The idea behind a federal anti-fraud task force is not inherently absurd. Independent estimates show billions of dollars are lost every year to fraud and abuse, and if officials have a credible idea about how to combat the problem, more power to them.

Seven months after the launch of the White House’s anti-fraud task force, however, the list of problems is not short.

From the outset, there was ample reason for skepticism. The effort, Donald Trump said, would be led by JD Vance, who was an unfortunate choice. Not only was the vice president unqualified for such a task, but the administration also made little effort to hide its partisan political motivations, which meant it was eager to target blue states.

What’s more, this is a delicate issue for the president, given his unfortunate record on committing fraud, benefiting from fraud and issuing pardons to those who have been convicted of fraud.

Making matters worse is the task force’s actual performance. Vance insists he and his team have uncovered more than $260 billion in fraud, but those claims have largely unraveled under scrutiny.

With this in mind, the White House is apparently trying a new tack: crowdsourcing.

Trump announces "fraud whistleblower incentive program" — "Americans will now be able to go to fraud dot gov and report cases of corruption and theft of taxpayer dollars in their communities … if you turn somebody in and you find $1 billion, we're giving a commission of 1%. That's a lot of money"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-20T18:18:02.278Z

On Tuesday afternoon, Trump and Vance announced a $25 million whistleblower program, to be administered by the Department of Justice, which is designed to offer cash rewards to those who uncover and report cases of fraud.

I suppose it’s possible that this will be an amazing success, and Americans will succeed in identifying the kind of systemic problems that the Republican administration has struggled to identify. (Trump specifically said at the Oval Office announcement, “People will make millions of dollars by turning others in.”)

But it’s probably best to keep expectations low.

First, the mechanism is a mess. People are supposed to submit tips to fraud.gov, with the promise of up to $30,000 to those who uncover cases that lead to criminal convictions or “significant federal enforcement” actions. What’s to stop scores of people from submitting baseless allegations, each of which investigators would be expected to review? Nothing. (I’ll be especially interested in seeing how many Americans report instances of alleged fraud involving Trump and his team.)

Second, the first recipient of a taxpayer-funded check is Nick Shirley, a right-wing YouTube influencer, who’s undeserving of such a reward, and whose payout reinforces concerns that this endeavor is little more than a political gambit.

Third, the White House staff doesn’t appear to have done its homework. The president said, under his plan, tipsters will be eligible for 1% of the cost of the disclosed fraud, prompting a reporter to remind him that under the False Claims Act, which has been on the books for more than 150 years, Americans are eligible to collect between 10% and 25%.

Fourth, given the way this administration has mistreated whistleblowers, it’s rather ironic to see the White House launch a whistleblower program like this one.

Finally, there’s Trump’s vision of his hands-on role in the program.

Trump lies his ass off about the economy: "We have more growth than this country has ever had. And we have more growth than any country in the world is having right now."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-20T18:40:15.035Z

“When you do these things, sometimes there’s a dispute about who turned them in, who didn’t turn them in and who is supposed to get what and when,” the president said. “So I am going to do something which I think people will like: I will be the arbitrator of all of these decisions. In other words, I’ll determine whether or not the person is deserving.”

In other words, the Justice Department is administering the program, but Trump expects to personally intervene, taking time from the day job he’s supposed to be doing, to adjudicate certain cases and approve payouts.

What could possibly go wrong?

The post White House’s new fraud whistleblower program suffers from some glaring flaws appeared first on MS NOW.

Vice President JD Vance said he isn't sure if he'd receive President Donald Trump's endorsement "right out the gate" if he were to run for president in 2028.

Vance expressed that uncertainty during a Monday interview with journalist Mark Halperin on his platform 2Way. The interview aired just weeks before the midterm elections, as Republicans and the White House are focused on maintaining control of Congress.

Vance emphasized that his top priority was the midterms and said he wasn't certain that a 2028 presidential run was in his future.

However, he said, "I think if I run, the president will endorse me."

VANCE CONFRONTED ABOUT 2028 AMBITIONS AFTER TRUMP TEASES 'DREAM TEAM' RUBIO TICKET

"Right away?" Halperin asked.

