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Monthly Archives: February 2026

Trumplestilskin’s Consistent, inconsistencies.


WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday pardoned former NFL players Joe Klecko, Nate Newton, Jamal Lewis, Travis Henry and the late Billy Cannon on Thursday. 

The pardons were announced by White House “pardon czar” Alice Marie Johnson. 

“As football reminds us, excellence is built on grit, grace, and the courage to rise again. So is our nation,” Johnson wrote on social media as she thanked Trump for his “continued commitment to second chances.”

Johnson said Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones “personally” shared the news with Newton, who won three Super Bowls with the team.

The White House did not return a request for comment Thursday night on why Trump pardoned the players.

Klecko, a former star for the New York Jets, pleaded guilty to perjury in 1993 after lying to a federal grand jury that was investigating insurance fraud. A defensive lineman, Klecko was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2023. He was a two-time Associated Press All-Pro and a four-time Pro Bowler.

Newton, an offensive lineman, pleaded guilty to a federal drug trafficking charge in 2002 after authorities discovered $10,000 in his pickup truck as well as 175 pounds of marijuana in an accompanying car driven by another man. Newton was a two-time All-Pro and a six-time Pro Bowler.

Lewis, formerly of the Baltimore Ravens and the Cleveland Browns, pleaded guilty in a drug case in which he used a cell phone to try to set up a drug deal not long after he was the fifth pick in the 2000 NFL draft. The running back was named an All-Pro once, a Pro Bowler once and the 2003 AP Offensive Player of the Year.

What about Colin Kaepernick who did nothing wrong!

After 4 Months, Elon Musk Learned What Every American Already Knows, Says Ross Gerber: ‘No One In Government Wants To Cut Any Budget’


Benzinga

This is a bit outdated but content is still relevant MA

Adrian Volenik

Mon, June 2, 2025 at 3:30 PM CDT3 min read

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO and former Trump administration adviser Elon Musk is learning a hard truth about Washington, according to investor Ross Gerber. “After 4 months Elon learned what every natural born American already knows. No one in the government wants to ‘cut’ any budget,” Gerber wrote in a May 24 post on X.

Musk has spent the past four months heading up the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a controversial cost-cutting initiative tied to mass layoffs and agency shutdowns. But even Musk now appears to be frustrated with Washington’s spending habits. On Thursday, he wrote on X that his “scheduled time” as a special government employee had come to an end.

Musk Criticizes Trump’s Big Spending Bill

In a recent CBS News interview, Musk slammed the Trump administration’s flagship tax and spending package—dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Bill”—saying it “increases the budget deficit, not just decreases.” He warned that the legislation “undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing” and criticized the government for ignoring the need for real cuts.

The bill, which passed the House and is now before the Senate, would boost spending on defense and border security, extend tax cuts, and slash clean energy and health care programs. Nonpartisan analysts estimate it could add trillions to the national debt.

“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Musk told CBS. “But I don’t know if it can be both.”

From Political Ally To Cautious Critic

Musk has been a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump and poured over $250 million into his 2024 campaign. But in recent weeks, he’s pulled back from the political spotlight. During a Tesla earnings call, he said he’d reduce his time with DOGE starting in May to focus more on the company. “The large slug of work necessary to get the DOGE team in place… is mostly done,” Musk explained.

He added in a CNBC interview that he would now be at the White House just “a couple days every few weeks.”

Elon Musk Is Realizing He Made a Huge Mistake

Futurism

Meanwhile, Tesla is dealing with real-world consequences. European sales of Tesla vehicles fell 49% in April, even as overall electric vehicle sales rose 28%, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. Analysts blame a mix of factors, including Musk’s political activity, factory shutdowns, and an aging vehicle lineup.

Diminishing Impact Of DOGE

Musk has touted DOGE as a trillion-dollar cost-saving initiative, though watchdogs and fact-checkers have questioned its savings claims. So far, the agency claims $175 billion in savings—a figure under dispute.

Musk posted last week that while DOGE “has and will do great work to postpone the day of bankruptcy of America,” he believes the government’s “profligacy” means that only radical gains in productivity can truly save the country. He said accelerating GDP growth is now essential, possibly hinting at his push for humanoid robots to boost economic output.

Economist Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Europac.com, dismissed the impact of DOGE, writing on X: “Unfortunately I think DOGE was too little, too late to really move the needle on a sovereign debt and dollar crisis. The process has already started.”

Opinion: The voters who believe in MAGA aka DJT, LOTUS,FFLOTUS, have a rude and expensive wakeup call coming. This will affect most Americans depending on their income, the richest will suffer the least.

Trumpelstiltskin


This is a pass through from Substack, there is an offer to follow the attached article, this is totally your option. MA

Somebody Needs to Tell Trump Everybody Is Laughing at Him

His worst fear has already come true.

