event would destroy Trump. “I feel exhilarated by the fact that this fellow finally, totally discredited himself,” McConnell told Jonathan Martin, then a reporter at the New York Times. “He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Couldn’t have happened at a better time.” Trump was a “despicable person” whose influence he would finally end by defeating his candidates in the 2022 midterms. “We crushed the sons of bitches,” he told Martin, “and that’s what we’re going to do in the primary in 22.”

McConnell had shielded Trump from removal in the Senate during his first impeachment for seeking to blackmail the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in exchange for fabricated political dirt on Joe Biden. In Trump’s second impeachment for the insurrection, McConnell protected him again. In his floor speech explaining why he voted against Trump’s removal, he made the case that Trump’s actions properly belonged to the criminal justice system: “President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office, as an ordinary citizen, unless the statute of limitations has run, still liable for everything he did while in office, didn’t get away with anything yet – yet. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”

After Trump left office, he blamed McConnell from not protecting him enough. “The old crow is a piece of shit,” he told Maggie Haberman of the New York Times. He was especially angry that McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who had been Trump’s secretary of transportation, quit in protest after January 6. In 2022, Trump tweeted a thinly disguised death threat against McConnell and a racist slur against Chao. “He has a DEATH WISH. Must immediately seek help and advise [sic] from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!”

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorialized: “Mr. Trump’s apologists claim he merely meant Mr McConnell has a political death wish, but that isn’t what he wrote. It’s all too easy to imagine some fanatic taking Mr Trump seriously and literally, and attempting to kill Mr McConnell. Many supporters took Mr Trump’s rhetoric about former Vice-President Mike Pence all too seriously on Jan 6.”

---

McConnell has a decades-long history in the Senate from intern to dinosaur, from minion to overlord, but his overweening pride in his shrewdness, his inner hackery, has prevented him from learning any larger lessons of history that explain his fall. He cannot dispense with his ingrained belief that he remains the true Republican and that there is an invisible Republican party that belongs to him, not Trump.

Like so many presumptive adults in the room, he has operated on the logic of Franz von Papen, the former German chancellor, who convinced President Paul von Hindenburg in January 1933 to appoint Hitler chancellor, with himself as vice-chancellor, on the assumption that he would control him. “We’ve hired him,” said Von Papen. After the Night of the Long Knives, the Junker aristocrat was shipped off to Vienna as ambassador. Not that Trump is Hitler, of course, just that the book of Hitler’s table conversation is the only book Trump is known to have kept on his nightstand.

Even as McConnell announced his retirement, his aides were negotiating his endorsement of Trump. McConnell could justify the hypocrisy of supporting a figure he considers an enemy of constitutional government as a last act of selfless sacrifice to help elect a Republican majority in the Senate. It would be his final performance as Trump’s enabler for which, like everyone else who enables Trump, he would inevitably receive ashes. In their mutual contempt, the psychopath has the advantage over the cynic.

Resources

Who was Deborah Jeane Palfrey and what Happened to her?

-en.wikipedia.org, “Deborah Jeane Palfrey.” By Wikipedia Editors;

-politic.com, “The tragedy of Deborah Jeane Palfrey.” By James Kirchick;

-6abc.com, “Suicide note: ”D.C. Madam’ said she didn’t want prison.” By 6abc;

-theguardian.com, “The madam, her girls and a city in fear.”;

-cato.org, “Deborah Jeane Palfrey, Hounded to Death.” By David Boaz;

-vice.com, “New Details on the Infamous DC Madam Scandal Emerge.” By Jason Leopold;

What Happened to Anthony Bourdain and how was he Associated with Adam Schiff?

-en.wikipedia.org, “Anthony Bourdain.” By Wikipedia Editors;

-totaldisclosure.com, “Anthony Bourdain.” By Total Disclosure Editors;

What is Project 2025?

-time.com, “What is Project 2025?” By Chantelle Lee;

project2025.org, “The Truth About Project 2025.”;

Why did Canada slow down their Immigration Policy?

cfr.org, “What Is Canada’s Immigration Policy?” By Diana Roy and Amelia Cheatham;

bbc.com, “How Canada soured on immigration.” By Nadine Yousif and Jessica Murphy;

bbc.com, “Trudeau announces sharp cuts to Canada’s immigration targets.” By Nadine Yousif;

bbc.com, “Justin Trudeau’s sinking popularity puts him on shaky ground.” By Nadine Yousif;

Why is England Arresting People for Posting on Facebook?

-bbc.com, “They were arrested for posting during the riots – will it change anything?” By Marianna Spring;

-bbc.com, “The real story of the news website accused of fuelling riots.” By Marianna Spring;

Why is Elon Musk Working so Closely with Trump?

-newsweek.com, “Why Is Elon Musk Supporting Donald Trump?” By Marie Boran;

-bbc.com, “Why is Elon Musk becoming Donald Trump’s efficiency tsar?” By Aleks Phillips;

-bbc.com, “What Elon Musk could gain from Trump’s presidency
.” By Lily Jamali;

How the Press is Ruining our Country?

-tennessean.com, “Hearing what we want to hear: America’s media landscape is ruining the country.” By Ralph Bristol;

-theguardian.com, “The mainstream press is failing America – and people are understandably upset.” By Rebecca Solnit;

-csmonitor.com, “Is America’s media divide destroying democracy?” By Peter Grier;

How can Trump get his Cabinet Picks Despite the Resistance of Congress?

-bbc.com, “Recess appointments eyed to speed up confirmation of Trump cabinet picks.” By Christal Hayes & Alys Davies;

-theguardian.com, “What are recess appointments and can Trump confirm nominees that way?” By Joan E. Greve;

-miamiherald.com, “How does Senate confirmation process work? What to know as Trump makes Cabinet picks.” By Brendan Rascius;

-pbs.org, “Trump test limits of Republican-led Congress with controversial Cabinet picks.” By Lisa Mascaro;

Why Does Mitch McConnell hate Trump?

-chriscillizza.substack.com, “The Morning: Mitch McConnell hates Donald Trump.” By Chris Cillizza;

-thehill.com, “McConnell privately slammed Trump as ‘stupid’ and ‘despicable’ after 2020 election.” By Alexander Bolton;

-theguardian.com, “Mitch McConnell loathes Trump more than most, but he’s been his top enabler.” By Sidney Blumenthal;

Randy’s Musings
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/04/02/randys-musings/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/04/13/randys-musings-2-0/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/10/22/randys-musing-3-0/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/10/05/randys-musing-4-0/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/11/12/randys-musings-5-0/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/11/23/randys-musings-6-0/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/12/17/randys-musings-7-0/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/12/30/randys-musings-8-0/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2024/04/16/randys-musings-9-0/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2024/11/22/randys-musings-10/