"I would think so, but I don’t know, man," Vance said. "I haven’t talked to him about it."

Halperin suggested it might be "weird" if Vance were to share with Trump his 2028 ambitions and for Trump to sit on an endorsement, a characterization that Vance pushed back on.

"No, I don’t think it’d be weird," Vance said. "Again, I think I would get his endorsement, but I also think there’s something to be said for people actually running their own race, and because the president’s endorsement is so dispositive, you could absolutely see a scenario where the president says, ‘You know what? We need to let, like, this race play out and not, like, preemptively prejudge the results.'"

Earlier in the conversation, Halperin brought up previous remarks by Vance in which he said that "whoever the president endorses for the Republican nomination will ultimately win the Republican primary."

CRUZ-VANCE RIVALRY HEATS UP AS TEXAS SENATOR SUGGESTS VP IS 'FEELING INSECURE'

Vance said this is typically true of both the Democratic and Republican parties, but that Trump's endorsement is much more consequential because he first won the trust of everyday voters while Republican Party elites rejected him. Vance said Trump's endorsement signals to voters that a candidate is not beholden to the party's elite.

"That’s the person they say, ‘Okay, if Trump is with a guy, that must mean that the elites are against that guy," Vance said. "I think that Trump’s endorsement just carries more weight than any political endorsement in history because of that. Obviously, the voters are gonna decide. Donald Trump is only one vote of many, but I think his endorsement is still the most powerful."

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Vance's uncertainty over winning Trump's blessing comes after Trump previously teased pitting Vance against Secretary of State Marco Rubio for his endorsement in the 2028 presidential race. Trump called Vance and Rubio the "dream team," at a May Rose Garden Club event but has refused to say who would be at the top of the ticket.

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Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.

Sen. Roger Marshall’s re-election campaign is struggling for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest problems for the Kansas Republican is the recent reporting on how he treated patients who couldn’t afford their bills during his time in private practice.

That Donald Trump is trying to defend his loyal congressional ally is not surprising. What’s notable, however, is how the president is rallying to the senator’s defense.

At a campaign rally in Kansas, Trump acknowledged the controversy but said news organizations had been unfair to the senator, since Marshall was “mandated by law” to “go after those people.” That wasn’t even close to being true — there was no legal requirement for Marshall to garnish paychecks, seek arrest warrants or charge punitive interest rates — although the president didn’t stop there.

Trump says the press smeared Roger Marshall as "a shylock type guy"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-20T00:36:34.374Z

“They made it like, oh, he was some kind of a Shylock-type guy,” the president said.

As NBC News reported, the word is widely recognized as “an antisemitic slur.”

In fairness, one might note that, in 2014, then-Vice Presiden Joe Biden used the same word, though the Delaware Democrat apologized shortly after.

Trump, in contrast, has publicly used the word more than once, and he has never apologized.

Making matters worse is the broader pattern, which makes it impossible to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. Last year, for example, the Republican president declared that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish lawmaker in the history of the U.S. Congress, is “not Jewish anymore” because the New York Democrat opposed the White House’s foreign policy agenda.

The inherent antisemitism was unavoidable. It’s not up to Trump to declare himself the arbiter of who the “real” Jews are based on his personal whims or any officials’ willingness to go along with his policies.

A year earlier, as the 2024 race neared its end, Trump publicly suggested that he intended to blame Jews, at least in part, if he lost. A month earlier, after seeing Gov. Josh Shapiro’s remarks at the Democratic National Convention, the former president decided to take a rhetorical shot at his critic. The Pennsylvania Democrat, Trump wrote online, is a “highly overrated Jewish Governor.” In context, there was no reason for the Republican to reference Shapiro’s faith. Trump did it anyway.

Months earlier, he similarly invoked the familiar “dual loyalty” trope by claiming that Jewish voters who support Democrats hate Israel.

All of this was offensive but familiar. During his 2016 campaign, the future president spoke to the Republican Jewish Coalition and said, “You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money. You want to control your politicians.” He added, “I’m a negotiator — like you folks.”

