ICYMI: Trump Bulldozing White House; US on Human Rights Watchlist; Viral Hillary Clinton "Bombshell" a Hoax
Plus: democracy dead in El Salvador, Epstein survivor family skeptical of Trump, radioactive wasps in America, and more
In case you missed it:
Trump is BULLDOZING the White House
The U.S. is slipping further and further down a Human Rights watchlist
Donald Trump was DESTROYED by the president of Mexico
All that and more in today’s ICYMI, my new weekly newsletter.
Death, taxes, and Donald Trump’s placement on the Epstein list: these are the only things truly certain in life.
To be honest, with the sheer scale of misinformation that Donald Trump and his administration have thrown at us over the past few weeks, I’m surprised that the Epstein list scandal has not only stayed alive, it’s seeing updates coming multiple times per day. You may have noticed that over on my YouTube page, this week alone, I’ve covered the story behind the missing minutes from the Epstein prison video being found, Trump flipping out over an Epstein survivor going public, Melania being outed as an Epstein girl, Trump slipping up and admitting he’s read the Epstein files, and Trump making a strange admission that Epstein “stole” one of his employees (more on that one later).
And yet, what if I told you there was more? There’s always more. Despite the fact that none other than Sydney Sweeney temporarily derailed the river of Epstein news, the focus is renewed. We are so back, y’all, and to kick off this week’s newsletter…
VIRGINIA GIUFFRE’S FAMILY IS PRETTY PISSED AT TRUMP:
In case you missed it, Donald Trump admitted that Jeffrey Epstein “stole” a 14-year-old girl from Mar-a-Lago. But it wasn’t just any 14-year-old: it was Virginia Roberts Giuffre, debatably the most well-known of Epstein and Maxwell’s survivors, who had previously implicated Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, Jean-Luc Brunel, Les Wexner, hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, and former MIT professor Marvin Minsky. More often than not, when you hear stories about Epstein’s very famous friends that allegedly raped young girls, they’re a story that originated from Giuffre.
Giuffre tragically passed away in April of this year, so she can’t confirm or deny whether Epstein “stole” her. However, her surviving siblings have come forward with concerns over Trump stating she was “stolen” because to them, it seems to imply that Trump knows more than he’s letting on.
“It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey ‘likes women on the younger side … no doubt about it,’” Giuffre’s two brothers and her sisters-in-law told The Atlantic. “We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this.”
According to her siblings Sky and Amanda Roberts, and Danny and Lanette Wilson, all of the recent news getting to the bottom of the Epstein list is bittersweet, because on one hand, the press is finally getting to the bottom of Epstein and Maxwell’s depravity… but on the other hand, they just lost their sister a few months ago, and they’re horrified by the potential for Ghislaine Maxwell to receive a pardon for her testimony to Congress.
“If our sister could speak today, she would be most angered by the fact that the government is listening to a known perjurer, a woman who repeatedly lied under oath and will continue to do so as long as it benefits her position,” the siblings wrote in a statement, referring to Maxwell’s overturned perjury charge.
Lost in the sauce of this story is that Trump admitted to more than one girl being “stolen” by Epstein, which means that there is currently another potential Epstein survivor out there that ALSO worked at Mar-a-Lago. This is just another “coincidence” in the long, storied history of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s friendship, just like the coincidences that Trump rode on Epstein’s jet eight times, or that Epstein was at Trump’s wedding, or that the two had a Victoria’s Secret party where they were the only men present, or that Trump knew Epstein well enough to send him a cryptic naughty birthday letter.
Yeah. It’s just one big coincidence.
Human Rights Org Specializing in Civil Society Does Not Find United States a Civil Society:
CIVICUS, a global civil society alliance, defines themselves as “an influential network of organisations at the local, national, regional and international levels, and spans the spectrum of civil society.” They’ve been keeping tabs on countries via a Watchlist that monitors whether or not they’ve begun to “decline” as a civil space. To put it simply, they’re looking to see which countries have begun to plunge into fascism, or are CONTINUING to plunge into fascism.
On July 30, they issued a press release raising some concerns about civic freedoms on six countries: El Salvador, Indonesia, Kenya, Serbia, Turkey… and the United States of America. I’ll say that again: on a list outlining countries falling into fascism, the United States is sitting pretty alongside El Salvador and Turkey.
“The United States appears to be sliding deeper into the quicksands of authoritarianism. Peaceful protests are confronted with military force, critics are treated as criminals, journalists are targeted, and support for civil society and international cooperation have been cut back,” said Mandeep Tiwana, Secretary General of CIVICUS, in the press release. “Six months into Donald Trump’s second term, a bizarre assault on fundamental freedoms and constitutional safeguards has become the new normal.”
