Tag: hypocrisy

Trump pardons convicted narco-trafficking pol amid plot to rig Honduran election

Donald Trump is threatening to destroy the Honduran economy unless the country elects the oligarch-run National Party. Now, he’s even pardoned the last party member to rule the country, who was convicted in 2024 of smuggling hundreds of tons of drugs into the US.

On November 28, US President Donald Trump Trump declared he will be pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was sentenced to 45 years in a New York prison in 2024 for his role in helping smuggle 400 tons of cocaine into the US in a drug-running scheme linked to the Sinaloa cartel. Hernandez, Trump wrote, had been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

While Hernandez was President of Honduras, he initiated contracts worth over half a million dollars with Republican lobbying firm BGR Group, after his brother, Tony, was sentenced to life in prison for cocaine smuggling. In the time since, BGR has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the campaign of Marco Rubio, the Cuban American former senator who now serves as Trump’s Secretary of State.

As The Grayzone reported, the US Department of Justice indictment of Hernandez contained explicit and often shocking details of his role in transforming his country into the Western hemisphere’s premier narco-state. The US-backed president “wielded incredible influence and partnered with some of the most notorious narcotics traffickers in Honduras, allowing them to flourish under their control,” a DOJ prosecutor stated.

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Trump Slammed Biden’s $52 Billion CHIPS Act. Then He Used It To Buy a Federal Stake in Intel.

In March, President Donald Trump blasted the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act of 2022. He called it “a horrible, horrible thing.” Passed under President Joe Biden, the CHIPS Act was essentially a $52 billion industrial policy slush fund intended primarily to bolster domestic production of computer chips.

When the law passed in 2022, the Biden administration said it was a “smart investment” that would “strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology” while bringing thousands of “good-paying manufacturing jobs back home.”

There was never much reason to believe in the previous administration’s industrial policy boosterism. Early grants largely went either to factories that were already in development and would have been built anyway or to facilities of questionable economic value that might not be completed even with the additional taxpayer funding.

So Trump was on solid ground when he told Congress, “You should get rid of the CHIPS Act, and whatever’s left over…you should use it to reduce debt, or any other reason you want to.” Yet in the months since, Trump has made use of CHIPS funding not to reduce the debt, but to pursue his own questionable industrial policy. His version is even less accountable and may well be even worse for taxpayers.

Among the recipients of CHIPS funding was computer chipmaker Intel, which was set to receive $11 billion to help fund the construction of semiconductor fabs in several states. By late summer, the company said it had already received more than $5 billion of the funds. But Intel struggled to fulfill those commitments, falling behind on factory construction in some places and laying off workers as it suffered from ongoing financial and managerial problems. By the middle of 2025, Intel looked very much like a failing business.

In theory, the CHIPS Act provided a mechanism for the federal government to retract the grant and get all or part of its money back should Intel fail to meet its obligations. It’s not clear whether the federal government would have exercised its option to take the money back, but it was an option—until Trump stepped in.

As the company flailed, Trump met with its CEO, Lip-Bu Tan. Trump first called for him to resign. Then in August, the Trump administration announced that the federal government would just take partial ownership of Intel. Essentially, the U.S. government would purchase a roughly 10 percent stake in the chipmaker, partially nationalizing the company. And funds from CHIPS would be used to do it.

Trump bragged about the deal, saying he planned to “do more of them.” The company’s stock price rose on the news, suggesting that investors liked it. But that’s probably because it was a good deal for the company, at taxpayer expense.

According to public financial filings, the federal government would disburse the remaining funds, about $6 billion, while clearing any obligations for the company to actually complete work on new domestic semiconductor fabs.

In exchange, the federal government would gain partial ownership—as well as all the financial risks stockholders usually have when they invest in companies. Those risks will now be borne by taxpayers. As Carnegie Endowment fellow Peter Harrell pointed out in a social media post, the move came with “a lot of downside risk.”

Fundamentally, Trump gave Intel a federal bailout, removing the company’s public obligations and accountability while loading more financial risk onto the public.

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Chicago Mayor Claims Crime Fell “Because of Him” as Texas National Guard Prepares to Leave

Chicago’s crime crisis did not disappear overnight, but you wouldn’t know that from listening to Chicago’s Democrat mayor.

This week, Mayor Brandon Johnson stood at a press conference and claimed that crime fell “because of him,” while attacking the Texas National Guard and President Trump for “wasting taxpayer dollars.”

The performance would have been comical if the stakes were not so serious.

Just hours before the event, at 11:00 p.m., an unknown individual attempted to start a fire outside City Hall.

Security footage shows the suspect lighting the exterior of the building before fleeing.

A CPD officer put out the flames before they spread. Instead of focusing on the conditions that allow attempted arson outside the city’s central government building, the mayor pivoted to politics.