Several months later, in the run-up to Election Day 2016, the Republican promoted antisemitic imagery on social media. In the closing days of the campaign, Trump again faced accusations of antisemitism, claiming Hillary Clinton met “in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers.”

During his first term, Trump continued to use highly provocative rhetoric about Jews and what he expected of their “loyalties.” In 2019, he spoke at the Israeli American Council’s national summit, where he suggested Jewish people are primarily focused on wealth, which is why he expected them to support his re-election campaign.

After his 2020 defeat, Trump kept this going, whining that Jewish voters “don’t love Israel enough,” dining with prominent antisemites at Mar-a-Lago, and arguing that Jews need to “get their act together” and “appreciate” Israel “before it is too late.”

In late 2022, he went so far as to declare that Jewish leaders “should be ashamed of themselves” over their “lack of loyalty.”

Trump occasionally expresses bewilderment over his lack of support among Jewish voters. Why he finds this confusing is a mystery.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Trump’s latest example of antisemitic rhetoric was hardly his first appeared first on MS NOW.

MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow described what she called the “presidential snowflake factor” that’s weighing down Republicans ahead of the midterms, as President Donald Trump continues to campaign for GOP candidates in red states while his party fights to hold onto Congress.

Maddow said Trump has spent his second term “pursuing things that make him feel good about himself” instead of focusing on policies that could give Republicans issues to tout to voters.

“You get all the vanity projects and him naming everything, and all the gold gewgaws everywhere that make him feel wealthy, all the pointless and feckless revenge investigations and attempted prosecutions of his perceived enemies,” she said. “It’s all stuff that’s designed to make him feel powerful and to feel good about himself.”

The “Rachel Maddow Show” host said Trump’s approval rating is “deep, deep, deep down in the political toilet” and argued that his preoccupation with praise has left little room for a strategy focused on actually helping Republicans in November.

“I think it’s obvious that he’s not going to pursue a midterm strategy that is based on propping up vulnerable Republican candidates other than himself,” she said.

Maddow said Trump had become such a “wuss” and a “snowflake” that he could only “bear hearing happy stories about himself.” She added, “He can only go to places where he gets adulation, and he only can stand ever hearing ‘Yes.’”

“He’s only going to go to places that still like him, and there are vanishingly few of those left,” she said.

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You can watch Maddow’s full comments in the clip above.

The post Rachel Maddow: Trump’s ‘presidential snowflake factor’ could leave GOP in the cold appeared first on MS NOW.

Embattled New Jersey Rep. Thomas Kean Jr.’s (R) hopes of hanging on to his battleground seat may be dimming after national Republicans effectively abandoned the race last week.  The fierce contest between Kean and Democrat Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, has tipped in her favor in recent weeks. The Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF),…

Embattled New Jersey Rep. Thomas Kean Jr.’s (R) hopes of hanging on to his battleground seat may be dimming after national Republicans effectively abandoned the race last week.  The fierce contest between Kean and Democrat Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, has tipped in her favor in recent weeks. The Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF),…

MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough blasted President Donald Trump for making false and misleading claims about Kansas Democratic Senate nominee Adam Hamilton at a rally for Republican Sen. Roger Marshall on Monday, asking how “stupid” the president thinks his supporters are.

Trump attacked Hamilton, the senior pastor of the Church of the Resurrection, the nation’s largest United Methodist congregation. He said Hamilton supports “flooding Kansas with unvetted refugees,” said the pastor “openly mocks Jesus” and accused him of using church money to fund “anti-religious transgender activities.”

“Everything you said there was a lie,” Scarborough said Tuesday on “Morning Joe,” after playing a clip of Trump’s remarks. A fact check by The Kansas City Star found that Hamilton does not support open borders and has said “dangerous criminals don’t belong here.” Hamilton also told ABC News earlier this month that he believes there are two genders while criticizing Trump for turning transgender people into a political target: “The president has taken a group of people that represent a very tiny minority of people who are bullied and picked on and harassed, and he’s tried to make them a campaign issue.”

