Secretive Right-Wing Billionaire Makes Massive Donation to Trump

Elusive right-wing billionaire Timothy Mellon made a massive donation—$50 million—to a Trump super PAC the day after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, according to disclosure filings. The donation is one of the largest single disclosed contributions ever, according to The New York Times, and one of the worst ways to burn $50 million, according to anyone with a functioning brain.

Mellon earned his wealth the way all hard-working Americans do: He inherited it from his grandfather, banking magnate and former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. Timothy Mellon’s introduction into the world of being a political powerplayer started from humble, hateful beginnings in 2010 when he donated $1.5 million for legal fees to defend Arizona’s ultra-racist “show me your papers” law, Senate Bill 1070, in court. The reclusive 81-year-old went on to become a major player in conservative politics in 2018, when he spent big on conservatives in midterm elections that year.

Fast-forward to 2024, and Mellon has spent this year’s election blowing through cash on both Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaigns, previously donating equal amounts of $25 million to both. Because when your options are between a racist demagogue and a brain-wormed conspiracy theorist, why choose?

According to The Washington Post, Mellon has made a bunch of statements that would make your ultra-racist grandfather proud. His 2015 self-published autobiography included passages that said Black people became “even more belligerent” after the expansion of social programs in the 1960s and ’70s, called people receiving social services “slaves of a new Master, Uncle Sam,” and described programs that help people not making enough money because billionaires hoard everything for themselves and dump money into presidential candidates who continue to cut their tax rates as “slavery redux.” Charming.

Prior to this latest billionaire boondoggle, Mellon donated $5 million to RFK Jr.’s campaign in April, according to The New York Times. Maybe he meant to give that same amount to Trump, accidentally added an extra zero and, being too wealthy for numbers to have meaning, just let it ride. Who knows. What we do know is that days after his donation, Make America Great Again Inc.—the super PAC that received the funds—stated it had raised $70 million in May (most of it Mellon’s) and had reserved $100 million in advertising in states where Trump already leads Biden.

Following his conviction, Trump’s campaign coffers now report having more cash on hand than Biden’s for the first time this election cycle—a feat that is expected to not last, as Biden gears up to collect two billion smackeroos in direct donations and another billy from outside groups with less prolifically heinous politics. According to The New York Times, Mellon’s spending spree has made him “the first donor to give $100 million in disclosed federal contributions in this year’s election,” an impressive investment that will nevertheless not be remembered by the sands of time.

Donald Trump is a big fan of the new Louisiana law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public classrooms.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee and convicted felon posted his approval early Friday morning on Truth Social in an all-caps post, noting “HOW CAN WE GO WRONG???”

The bill almost certainly will invite a lawsuit on First Amendment grounds, which would likely make its way to the Supreme Court, which, thanks to Trump, has a conservative majority. In past decades, however, the court has struck down similar bills.

But Trump knows what he’s doing. This is a calculated effort to appease the Christian right, along with his attacks on abortion rights, which he tries to disguise but very clearly states to Christian audiences. Somehow, despite his philandering, lying, business fraud, and numerous other violations of the Ten Commandments, he continues to be thought of as a person of faith by 64 percent of Republicans.

Trump depends on support from the Christian right, not just for himself but also to keep the Republican Party behind him. He will need their votes to have any chance of reelection in November, and they are already making plans for what to do if he returns to the White House.

Donald Trump’s media company stock has been steadily slipping in value following his conviction on 34 felony charges, and on Thursday, it dropped back down near its all-time low. 

Since the verdict in Trump’s hush-money case was decided last month, shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, have dropped in value by nearly 40 percent, according to CNBC. 

The stock market closed Thursday with DJT (Trump Media’s stock symbol) another 15 percent down, valued at just $26.75—dipping dangerously near its all-time low of $22.84, which it hit in April. At the time, Trump stock was doing so badly that Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes wrote a letter to Congress asking them to investigate the anonymous trading of DJT stock. He was previously torched for reaching out to NASDAQ to complain about “naked short-selling.”

It’s been another particularly tumultuous trading week for DJT, beginning with Trump’s stock plummeting nearly 10 percent on Tuesday. After closing that day, the SEC declared that Trump Media’s registration statement had gone into effect, which caused the value to dip another 17 percent in post-market trading.  

The registration statement allowed some investors to exercise warrants, which permit them to swap and sell shares. Unfortunately for standard shareholders, who are not granted the benefit of warrants, this can dilute the value of their shares.

Less than a month ago, everything was different for DJT. Shares of Trump Media stock cost a whopping $49, and Trump’s 114,750,000 shares were worth more than $5.6 billion.