He called the National Guard withdrawal an “unconditional surrender by the Trump administration,” as if the presence of Texas troops—not Chicago’s own governance—were the reason the city remains unsafe.

According to the mayor, Guard troops “sat idle for six weeks doing nothing,” a claim that conveniently ignores why Texas deployed them in the first place: to support overwhelmed border states and help cities impacted by the migrant influx created by Democrat sanctuary policies.

Chicago asked for migrants, boasted about being a sanctuary city, and then attacked Texas when the consequences arrived.

The mayor also complained that these deployments cost “hundreds of millions of dollars,” even though his own administration spends billions on bureaucracy and programs that have failed to reduce violence.

He criticized federal spending on Argentina while ignoring the billions Chicago spends without improving basic services.

Meanwhile, the attempted arson outside City Hall demonstrates exactly why a heightened security presence has been necessary.

He then targeted CPB official Greg Bovino, whom he claimed “left a trail of tears” and “undermined” the city’s work, even though federal officers arrived in September, and yet the mayor took credit for crime reductions from the summer months.

His argument was so weak that he joked Trump must think “September counts as a summer month.”

What he did not explain is how a city with increasing violence, collapsing public schools, and overflowing migrant shelters can possibly credit its problems to Texas or Trump.

The mayor framed the withdrawal as a victory against “unconstitutional federal overreach” and claimed Trump is waging a “war on poor and working people.”

But under Democrat leadership, Chicago remains one of the most dangerous cities in America, with residents fleeing, businesses closing, and families begging for basic safety.

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Tone Deaf Michelle Obama Shares Behind the Scenes Photoshoot Footage with Glam Team After Complaining About “Necessity” of Glam Team as First Lady

Michelle Obama is coming under fire for her tone deaf antics after posting a video of herself doing a photoshoot while her lowly helpers fix her clothes, hair, and makeup, just weeks after she appeared in a book tour interview, griping about her displeasure of having a “glam team” as First Lady. 

But just a couple of weeks ago, Obama appeared in an ABC special with Robin Roberts to promote her memoir, “The Look,” where she grumbles about her wardrobe, hair, and makeup staff making her life so easy.

While the rest of us plebeians have to dress ourselves and don’t get extravagant vacations on Steven Spielberg’s $250 million yacht in the Italian Riviera, Michelle Obama moans about her time in the White House and how hard it was keeping up appearances.

“I was up for the public, and the days were long,” she complains, describing her “glam team” as not a luxury but a “necessity.”

Roberts obnoxiously interjected words of agreement and affirmation throughout Obama’s tirade about how difficult it was to be the First Lady.

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Anchor Grills Dem Rep: “What Specific Order From Trump Are You Asking Our Military To Object To?”

Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum tore into Colorado Democrat Rep. Jason Crow during a tense interview, pressing him repeatedly on the specifics behind a viral video where congressional Democrats urged military members to defy “illegal orders” from the Trump administration.

Crow repeatedly dodged, with vague allusions to random “Trump bad” rhetoric, and offering no concrete examples of actual unlawful directives.

The exchange highlighted what critics, including senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller, have blasted as Democrats’ desperate call for insurrection, rooted in nothing more than baseless fear-mongering as they cling to power.

In the video, a group of Democrats with military or intelligence backgrounds—including Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA), and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA)—solemnly intoned messages like: “Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders,” and “No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.” 

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Rand Paul Slams Alcohol And Marijuana Interests Over Federal Hemp Ban, Announcing He’ll File A Bill To Reverse It Next Week

A GOP senator says he’ll be filing a bill next week to protect the hemp industry from an impending federal ban on most cannabinoid products. He’s also calling out alcohol and marijuana interests for allegedly “join[ing] forces” to lobby in favor of the prohibitionist policy change, which will restrict access to a plant and its derivatives that are often used therapeutically—including by members of his Senate colleagues’ families.

In an interview on “The Chris Cuomo Project” podcast that was posted on Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) previewed his plan to push back against the hemp ban that was included in major spending legislation President Donald Trump signed into law last week.

Paul has been sounding the alarm for weeks about the potential consequences of the hemp recriminalization provisions, which he says would cause mass job losses and a $25 billion industry to be “wiped out.”

As he previewed during a separate webinar organized by the Kentucky Hemp Association on Wednesday, the senator told Cuomo that he intends to introduce legislation next week that would make it so state policy regulating hemp cannabinoid products—with basic safeguards in place to prevent youth access, for example—”supersedes the federal law.”

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Lindsey Graham Falls Prey to the Surveillance Monster He Championed

Some people find religion after a brush with mortality. Lindsey Graham found the Fourth Amendment after a brush with Jack Smith.

The senator from South Carolina has spent the past two decades helping build the modern surveillance state, and now he’s furious that it turned its cold electronic eye on him.

Federal prosecutors secretly subpoenaed his phone records without his knowledge as part of Special Counsel Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump’s alleged role in the events of January 6.