Scarborough called it “deeply offensive” for Trump to attack “the pastor of the largest Methodist church in America, who preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

“If you listen to his sermons, that’s what he does, which is the antithesis of what Donald Trump does every day when he lies about people, when he’s angry, when he attacks other people — not for political differences, but just attacks them personally and spreads lies,” he added.

Trump also defended Marshall over a controversy involving his former OB-GYN practice. A review of Kansas court records by The New York Times found that the practice sued more than 700 former patients over unpaid bills, some as small as $101, and routinely were charged 18% annual interest. In 81 cases, patients were arrested after missing court dates.

The president said Marshall “was given a bum rap because he was mandated by law to request, strongly, money owed from patients.” But no law required doctors to sue patients over unpaid bills.

“Marshall wasn’t mandated to go after single mothers and have them thrown in jail,” Scarborough said, adding, “It’s just like, how stupid do you think your supporters are?”

Watch Scarborough’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.

The post ‘Everything you said there was a lie’: Joe Scarborough rips Trump’s Kansas rally appeared first on MS NOW.

Donald Trump’s first bailout for farmers came in 2018, at which point the president approved payments totaling $12 billion. A year later, the Republican administration kept going, announcing a bailout for farmers worth $16 billion.

Late last year, the president launched another $12 billion bailout for farmers, many of whom were harmed by the White House’s misguided and ill-fated trade tariffs policy, though the money proved insufficient. As my MS NOW colleague Hayes Brown summarized, the policy was little more than “duct tape on a broken pipe,” which did “little to fix the underlying problem.”

In June, Trump made it clear that he was eyeing a possible fourth bailout for the industry. And this week he followed through, announcing an $8 billion bailout during a campaign rally in Kansas, specifically aimed at helping farmers address higher diesel costs. The New York Times reported:

Under the plan, known as the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, the Agriculture Department will use a formula based on how many acres and which crops farmers planted to reimburse them for a “portion” of their losses. The money will come from the Commodity Credit Corporation, a financing institution that the Agriculture Department uses to fund crop insurance and natural disaster payment programs.

Payment rates will be announced next month, and farmers will receive money at a later date.

There’s ample reason to believe the $8 billion will be insufficient. But just as notably, at no point during Trump’s event did he mention that farmers were struggling with higher diesel costs because of the war with Iran that the president launched eight months ago.

Indeed, the one thing that all four of the bailouts have in common is that they’re effectively admissions of guilt: Trump’s agenda continues to hurt his own country’s agriculture industry, which in turn has necessitated a series of payouts.

As for the timing of the president’s latest announcement, it comes just two weeks before Election Day, with early voting underway in many states. It’s a safe bet that the bailout was intended to address intensifying discontent among voters in farming communities, who have long backed Republicans but don’t appear to have much to show for it. As MS NOW reported this week:

After two decades of defeats in rural America, Democrats are suddenly putting up a fight in farm country. The party is running competitive Senate races in Iowa, Kansas and other farm states, as well as House races in heavily rural districts that could help it regain control of Congress in January.

Credit (or blame, depending on your party) for this reversal of fortune lies with President Donald Trump’s tariffs and his war with Iran, which have battered farmers and pushed the rural economy into crisis. The Department of Agriculture’s analysts expect farmers’ net incomes to decline by 5.5% this year, as costs rise and receipts fall. The National Agricultural Law Center’s tally of farm bankruptcies jumped 45% last year, and is on pace to rise another 11% in 2026.

Will Trump’s latest bailout affect voters’ attitudes, enough to stem the tide? We’ll find out in two weeks.

The post White House approves yet another bailout for farmers hurt by Trump’s agenda appeared first on MS NOW.