At today’s rate, the former president’s shares would be worth closer to $3.2 billion, and it’s hard to imagine what they will be worth by September, when Trump will actually be allowed to sell. 

DJT continues to prove itself to be a uniquely volatile stock, the value of which is tied to the fate of one convicted felon and his ability to appeal to voters. 

A secretly recorded conversation with Roger Stone suggests that the Donald Trump adviser and confidant is implying that the judge in Trump’s classified documents case, Aileen Cannon, could be in the convicted felon and former president’s pocket.

Liberal filmmaker Lauren Windsor secretly recorded the self-described “dirty trickster” at a Catholics Prayer for Trump event on March 19 at Mar-a-Lago, where he made several comments hinting that Cannon would dismiss the case. MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance said that these comments could suggest Cannon is compromised.

“To the extent Stone is insinuating something more sinister, that they have judges in their pocket, that’s entirely different, entirely wrong,” Vance wrote in her Substack newsletter.

“Perhaps he’s just making it up when he says Judge Cannon will soon dismiss the case against Donald Trump and that they have other judges available during the election. But given his background and history, it would be foolish not to be concerned,” Vance added.

Stone was caught on video saying, “We are beating them. I think the judge is on the verge of dismissing the charges against him in Florida,” referring to Cannon.

“They’re delayed in New York City, and they’re now delayed in Washington,” Stone continued, alluding to Trump’s election interference case regarding the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

Stone’s words, if he is hinting at Cannon working with Trump, would seemingly be corroborated by a Thursday New York Times report revealing that the Trump-appointed judge was urged by senior federal judges to hand off Trump’s classified documents case to other judges with more experience, who didn’t have previous involvement interfering in the case, as Cannon had. Cecilia Altonaga, the chief U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Florida and Cannon’s superior, even reached out to Cannon and told her taking the case would be “bad optics.” Cannon turned the judges down.

Cannon’s decisions in the case have been criticized for appearing to favor the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and convicted felon. She’s agreed to hear pretrial motions that have slowed down proceedings, thrown out parts of the case, and postponed the trial indefinitely. The judge has drawn criticism, even from one of Trump’s former lawyers, for seeming to be prone to exploitation,

George Latimer made a bizarre comment to denigrate incumbent Representative Jamaal Bowman, whose seat he’s working to oust, claiming Bowman has an “ethnic benefit” against him. The comment is just the latest in a string of race-baiting comments Latimer has made against Bowman in a desperate attempt to win his seat in the most expensive House primary in history.

Latimer’s comment came during an interview with Punchbowl News released Thursday where Latimer said, “Is [Bowman] going to get at least 40 percent of the vote? Yes. Does he have an obvious ethnic benefit? Yes. Will he get the people who are furthest to the left? Yes. But once you get beyond a couple of constituencies that he has strength in, he’s weak everywhere else.”

This isn’t Latimer’s first bigot-coded remark to swipe at Bowman. During a debate last week, Latimer claimed Bowman’s “constituents are in Dearborn,” a remark widely interpreted to be an anti-Arab and Islamophobic nod to Dearborn, Michigan’s Arab-majority population.

Bowman, who is Black, represents New York’s 16th congressional district, which is 20.4 percent Black and over 40 percent white. Four days before Latimer’s latest comment, Bowman slammed him, saying, “George Latimer’s rhetoric is filled with dogwhistles, but his results are even worse: a decades-long history of obstructing federal desegregation orders.”

Latimer’s comment drew fierce backlash, with critics pointing out Latimer’s history of slow-walking desegregation in Westchester County and his tendency to claim the only reason people support Bowman is because he’s Black.

During their debate on June 11, Latimer accused Bowman of only ever talking about Black constituents, saying, “You don’t mention people who are not Black or brown. There’s a whole district, Jamaal, that you’ve ignored, and the district knows you’ve ignored it.” Latimer’s comment came in response to Bowman accusing Latimer of ignoring Black and brown constituents in Westchester, keenly noting, “Just because you have a few Black friends doesn’t make you anti-racist.”

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. didn’t qualify for CNN’s upcoming presidential debate, and he is not taking it well.

The debate, which will take place on June 27, is set to be a showdown between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive nominees from each major party. Unfortunately for Kennedy, CNN said he does not qualify to join them onstage.

“Presidents Biden and Trump do not want me on the debate stage and CNN illegally agreed to their demand,” insisted Kennedy, in a statement released Thursday by his campaign. “My exclusion by Presidents Biden and Trump from the debate is undemocratic, un-American, and cowardly.”

