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Newsweek
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
The MAGA Meltdown Over Trump's Jeffrey Epstein Scandal
Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The most striking feature of the Jeffrey Epstein drama playing out across the Trump administration is MAGA followers' shock at learning that Donald Trump was a longtime associate of Epstein's. Some even begin to wonder whether the president's name might appear in any documentation that may still exist about Epstein's alleged abuse of underage girls. The MAGA movement is no stranger to sex abuse scandals—for years, it's invented ever-more salacious ones to pin on its political enemies rather than admit Trump's proven misdeeds. Edgar Maddison Welch shot up the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C., on December 4, 2016, just weeks after Trump had been elected president for the first time. As Q-Anon emerged in early 2017, "Pizzagate" became one of the central tenants of the cult. By 2020, the theory had gone beyond merely claiming that Democrats and financial elites like Bill Gates were running pedophile rings, and turned into a full-blown delusion that they were torturing children to jack up their hormones and then draining them of their blood to extract psychoactive, life-extending substances. As Right Wing Watch documents, uber-Trump cultist and Q-Anon theorist Liz Crokin explains in one of her videos: Adrenochrome is a drug that the elites love. It comes from children. The drug is extracted from the pituitary gland of tortured children. It's sold on the black market. It's the drug of the elites. It's their favorite drug. It is beyond evil. It's demonic. It is so sick. When then-OMB Director Mick Mulvaney used the word "pizza" in a televised cabinet meeting, Crokin and other Trump cultists took the remark as confirmation of the "reality" of children being being tortured and having their adrenochrome "harvested" at a pizza restaurant in a D.C. suburb. "President Trump and his staffers are constantly trolling the deep state," Crokin said of Mulvaney's reference. "That's President Trump's way of letting you know Pizzagate is real and it's not fake. They're—he's constantly using their words against them and throwing it in their face and God bless him, it's amazing." Much of this served to distract from a real sex scandal Republicans would rather not discuss: Trump's years-long and reportedly close association with Jeffrey Epstein, and the young women—one who claimed, but later retracted, that she was 13 at the time—who have accused Trump of sexual assault. WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 15: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he departs the White House on July 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump is traveling to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to speak at... WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 15: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he departs the White House on July 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump is traveling to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to speak at an artificial intelligence and energy summit. MoreNow, the old proverb about the dangers of "riding the tiger" is haunting Trump. Whataboutisms like, "But what about the Clintons?" and "What about Biden's laptop?" aren't working this time. People of all political stripes aren't willing to overlook the alleged abuse of youngsters. Many Trump supporters have spent years emotionally and socially invested in a mythos that depicts the president as a brilliant, competent, and upstanding man with the best interests of the working class at heart. They've merged their own sense of self with the persona of Trump they've seen, heard, and internalized from within the carefully controlled right-wing information bubble. Admitting betrayal or deception requires admitting they were wrong, which comes with deep psychological costs—thus the anguish and conflict we're seeing among the Trump base. As MAGA icon Candace Owens offered this week in a wounded voice, "What is happening now is it seems like you think your base is stupid. That's how I feel. I feel like Trump thinks his base is stupid." The big question now is whether the swamp of right-wing media can process the news in a way that will turn it into simply another passing-and-soon-forgotten Trump scandal, like his abuse of E. Jean Carroll, the Access Hollywood tape, or the 34 felony convictions arising from his payoffs to Stormy Daniels for their extramarital tryst. Trump's ability to survive the Epstein saga will also depend on whether his administration can release anything that his base may consider credible. Original videotapes or photos that are not clearly doctored, first-person testimony by Ghislaine Maxwell should she ever be allowed to speak with the press or Congress (Republicans just blocked the latter), or more former teenage victims going on the record could spell doom for his relationship with his base. On the other hand, Trump's efforts to squelch the conversation, strong-arm the press, and threaten reporters who ask Epstein questions may work. More concerning, if cornered Trump may decide to do something truly risky—something that could crash the economy or lead the nation to war—to change the subject. If there's anything we know about Donald J. Trump, it's that he's a survivor. His tenacity and thirst for revenge are legendary, and if he makes it through this there will be hell to pay, at least in some quarters. Hopefully it won't be our entire nation—or world peace—that has to suffer the consequences. Thom Hartmann is a four‐time winner of the Project Censored Award, a New York Times bestselling author of over thirty books, and America's #1 progressive talk radio show host for more than a decade. His latest book is The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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First Post
09-07-2025
- Politics
- First Post
‘Weather weapon' and more: After Texas floods, a flurry of conspiracy theories emerge
Over 100 have been left dead in the Texas flash floods including some young girls. Even now, the search for missing people continues. But that has not stopped some from going online and spreading rumours and conspiracy theories about the matter. Let's take a look at the claims and what experts are saying read more Water rises from severe flooding along the Guadalupe Kerr County, Texas on Friday. AP The tragedy in Texas has left over 100 dead including some young girls. Even now, the search for missing people continues. But that has not stopped some from going online and spreading rumours and conspiracy theories about the matter. Some have even claimed that 'weather weapons' have been deployed against Texas. But what happened? What do we know? Let's take a closer look: 'When was last cloud seeding?' It began with a number of people on the far-right and within the Q-Anon community taking to social media. They blamed cloud seeding – which is done to encourage rain by adding silver iodide or dry ice to a cloud – for the flash floods. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'I need someone to look into who was responsible for this,' far-right figure and ex-special forces commander Pete Chambers wrote. 'When was the last cloud seeding?' 'Anyone able to answer this?' asked Mike Flynn, a Q-Anon figure and former NSA in the Trump administration. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, famous for coining the phrase 'Jewish space lasers', joined the fray. Marjorie Taylor Greene earlier suggested that 'lasers or blue beams of light' from 'space solar generators' in the sky started wildfires. Reuters 'I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity', Greene wrote on X. 'It will be a felony offence.' Right-wing influencer Gabrielle Yoder too pointed the finger at cloud seeding – specifically to cloudseeding company Rainmaker. As did Flynn, who wrote on X, 'anyone who calls this out as a conspiracy theory can go F themselves'. 'Weather weapon deployed' Others claimed some sort of weather weapon had been deployed. Michael Meyer, the founder of extremist Veterans on Patrol, wrote on Telegram, 'Due to the recent weather weapon deployed against Texas, which resulted in a high number of child murders, efforts to eliminate this military treason are being escalated.' 'Fake weather. Fake hurricanes. Fake flooding. Fake. Fake. Fake,' Kandiss Taylor, who plans to run as a GOP candidate, wrote on X. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD That doesn't even seem natural,' Kylie Jane Kremer, executive director of Women for America First, added. Experts, of course, dismissed such claims. 'It is not physically possible or possible within the laws of atmospheric chemistry to cloud seed at a scale that would cause an event like \[the Texas flooding\] to occur,' Matt Lanza, a digital meteorologist based in Houston, told Wired. Senator Ted Cruz was among those rebuffing the conspiracy theories. 'The meteorological ingredients [for the storm] were already there, and cloud seeding could not have played a role,' Lanza added. 'I am trying to be as transparent as possible, because this is an incredibly controversial subject but isn't actually as regulated and discussed transparently as it ought to be by the federal government,' Doricko added. 'Just for the record, I'm not a deep state plant from either Bill Gates or Palantir, Peter Thiel or Bill Clinton.' Among those rebuffing the conspiracy theories was Senator Ted Cruz. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'To the best of my knowledge, there is zero evidence of anything related to anything like weather modification,' Cruz was quoted as saying. 'Look, the internet can be a strange place. People can come up with all sorts of crazy theories.' 'There's a time to have political fights. There's a time to disagree. This is not that time,' Cruz added. Some on the left mocked these claims from the right. One, using a famous Simpsons meme of Principal Skinner, asked if the Trump funding cuts were responsible for the tragedy. 'No, it must have been Democrats using a weather modification machine,' the caption stated. What do experts say? However, experts say that claiming those blaming cuts at the National Weather Service (NWS) by the Trump administration aren't correct either. There have been claims that (weather agencies) did not foresee catastrophic (Texas) floods – but that's simply not true," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, wrote on X rival Bluesky. 'This was undoubtedly an extreme event but messaging rapidly escalated beginning (around) 12 (hours) prior…Locations that flooded catastrophically had at least 1-2+ hours of direct warning from NWS.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'This truly was a sudden & massive event and occurred at worst possible time (middle of the night). But (the) problem, once again, was not a bad weather prediction: it was one of 'last mile' forecast/warning dissemination,' Swain added. Search and recovery workers dig through debris looking for any survivors or remains of people swept up in the flash flooding at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas. AFP 'False claims from both the left and right have spread widely on social media following the catastrophic floods in Texas,' Sarah Komar and Nicole Dirks from the disinformation watchdog NewsGuard wrote. 'When extreme weather events occur, conspiracy theories about humans creating or controlling them often soon follow.' Even the media fell victim to such stories Kerr County Lead, a local outlet, was forced to retract a false story about the miracle rescue of two girls who clung to a tree in the floods. The story first surfaced in social media posts that quickly went viral, but a local official said the reports were '100 per cent inaccurate.' 'Like everyone, we wanted this story to be true, but it's a classic tale of misinformation that consumes all of us during a natural disaster,' Louis Amestoy, Kerr County Lead's editor, wrote in a note to readers on Sunday. 'Unfortunately, the story is not true and we are retracting it.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD With inputs from agencies
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Rubio's Team Launches ‘Witch Hunt' for Staff Who Criticized Alex Jones
A senior State Department official requested internal records on dozens of individuals and organizations perceived as enemies of the political right as part of a probe into alleged conservative censorship. State Department Undersecretary Darren Beattie filed an 11-page request in March for all records of internal communication related to 39 individuals and 16 organizations who track disinformation or criticized President Donald Trump and his allies, according to MIT Technology Review. The request, which was framed as a 'transparency' initiative, reportedly targeted names like former U.S. Cybersecurity official Chris Krebs, who denied Trump's false claims of a stolen election, anti-Trump pundit Bill Kristol, The Atlantic reporter Anne Applebaum, and even tech mogul Bill Gates. The State Department also sought documents and correspondence from staff that mentioned controversial names such as Trump, Elon Musk, Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as well as keywords like Black Lives Matter, January 6, Q-Anon, immigration, and anti-vaxx. Beattie, a conservative journalist who was fired as speechwriter during the first Trump administration for appearing with white nationalists, reportedly told State Department officials that he aimed to release internal agency documents 'to rebuild trust with the American public.' In particular, Beattie wanted records held by the agency's Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub (R/FIMI), which replaced the now-defunct Global Engagement Center that exposed Russian propaganda and Chinese disinformation operations. Weeks after Beattie's request, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the shutdown of R/FIMI. 'Under the previous administration, this office, which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year, spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving,' Rubio said. 'This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America. That ends today.' Several people who saw the request told MIT Technology Review that the broad requests for unredacted information felt like a 'witch hunt' that could jeopardize the individuals' privacy and security. Other officials called the request 'unusual' and 'improper.' 'It stank to high heaven,' one staffer told the publication. 'This could be used for retaliation. This could be used for any kind of improper purposes, and our oversight committees should be informed of this.' By early April, however, Beattie had reportedly received many of the documents he requested. The Daily Beast has reached out to the State Department for comment.