Mona Charen

Dec 30, 2025

President Donald Trump on Christmas Eve at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)

IN THE COURSE OF HIS LOSING RACE with the teleprompter during his Oval Office address on December 17, President Trump returned to a theme that obsesses him—respect. Even before his entry into politics, Trump was convinced that “weak” leaders, including Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama, were despised by other nations and that the United States was a laughingstock. As of 2016, according to a Washington Post tally, Trump had fumed at least one hundred times that other nations were “laughing at us.” Between 2020 and 2024, he probably exceeded that total, and in fact, even now that Biden is in the rearview mirror, Trump perseverates about how much Biden was scorned by the world.

After a litany of lies and an extra helping of gibberish (“We had men playing in women’s sports, transgender for everybody, crime at record levels with law enforcement and words such as that just absolutely forbidden”), Trump closed with the respect theme:

When the world looks at us next year, let them see a nation that is loyal to its citizens, faithful to its workers, confident to its identity, certain to its destiny, and the envy of the entire globe. We are respected again, like we have never been respected before.

His speechwriters might want to make a note that the word “of” should follow the words “confident” and “certain,” not “to.” And while we’re offering constructive criticism, the president might profit from a little thought experiment.

Suppose you are driving in a foreign country. It’s late at night and you get pulled over by a policeman. After examining your passport and driver’s license, he narrows his eyes, gives his palm a few smacks with his nightstick, and demands a $1,000 bribe to let your infraction go. You might pay the man, but do you come away from this encounter respecting him? Or do you drive off, shaken and angry, concluding that the cop and maybe the whole country is rotten?

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The president seems genuinely not to grasp the difference between respect and fear, and because he has surrounded himself with fawning toadies, there isn’t anyone available to explain it to him. Accordingly, here is my modest effort to do so:

Dear President Trump,

Of all the wrong ideas you hold in your heart—that tariffs are paid by foreigners, that good looks are the chief credential for cabinet offices, that the 2020 election was rigged, that allies are bloodsuckers we’d be better off without—perhaps the most gobsmacking is your cherished notion that people respect you when they kiss your ass.

Sorry, that’s not true. They despise you on two levels. On the first level, because you’ve managed to get elected president, you do have leverage that nearly everyone must grapple with in some fashion. (Think of Volodymyr Zelensky.) That power comes not from you personally but from the great strength of this country, economic, military, and diplomatic. So yes, when you use that leverage to extort lavish praise from people, they will offer it. But they don’t mean a word of it. Not a word. And in their hearts they hate you for demeaning them in this fashion instead of treating them with respect.

The second level of contempt arises from the knowledge—recognized by the whole world, Mr. Trump, except you—that your extravagant need for attention and praise is evidence of your emotional stuntedness. With every renaming of a building you are sending up a signal that screams “I am so insecure!” And here’s the truth: You cannot piggyback on the respect John F. Kennedy earned by slapping your name on the arts center that was named by statute to be his living memorial. Your name may be side by side with his on the marble for now, but in our hearts, we will never respect you. Quite the opposite—for all of your depredations and twice on Sunday for attempting to hijack someone else’s honor.

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It gets worse. It isn’t just that your ravenous hunger for recognition betrays a personality disorder, it’s that your particular style of seeking it really does provoke ridicule—that’s another word for “they’re laughing at us.”

The “Gulf of America”? Musing about absorbing Canada into the United States whether they like it or not? Decorating the Oval Office in a Saddam Hussein aesthetic? Threatening to expropriate Greenland from our ally Denmark? Truly great nations don’t need to prove their manhood by lording it over smaller ones. Imposing tariffs on islands inhabited only by penguins? Panting after a Nobel Peace Prize so flagrantly that you’re claiming to have settled eight wars? In two of those cases, there was no war. In the other six, the conflicts are either ongoing or were largely settled without you. Offering meme coins for sale to the highest bidder? Auctioning off pardons to criminals and leaders on the take? You bet they’re laughing.

Among the specific nations whose contempt you most often cited against other presidents, the go-to was China. China was, in your telling, always gloating about getting one over on Biden, Obama, etc. Well, just in the past few weeks, you have agreed to give China access to high-end microchips that are crucial for commercial and military use (and that were withheld by Biden), and you have held your tongue as China has pressured our ally Japan over its support of Taiwan. You even soft-pedaled the threat from China in your National Security Strategy. A younger Trump might have demanded, ‘What did we get in return?’ Nothing.

Our traditional allies are not always laughing. More often they’re wringing their hands as you luxuriate in the company of international outlaws like Vladimir Putin and Nayib Bukele, and mouth stupendous lies such as that Zelensky started the war with Russia.

In short, there has never been a president who has made the United States less respected than you have. We are, to borrow a phrase, disrespected like never before. Whether your twisted ego can recognize that is open to question, but what is not debatable is that virtually the whole world knows.

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