With less than two weeks before the midterm elections, some high-profile names are adding their voices to a flurry of fundraising pitches warning of the dangers of Republicans maintaining control of the House. A slew of famous faces — including Barbra Streisand, “West Wing” star Bradley Whitford, documentarian Ken Burns, and scientist and TV personality…

With less than two weeks before the midterm elections, some high-profile names are adding their voices to a flurry of fundraising pitches warning of the dangers of Republicans maintaining control of the House. A slew of famous faces — including Barbra Streisand, “West Wing” star Bradley Whitford, documentarian Ken Burns, and scientist and TV personality…

In hindsight, it seems like Donald Trump might not have fully thought through the consequences of his bizarre $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC, which continues to move forward in ways the presidential plaintiff doesn’t seem to like.

Attorneys for the British broadcaster, for example, recently subpoenaed former special counsel Jack Smith to testify.

“It is difficult to imagine a more authoritative source on these issues than Mr. Smith, who spent years gathering evidence on those topics with the force of the Justice Department and the power of the grand jury behind him,” the BBC said in a court filing.

The president and his lawyers apparently don’t see it that way. The New Republic reported:

President Trump doesn’t want former special counsel Jack Smith to testify in a deposition as part of Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Company.

The BBC has subpoenaed Smith to defend itself from Trump’s accusations that the network defamed him with deceptive editing in a 2024 documentary about the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. In a court filing Friday, Trump’s lawyers tried to fight the subpoena by claiming that “Smith lacks any personal knowledge regarding the issues in this matter.”

In response, the BBC’s attorneys wrote, “No one forced Plaintiff to file this lawsuit and to dispute that his speech on January 6 incited the violence that followed at the Capitol. But as long as he chooses to maintain the case, he cannot commit the fundamental injustice of preventing the BBC from obtaining the evidence it needs to robustly defend itself on every element of his claim, including Plaintiff’s burden to prove falsity.”

To recap briefly, Trump sued the British broadcaster for $10 billion late last year over a news program that focused on the Jan. 6 attack. Defending the litigation, Trump told reporters that the network “literally put words in my mouth,” adding, “I guess they used AI. … They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with Jan. 6 that I didn’t say.”

That wasn’t quite right. For one thing, the BBC didn’t use artificial intelligence. For another, the network did air a program that edited Trump’s Jan. 6 speech, connecting two clips delivered roughly 50 minutes apart; but the news outlet didn’t manufacture words or phrases out of whole cloth.

The editing nevertheless sparked a controversy that led to an internal investigation, and the BBC ultimately fired some senior officials and issued a written apology.

Trump, however, apparently didn’t want to settle for an apology. He wants $10 billion.

The case, however, has proven rather inconvenient for the Republican who filed it. BBC lawyers want to depose the president as part of the proceedings, but Trump has already backed out of a scheduled deposition and appears reluctant to answer questions about his own case.

As The New Republic report added, “His attorneys are also fighting attempts to … subpoena his children to testify and to dive into his finances.”

Now those same lawyers want to prevent the former special counsel, who has plenty to say about Trump’s Jan. 6 efforts, from answering related questions, further delaying the case that the president ostensibly wants to proceed.

The judge has scheduled a hearing for later this week to consider questions about the Smith deposition and discovery related to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago revenue, which would help shed light on whether the president has suffered damages as the result of the alleged defamation. Watch this space.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Why the BBC wants to talk to Jack Smith, and why Team Trump wants to block his testimony appeared first on MS NOW.

Per lungo tempo Archie è stato segregato in casa, ma poi, grazie a una provvidenziale segnalazione, è riuscito a uscire da quelle mura e ora, grazie all’intervento che ha da poco subito, potrà forse anche tornare in salute. La storia di Archie, un cane di taglia media, comincia con una segnalazione che arriva lo scorso 1° settembre a un’attivista messicana per la protezione degli animali, Trinidad Arreola, che viene informata di un caso di maltrattamento nel quartiere “La Ballena” di San José del Cabo.

Il padrone del cane, infatti, aveva deciso di tenerlo sempre chiuso in casa, considerandolo ormai un “mostro” per la deformazione della testa che presentava a causa di un tumore. “Non ha mai curato il suo tumore e per diversi anni lo ha tenuto rinchiuso lì. La situazione è arrivata a questo punto e, invece di assumersi la responsabilità, lo ha buttato in strada. Quando l’ho trovato, mangiava gli avanzi” ha spiegato Trinidad Arreola.

Il cane è arrivato persino a perdere la vista all’occhio sinistro a causa della massa tumorale che gli premeva da quel lato. Dopo che, però, è stato soccorso da Arreola, Archie è arrivato all’attenzione anche del noto soccorritore di animali Arturo Islas Allende, che vanta un seguito su Instagram di oltre 4 milioni di follower. Insieme al consigliere comunale Jesús Alberto Alvarado Aragó, Allende si è impegnato a fornire assistenza al cane.

Lunedì 7 settembre così Archie è stato sottoposto a esami del sangue e TAC per stabilire se fosse possibile un intervento chirurgico. Il cane ha poi continuato a vivere con la sua soccorritrice Trinidad Arreola, che lo ha ospitato a casa sua perché, per motivi di salute, non poteva stare all’interno del rifugio dove Arreola con la sua associazione “Luna: la Voz de Esperanza” si prende cura di altri 38 cani. Le spese quotidiane per Archie sono state, però, coperte da Arturo Islas e Alberto Alvarado.

L'articolo “Non ha mai curato il suo tumore e per diversi anni lo ha tenuto rinchiuso in casa. Quando l’ho trovato in strada, mangiava gli avanzi”: la drammatica storia del cane Archie proviene da Il Fatto Quotidiano.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby backed national wealth and inheritance taxes in an interview published Sunday, arguing they would help level the playing field for Americans. Kirby told The New York Times that wealth inequality “has become a danger to our society,” adding the federal government must “address” it. “We should have a national wealth…

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby backed national wealth and inheritance taxes in an interview published Sunday, arguing they would help level the playing field for Americans. Kirby told The New York Times that wealth inequality “has become a danger to our society,” adding the federal government must “address” it. “We should have a national wealth…

Newcomer Mia Tharia, Natasha Lyonne and Steve Buscemi also star in this adaptation of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel about the unique qualities of being human that cannot be replicated.

American consumers will pay dearly for this misguided decision.

American consumers will pay dearly for this misguided decision.

The E15 policy is probably unfamiliar to many Americans, but in parts of the Midwest, especially Kansas, it’s a very big deal. Its importance is what made Donald Trump’s latest rhetoric so extraordinary.

To oversimplify matters a bit, the E15 policy refers to a biofuel blend made with 15% ethanol, which is sold to consumers as part of an effort to reduce prices at the pump. Under existing federal laws, E15 sales are limited to the summer driving season, though Kansans, especially in rural areas, would much prefer year-round E15 sales.

With this in mind, ahead of the president’s campaign rally in Kansas on Monday night, the White House boasted in a press statement, “President Trump approved year-round E15 sales, expanding markets for Kansas corn growers and giving drivers more affordable options at the pump.”

Hours later, Trump delivered remarks at his campaign event, which touched on the E15 policy — in an unexpected way.

Trump: "With Roger Marshall in the Senate, we will make year-round E15 permanent. But if Adam Hamilton is in, I'm not going it. That's it. I'm only doing it for him. That's a big deal for Kansas."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-20T01:17:16.134Z

“I also gave Kansas a waiver to sell E15 all year round, and with [incumbent Republican Sen.] Roger Marshall in the Senate, we will make year-round E15 permanent,” the president said. “But if [the Rep. Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee] is in, I’m not doing it. That’s it. I’m only doing it for him. That’s a big deal for Kansas, actually.”

I’m mindful that Trump’s transactional approach to campaign politics has become quite brazen of late. Over the weekend, for example, the president told a Kentucky audience that the administration would invest in a local economic revitalization project, but only if his preferred Senate candidate won.

Earlier this month, Trump similarly told an Ohio audience that he might look unfavorably at the state’s future emergency aid requests if they don’t elect a Republican governor.

At practically every rally, Trump similarly vows to send $5,000 checks to every American adult — at a cost of roughly $1.3 trillion — but only if the election results make him happy.