Graham says it’s an outrage, a scandal. He’s demanding the impeachment of the federal judge who approved it and threatening to sue someone, though he hasn’t worked out who, for “tens of millions of dollars.”

It’s the kind of melodrama that comes easily to a man who’s never been shy about using the power of the state when it suits him.

This story started last month when FBI Director Kash Patel revealed that phone records of eight Republican senators, including Graham’s, were pulled as part of Smith’s “Arctic Frost” probe.

The data covered January 4 to 7, 2021, and came with gag orders preventing telecom companies from telling the targets they were under the microscope.

“They spied on my phone records as a senator and a private citizen,” Graham complained on Fox News. “I’m sick of it.”

He’s not wrong to be angry. But there’s something deeply comic about Graham discovering his inner civil libertarian only after the dragnet landed on his number.

Graham has been one of the most reliable defenders of the surveillance architecture that is now bothering him.

In 2001, as a House member, he voted for the Patriot Act, the law that kicked open the door for mass data collection. When Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was collecting Americans’ phone records by the millions, Graham didn’t seem alarmed.

“I’m a Verizon customer. It doesn’t bother me one bit for the NSA to have my phone number,” he famously said. “I’m glad the NSA is trying to find out what the terrorists are up to overseas and in our country.”

He later voted to codify those surveillance powers into Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2008 and backed every major reauthorization since.

For most of his career, Graham treated Section 702 like a sacred text.

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Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s Effort to Smear Republicans Over Epstein Donations Blows Up in Her Face When Conservative Journalist Unearths the Damning Truth

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) provided some unintentional comic relief right before the House decided to give her fellow Democrat, Stacey Plaskett, a pass regarding her dealings with Jeffrey Epstein.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, the House of Representatives on Tuesday evening voted against censuring Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.) over her collusion with Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing.

The House voted 214 -209 against censuring Plaskett. Every Democrat voted against the censure, while three Republicans voted present, and three other GOP lawmakers joined the Democrats.

It was later exposed by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) that House leadership in both parties cut a dirty deal to ensure Plaskett would not face accountability.

Before the censure vote, Crockett took to the House floor and accused the GOP of a double standard by asserting without evidence that the likes of Mitt Romney, Lee Zeldin, John McCain, and George W. Bush had once taken money from Epstein.

But in a development that will surprise no one, Crockett got her ‘facts’ wrong. The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross took her advice and dug up the FEC filings and discovered that a completely DIFFERENT Epstein made these donations, not the deceased p*dophile.

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Trump’s New Islamic Extremist “Allies” — Syrian and Qatari Regimes

Is the ghost of Dick Cheney (CFR) haunting the Trump administration? During the George W. Bush administration, Vice President Cheney and a coterie of CFR neocon war hawks known as “The Vulcans” (Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Stephen Hadley, Robert Gates, and Paul Wolfowitz) dragged America into a series of “forever wars” and “regime change” interventions. Accompanying these misadventures was the continuation of the policies of previous Democratic and Republican administrations’ musical-chair alliances, in which yesterday’s “terrorist” becomes today’s “noble ally” (and then tomorrow turns on us and is again designated a terrorist).

Donald Trump pledged that he would cease these disastrous policies. However, his recent policies with regard to Syria and Qatar call that pledge into question. Are Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth channeling the Cheney/Vulcan spirit? It seems so.

The recent White House reception for Syrian “President” Ahmed al-Sharaa was odd, to say the least. Our government had previously designated him as a terrorist, with a $10 million bounty on his head.

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Hunter Biden Makes Insane Claim About Charlie Kirk’s Assassination and Takes an Absolutely Disgusting Shot at Conservative Journalist Miranda Devine’s Looks – Devine Responds to Hunter 

Hunter Biden emerged from his hiding hole last week to take several potshots at his perceived enemies, including MAGA and one of the nation’s premier conservative journalists.

Hunter appeared on the Wide Awake Podcast while he was in Cape Town, South Africa. The two discussed several subjects, including Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, and Jeffrey Epstein.

During the interview, Hunter made this crazy claim about Kirk’s assassination:

“I don’t know why Charlie Kirk was shot, but I do know this: it only served one group of people, MAGA,” Hunter said.

Are we sure he is sober?

Hunter later took a sexist shot at New York Post journalist Miranda Devine. She is a truly indispensable journalist who has extensively covered his scandals, including the “laptop from Hell,” which provided damning evidence that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s crooked dealings in China, Ukraine, and other nations.

But to Hunter, Devine is a ‘greedy, ugly wh*re.’

“There’s no ethics in what someone as horrendously ugly as Miranda Devine — physically and in terms of her ethics,” Hunter said. They’re wh*res for money, and she does it because she makes money.”

“And when she goes to sleep at night I’m sure she sleeps just fine — but I don’t know anybody that is going to be mourning her when she’s gone,” he added.

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