CNN gave Kennedy’s campaign until 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, June 19, to demonstrate that the independent candidate is on enough statewide ballots to potentially earn the 270 electoral votes needed to actually win the election. Kennedy fell woefully short: His name is confirmed on the ballot in just five states, tallying up to only 42 electoral votes, according to The Washington Post.

CNN generously also counted California and Hawaii, where Kennedy is the presumptive nominee of minor parties but the states have not either confirmed him on the ballot or received ballot paperwork yet. But even including those states, that would only bring him to 100 electoral votes. The anti-vaxxer’s name was reportedly not on the ballot in some of the 13 states where he’d previously claimed to have successfully petitioned.

Meanwhile, as the presumptive nominees, both Biden and Trump should be allowed onto the ballot in every state without having to petition once they are formally nominated. The fact that this hasn’t actually happened yet seems to be what’s infuriating Kennedy.

In the statement, Kennedy’s team went on to accuse CNN of using a double standard against the widely unpopular candidate.

“CNN’s published debate criteria require that ‘a candidate’s name must appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to reach the 270 electoral vote threshold.’ CNN is holding Kennedy to this requirement but is not requiring Presidents Biden and Trump to meet this requirement by claiming they are each the ‘presumptive nominee’ of a political party,” the statement said.

The statement also threatened legal action against CNN for supposedly violating Federal Election Commission guidelines.

“This means CNN, and every member of CNN who is participating in planning, executing, and holding this debate, is at risk of prosecution, as happened to Michael Cohen, for violating campaign finance laws. This risk is now acute given that any further violation would be knowing and willful, and thus could carry with it serious jail time,” the statement said.

The brain worm–haver has continued to delusionally insist that CNN, Biden, and Trump are locking him out of the debate because they are “afraid” he will win.

Kennedy’s statement included a quote from former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee, who ran a long-shot presidential campaign in 2020 as a libertarian candidate.

“If the American people could hear what all three candidates had to say about the critical issues facing our country, the choice between these three men would be clear,” Chafee is quoted as saying in the statement. “Kennedy would become the 47th President of the United States.”

The reality that Chafee describes looks less and less likely every day.

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when U.S. health officials were trying to get the public to adopt safety measures, White House staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin tried to appeal to Donald Trump’s vanity in order to get him to wear a mask.

The co-host of ABC’s The View was catching up with Dr. Anthony Fauci Thursday, who was on the show to promote his new book, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service. Griffin mentioned what she told Trump to try to convince the then president.

“I remember telling him he looked cool in the mask,” Griffin said, drawing laughs from the studio audience.

“I remember, yeah!” Fauci replied.

“I thought he might be like, ‘OK, fine, I’ll wear it.’ It didn’t work,” Griffin said.

“Nice try, Alyssa,” Fauci said.

In an April 2020 press conference, Trump gave a conflicting message by announcing federal guidelines recommending people wear masks, but saying he was choosing not to do so. Fauci referenced that event, telling the show’s hosts that the now convicted felon and presumptive Republican presidential nominee could’ve gotten his many supporters to wear masks early in the pandemic, possibly saving more lives.

“He has millions and millions of followers who are very loyal to him. All he had to do was say, ‘The CDC is recommending masks, we know it’s going to save lives, do it,’” Fauci said. In the end, Trump’s refusal to wear a mask was due to it smearing his makeup, his aide Cassidy Hutchinson would later reveal.

Trump and his administration would go on to give a lot of mixed messages and ultimately handle the virus poorly, from Trump voicing outrageous recommendations like injecting bleach and using bright lights to fight the virus, as well as championing the unproven anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine. In the end, Trump would contract Covid-19 himself.

Watch the segment here:

Loose Cannon alert: Judge Aileen Cannon was reportedly urged by senior federal judges to hand off Trump’s classified documents case when it was handed to her last year, according to sources who spoke to The New York Times. The new details add to what’s already a lengthy series of suspicious choices by Cannon that have benefited Trump.

According to The New York Times, two senior federal judges reached out to Cannon. The first unnamed judge contacted Cannon and argued she should hand the case off by citing the lack of a secure storage facility at the Fort Pierce courthouse where Cannon sits, a necessity for storing the classified documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Cannon refused, requiring the city (and taxpayers) to shell out to build a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility at the courthouse.

After Cannon’s refusal, Chief Justice Cecilia Altonaga got on the horn and told Cannon taking the case would be “bad optics,” according to The New York Times, due to Cannon’s intervention after Trump sued the government for seizing the classified documents, which Trump argued were his personal property. Cannon took over and decided the case in Trump’s favor. Prosecutors appealed her decision, and an appeals panel—including two Trump-appointed judges—overturned her order, ruling that she had no authority to intervene. Cannon rejected Altonaga’s assessment.

Since those calls, Cannon has routinely issued decisions in Trump’s favor: She’s slow-walked pretrial motions, thrown out portions of the case against Trump, and indefinitely postponed the trial. Cannon has shown a steep lack of aptitude and unusual willingness to cater to Trump’s most absurd lies.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s authoritarian deeds have resulted in a lawsuit from a former top employee in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who says he was forced to resign for whistleblowing.

Shane Desguin, the agency’s former chief of staff, said in his filing that he was forced to retire in November after he wouldn’t carry out illegal or inappropriate orders, such as violating the state’s public records laws, arresting protesters without probable cause, and obtaining the photos and personal information of migrants who were transported to Florida without legal justification.

Desguin “was subjected to disparate treatment, different terms and conditions of employment, and held to a different standard because he reported Defendants’ malfeasance, gross misconduct and unlawful employment activities and was subject to retaliation thereafter,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed against DeSantis and the FDLE.

Not long after Desguin’s retirement, his deputy, Patricia Carpenter, was also fired. The lawsuit claims that Desguin and Carpenter faced an internal investigation that was a “thinly veiled attempt at character assassination” because of their whistleblowing.

A spokesperson for DeSantis didn’t comment on the lawsuit, according to ABC News, but cited that investigation as well as comments from the FDLE’s communications director, Gretl Plessinger: “Shane Desguin and Patricia Carpenter created workplace chaos, endangered the safety of other employees, and acted dishonestly and unprofessionally.”

The lawsuit says in late 2021, Desguin had to deal with the arrival of migrants being flown by the federal government to Florida in his position with the FDLE’s Office of Statewide Intelligence.

In his lawsuit, Desguin says that he was ordered by DeSantis, through another official, to get “photographs, biometric data, and any other pertinent information by engaging with migrants at the airport. As these requests escalated, (Desguin) objected, and emphasized, on multiple occasions … FDLE could not legally conduct name checks, capture photographs, or compile intelligence files without a criminal predicate or reasonable suspicion, as those actions would be unlawful.”

Later, when Florida officials suggested that migrants should be transported by bus out of the state (which was later attempted), Desguin said he told his superiors that this could constitute “false imprisonment or kidnapping,” the lawsuit said.

Once, in September 2023, Desguin said he was told by a DeSantis aide to arrest neo-Nazi demonstrators at an Orlando event to benefit the governor politically. He said that he couldn’t arrest protesters simply for their views, to which the aide told him, “I don’t think you understand. If you look hard enough, you can find a way. The governor wants someone arrested today. He will stand by you in any arrest.”

DeSantis has recently been experiencing long-overdue pushback for his hard-line actions, whether it’s having his signature anti-trans law being struck down in court, a failed attempt to invoke executive privilege, or having to back away from his infamous book bans. His culture-war laws have cost Florida millions of dollars and made him unpopular in the state, and unsurprisingly, he’s now working with the more popular, if not more authoritarian, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene went ballistic Thursday over a new poll from Fox News that saw President Joe Biden take the lead from Donald Trump, even if by only a couple points.

Clearly confusing the poll’s agreeableness with its accuracy, the Georgia Republican found herself in lock-goose-step with the meme-loving fascist Charlie Kirk, who also took issue with the results.

“Okay, I’ve been studying this new FOX NEWS poll, and I have concluded it’s a complete outlier,” Kirk wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “They have Joe Biden winning rural voters 50-48% over Trump. There is no way that’s possible. Zero.”

Kirk recently announced that his conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA, would be partnering with the Trump campaign, and invited Trump to speak at its convention in Milwaukee last weekend.

Kirk didn’t provide any evidence for this claim, but Greene, who is no stranger to pushing conspiracy theories, reposted his so-called analysis in total agreement.

“100% correct!! This Fox News poll is WRONG!” she wrote. “My district is in rural northwest Georgia and it is SOLIDLY supporting Trump! Same with most of rural America! Smart people!”

Greene’s factless freak-out comes just hours after a tantrum from Trump himself, who went off about the poll on Truth Social, claiming that Fox News is regularly unreliable, even though the outlet pretty consistently backs the former president in its coverage.

Losing it over one poll is certainly not normal but goes to show the fealty Trump imagines conservative news networks should have for him. And wherever Trump goes, Greene is always sure to follow.