But his E15 comments in Kansas are arguably the most outrageous to date. There’s nothing about a Democratic-led Congress that would prevent Trump from extending his earlier waiver, but the president made the policy commitment conditional anyway, not because he had to, but because he chose to.

Trump effectively told Kansans he’s prepared to hurt their state on purpose if they vote in a way that displeases him. If there’s a defense or a precedent for such a presidential message, I can’t think of it.

The post Trump takes transactional politics to a new level at latest campaign rally appeared first on MS NOW.

Quello che doveva essere un gesto di ordinario senso civico — restituire un animale smarrito alla sua famiglia — si è trasformato in un tentativo di estorsione in piena regola. È accaduto a Milano, nel quartiere Niguarda, dove due giovani hanno preteso mille euro come riscatto per riconsegnare un cane fuggito il giorno precedente. La ferma reazione della proprietaria, che si è rifiutata di assecondare la richiesta e ha allertato le forze dell’ordine, ha permesso alla Polizia Locale di rintracciare i responsabili e riportare a casa l’animale sano e salvo.

La vicenda ha avuto inizio domenica 18 ottobre. Il cane, un esemplare di pastore belga Malinois dal valore commerciale stimato intorno ai 2.000 euro, si trovava a passeggio con il fidanzato della proprietaria. A causa di uno spavento improvviso, l’animale è riuscito a divincolarsi e a fuggire, facendo perdere rapidamente le proprie tracce tra le vie del quartiere. Scattato l’allarme, la proprietaria ha immediatamente avviato le ricerche tappezzando la zona con decine di volantini, inserendo i propri recapiti telefonici nella speranza di ricevere segnalazioni utili da parte dei residenti.

L'articolo Trova un cane smarrito per strada e chiede 1.000 euro di riscatto alla proprietaria per restituirglielo: coppia denunciata per tentata estorsione proviene da Il Fatto Quotidiano.

The good news for Donald Trump is that he’s profiting to a breathtaking degree from the presidency. The bad news for the Republican is that Americans have noticed.

The latest Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, for example, found that 66% of the public believes the president is using his office to enrich himself, up from 56% a year ago. A week earlier, The Associated Press released the results of its latest national poll, which similarly found that most Americans believe that Trump “is profiting off the presidency in unethical or illegal ways and is focused more on his wealth than helping people like them.”

Somehow, JD Vance has failed to notice what the American mainstream already understands.

On Saturday, CBS News aired a town hall event in Michigan where the vice president told host Tony Dokoupil, “I’ve not once seen evidence that Donald Trump has enriched himself.”

JD Vance: "I've not seen a single shred of evidence that Donald Trump participates or sanctions in that corruption … I've not once seen evidence that Donald Trump has enriched himself"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-18T00:43:28.833Z

Two days later, the Ohio Republican sat down with Mark Halperin, who interviewed the vice president for a media outlet called 2WAY, and Vance continued to toe the line.

“I think the president’s allowed to earn a living and allowed to live his life, and I don’t see, again, the question is, is he profiting off of his office,” Vance said. “I just don’t see any evidence that’s true.”

This suggests that the vice president is either remarkably unobservant or deliberately unobservant.

This doesn’t have to be complicated. In the first year of Trump’s second term, the president pulled in at least $2.2 billion, including more than $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency-related income, according to his latest annual financial disclosure.

No other president in American history has ever seen such financial gains while in office, and as a recent analysis from The New York Times explained, “Mr. Trump’s profits are a haul once unimaginable for any leader of a liberal democracy, particularly a sitting American president. No modern Western leader has ever publicly disclosed such big windfalls while in office. The Trump family’s earnings, experts said, have moved him into an echelon of enrichment more associated with strongmen in Russia and Turkey.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut posted a related, seven-part response to Vance via Bluesky, highlighting a variety of other ways Trump has profited off his office, including lucrative stock trades.

“Listen man, we get it,” the senator concluded in a message directed at the vice president. “If you work for Trump, you agree to lie and let your boss steal from taxpayers. But NO ONE believes you.”

The post As Trump profits off the presidency, JD Vance is surprisingly unobservant appeared first on MS NOW.