So… why is the United States sliding deeper into authoritarianism? According to CIVICUS, it’s a rise in political violence, with the assassination of Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman being directly cited, alongside the crackdowns on peaceful assembly and protests, the rise in deportations, the National Guard and Marines being deployed to Los Angeles, and the attacks on journalists Lauren Tomasi and Mario Guevara. But that’s not all, because they also highlight the defunding of PBS, NPR, and local stations, as well as the rollback of foreign aid, slashing humanitarian, and development and global health programs.
The press release is somehow even longer than Donald Trump’s history with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, and CIVICUS makes a compelling case that the United States has become “narrowed” - in their list of rankings, that means the U.S. is a state where people can exercise their rights and freedoms, but “violations of these rights also take place.” Compare this to countries that are doing fine, or “open,” with “both enables and safeguards the enjoyment of civic space” and its citizens live in lower levels of fear, or the worse off, or “closed” countries, that are in “complete closure - in law and in practice - of civic space.”
That means the United States is slipping far beyond its reputation as “home of the free,” and it’s all Donald Trump’s fault.
I’m not really sure what we can do about this except get Donald Trump out of office, and even then, is it too late to fix what Trump has already done? As we’ll see in a story later on about DOGE, the damage has already been done - and might be completely irreversible.
MORE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
On X, an alleged “bombshell” was dropped by Tulsi Gabbard claiming to prove Hillary Clinton created a “treasonous” plot to frame Donald Trump for colluding with Russia. The New York Times has revealed this is based off the work of - get this - Russian spies.
DOGE was supposed to eliminate government fraud and waste, wasn’t it? To nobody’s surprise, it didn’t. Instead, it wasted $21 billion, and is projected to continue to waste $29 billion per year from aid organizations affected by the shuttering of USAID. I guess the real government fraud were the friends we made along the way.
The Smithsonian has removed Donald Trump from an exhibit on impeachment within their American history museum, with the exhibit now slated to claim that only three presidents have ever faced impeachment in U.S. history. Which is strange, since Donald Trump is the only president to have ever been impeached twice, and we all know how much Trump likes to flex on things nobody else can claim.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has exposed his own game and revealed that the long con is to privatize social security. I don’t have a joke for this, it’s one of the more disturbing pieces of news this week that’s been unfairly buried.
De minimis shipments, the tax loophole that allows duty-free low value shipments of $800 or less from overseas, will be dead on August 19. Another win for the “kill all poor people” initiative set in place by Donald Trump, experts claim that low-income families are going to be hit with anywhere between 10.9 and 13 billion in additional costs.
President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum has once again destroyed Donald Trump, by getting yet another extension on Donald Trump’s big “beautiful” tariffs on Mexico. The woman the Washington Post once called “the world’s leading Trump whisperer” is less a whisperer than a wrecking ball, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up convincing Trump to tariff himself instead of Mexico.
$200 million for a new, tacky gold ballroom at The White House, in place of the East Wing - and only The Daily Beast seems to have noticed that the East Wing used to be Melania Trump’s wing. Meaning: Trump is tearing down his wife’s part of The White House. Easily the most divorced guy energy he’s exuded in his second term.
Senate Democrats are investigating the Paramount-Skydance merger following their quick $16 million settlement with Trump. But Skydance disputes that they broke any laws, specifying they stuck to anti-bribery laws - yeah totally, they just really like Trump and wanted him to have some money. Makes sense.
I’m not sure we’re going to see a month this year without meaningful protests against Donald Trump. 50501 has announced that, following the success of the No Kings protests, more than 300 demonstrations are set to take place across the US on August 2. Fun fact: August 2 is just a day later than the two year anniversary of Mike Pence publicly denouncing Trump for his Jan. 6 indictment.
“Radioactive wasp nest found at site where US once made nuclear bombs,” says ABC News. Is this nature’s revenge against that time Trump tried to kill all the bees?
In the latest case of “water is wet,” it turns out Los Angeles protesters, the same protesters that kicked off what became the No Kings protests, were arrested on false pretenses. What - the Trump administration lying? That doesn’t make ANY sense.
Nate Silver has released an analysis of the media’s focus on Jeffrey Epstein, asking the question of whether the Epstein saga is the new Russiagate. As of right now, the top comment reads, “Leave it to Nate to write a galaxy brained take about how the Republican president of the United States being credibly associated with a child sex trafficker is bad news for the Democrats.”
One of the authors of Project 2025, Paul Dans, is going to challenge Lindsey Graham in the 2026 Republican primaries. Paul Dans edited ALL of Project 2025 and co-wrote the chapter declaring that most governmental bodies need to be privatized, so this would be a true example of replacing a paper cut with a stab wound.
The official GOP X account has posted a meme stating that Donald Trump is “making automobiles great again.” Unfortunately for him, the car is a Lada - a Russian automobile. Make Russia Great Again?
