Weekend Quotables
Trump's Criminal Enterprise. Call it a 'regime', not an administration.
It is time to acknowledge what has become tragically obvious: the Trump administration is essentially acting as a massive criminal enterprise. It lies, steals, extorts, and murders — all while cloaked in the awesome authority of the state. It is on a crime spree that puts Al Capone to shame. — The most powerful crime syndicate in history
The Debt Crisis
Everybody’s talking about the “debt crisis.” Trump added roughly $7.8 trillion to the gross federal debt during his first term, raising it from about $19.95T to $27.75T. That increase represents about 28% of the total debt as of the day he left office.
But America doesn't just have a debt crisis. It has a corruption crisis. And it's the biggest financial scam in history. The crisis has moved beyond old-style political corruption and has become structural. Trump’s net worth has more than doubled in the past year, surpassing five billion dollars. In July, the Times put Trump’s wealth at more than 10 billion. But that’s only a tiny part of the largest government-led, criminal wealth extraction operation in history.
The rot includes the ability of the perpetrator(s) to pardon and to profit. When Trump can sue his own government for billions of dollars and then “negotiate” a settlement through the very Justice Department he oversees, the system has already collapsed. That’s not corruption in the classic sense. That’s a criminal enterprise built on international oil theft, currency manipulation, and taxpayer dollars, where criminality isn’t punished but compensated, and where the state becomes the mechanism of extraction rather than its victim.
The “debt crisis” narrative is a smokescreen for a political economy based on perpetual war that drains the public to enrich the war profiteers and insider traders, all while insulating itself from consequence. When Trump can pardon the crimes of his own grifter family, his cronies, and even bankroll pardon and compensate convicted violent criminals with billions in taxpayer funds, democracy isn’t in danger; it’s already been turned into its opposite.
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Strait Talk
A closure of the Strait of Hormuz through August raises the risk of an economic downturn on a scale comparable to the Great Recession in 2008, according to Rapidan Energy Group. A delay until August would deepen the third-quarter supply deficit to roughly 6 million barrels a day, the firm said, just as inventories approach operationally challenging levels.
The Middle East supplies the world with three inputs: energy, trade routes, and capital. The Iran war is disrupting all of them at once. The oil and gas industry is facing its biggest shock in history. Constricted trade arteries are choking flows of fertilizers, helium, and sulfur, as well as energy. And the supply of petrodollars from the region to the rest of the world is under threat.
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Under pressure from China, Trump claims Iran deal is done
Beijing didn’t host a peace summit this week, but it might as well have. Within ten days, Xi Jinping met Trump, then Putin, then Iran’s foreign minister, with Pakistan’s mediators shuttling through for good measure, a diplomatic parade that turned China into the war’s de facto control tower. And right on cue, Trump emerged claiming a “largely negotiated” peace deal, as if it had just been decided by him, rather than under international pressure. The choreography is unmistakable: China and Russia publicly pressed for a ceasefire, Iran signaled it trusts Beijing more than Washington, and Trump, badly isolated and weakened military, and at a standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, began declaring progress no one else will confirm. It’s not a four‑power pact, but it’s the closest thing to one this war has produced.
Israel remains the skunk at the garden party.
Every major power with leverage in this war is now signaling that the conflict has reached its limits, except Israel. Even as Beijing becomes the diplomatic crossroads and Trump starts declaring a ‘largely negotiated’ peace, Israel continues bombing Lebanon as if none of it applies. The world is trying to land the plane; Israel is still hitting the throttle.
The Broadview Six
Federal prosecutors dismissed all charges against the “Broadview Six”—a group of activists and progressive politicians who faced federal indictment following a 2025 immigration protest outside the Broadview ICE facility. The group of six included candidates and local elected officials active in Democratic politics, including congressional candidate Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, who placed second in a crowded primary race for Illinois’ 9th congressional district in March.
Broadview 6 defendant, Chicago 45th Ward committeeperson Michael Rabbitt, will be my guest on Hitting Left, 11-noon CDT on Friday, June 5th.
“This case was clearly about Trump and his Department of Justice’s campaign of retribution against Democrats and Chicago. Trump and his authoritarian regime have weaponized the federal government against its own people — an extraordinary abuse of power,” said Rabbitt, who is serving his first term as committeeperson.
“The Trump administration is trying to silence us. To create fear. To break us so we won’t speak up. But they won’t succeed. We are winning. — NPR Illinois
Weekend Quotables
Trump on rising gas prices: “It’s peanuts.” — CNN
District Judge Waverly Crenshaw dismissed the criminal human smuggling case brought by the Department of Justice against Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
"Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted." —ABC News
Robert Reich
Over the past 16 months, Trump and his appointees have so profoundly undermined the United States government that different words should be used to describe them than have been used to describe all previous administrations.
To begin with, they shouldn’t be called an “administration” at all. They should be referred to as a regime. — Guardian
Mexican President, Claudia Sheinbaum
Sheinbaum confirmed that Mexico will host Iran’s World Cup team after the U.S. declined to do so.
“The United States doesn’t want the Iranian national team to stay overnight in the United States… And we said, ‘Yes, no problem. We have no issue with that.’” — Politico
There are still more of us than them...the goodness out weighs the low life.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIKE