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Lara Trump Blasted For Claiming Presidency Made 'Good-Hearted' Father-In-Law Poorer

Critics on social media were not buying Lara Trump’s pity party for President Donald Trump. They particularly did not care for her claim that Trump would have an easier time of things were he not president.

“Lara Trump was slammed for claiming her father-in-law’s life would be better if he weren't President of the United States,” reported RadarOnline.com. “Lara, 43, who is married to Donald Trump's son Eric, said in a recent interview that the business mogul has been punished financially by getting into politics – even though his net worth has climbed to $6.5billion from $2.6 billion in little over 14 months.”

“I wish people would appreciate how much easier Donald Trump’s life would’ve been if he'd never gotten involved in politics,” Lara Trump claimed on the podcast of Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller. “He's the one President to leave the White House with less money than he went into it with. He’s had zeros come off his net worth because he ran for president.”But RadarOnline and other critics fact checked Lara Trump on the spot, with RadarOnline pointing out that “Donald Trump and his family made over $4 billion since he took office.”

“You cannot be serious. Unplug your head from Trump’s a——," said one critic on X, while another called her assertion “Absurd.”"Lara, you are f—— delusional,” wailed another on X, while a third called her claim “a complete lie. Trump is using the presidency to become richer.”

“Our [lives] would be so much better, too,” said another critic on X. “ … [M]aybe he should just quit now.”

“But [Trump is] a genuinely good-hearted person," Lara Trump added, while ignoring the fact that Trump threatened to extinguish the entire civilization of Iran on Easter and destroy their energy infrastructure.Lara Trump's claims stand in stark contradiction to documented financial realities.

Beyond the $4 billion accumulated by Trump and his family since taking office, investigative reporting has revealed specific mechanisms through which the presidency has enriched the Trump organization [including her husband Eric's firm recently winning a $24 million Pentagon deal}.

Foreign leaders and wealthy donors have funneled money into Trump-branded properties, investment funds, and business ventures at unprecedented rates. The World Liberty Financial crypto fund alone secured a half-billion-dollar investment from UAE officials shortly before Trump's inauguration—a transaction that coincided with the White House granting advanced AI chip access to the Emirates.

Meanwhile, Trump has collected hundreds of millions from corporate donors and wealthy individuals for vanity projects including a proposed presidential library, ballroom renovation, and triumphal arch, with tens of millions of those funds remaining unaccounted for. The assertion that Trump sacrificed financially for public service ignores the systematic weaponization of the presidency for personal enrichment.

Additionally, Trump's threats of genocide against Iran, his illegal war that has destabilized global markets and cost American consumers billions in increased energy costs, and his various corruption scandals paint a portrait of a president whose time in office has been characterized by personal gain at the expense of national stability and democratic norms. Lara Trump's narrative of victimhood rings hollow against this documented record.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

On Fox, Bartiromo Celebrates Eric Trump's Company Winning $24M Pentagon Contract

Fox Business anchor Maria Bartoromo — who was one of the most fervent participants in Fox’s effort to turn Hunter Biden’s business interests into a corruption scandal for his father, President Joe Biden — congratulated President Donald Trump’s son Eric on air on Thursday after his company landed a robotics contract from the Pentagon.

Bartiromo devoted more than 10 minutes of her program to a fawning joint interview with Foundation Future Industries CEO Sankaet Pathak and Eric Trump, the company’s “chief strategy adviser.”

After Bartiromo congratulated the pair on winning a $24 million Defense Department contract to test its “Phantom” robot for military applications, she gave them a platform to talk up their product, as well as what Bartiromo described as “these incredible goals that you've got,” including to “build life-sustaining technology on Earth and beyond.”

Bartiromo did not quiz Eric Trump on the obvious ethical problems involved in the Pentagon directing a contract to the president’s son’s company. Instead, she asked him the following questions:

“Eric, I know this is a lot about national security, but [Pathak’s] talking to us about other use cases. Tell us about that and how did you get involved — what attracted you to this company?”
“Eric, you're a master at hospitality. Tell us how you could see these uses play out with robots. I know that there are robots used right now, for example, in hospitals, but this is something that you — the robot goes to the dock, picks up medical equipment, puts it in a basket, and delivers it where it needs to go.”

Eric Trump and other members of the president’s family have apparently adopted Fox’s “Biden Crime Family” conspiracy theory as their business plan, as I detailed for MSNOW earlier this month:

Many of the network’s highest-rated hosts carried out a yearslong obsession with what Fox host Sean Hannity described as the “Biden Crime Family,” mentioning Biden’s son at least 13,440 times over a period of less than 16 months of Biden’s presidency. Their feverish conspiracy theory postulated that Hunter Biden had served as a “bag man” for his father, soaking up money funneled from foreign entities and kicking a share back to Joe Biden, who would then use his elected office to help his son’s business partners.
No substantive evidence ever emerged that Joe Biden profited from Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. The dealings in question largely occurred when Joe Biden was a private citizen, and the primary instance the conspiracy theorists have cited as evidence of him taking state action on behalf of one of his son’s clients — that he, as vice president, pushed for the removal of Ukraine’s top prosecutor in order to benefit one of his son’s clients — was manifestly bogus.
But Trump and his family members appear to have adopted influence-dealing on a dramatically larger scale than the Biden family was ever accused of. And the Trumps’ sprawling set of business deals with Gulf state royals and the sovereign wealth funds they control cannot be disentangled from the president’s decision-making in launching and continuing a war of choice against Iran.

Bartiromo was a key player in Fox’s fixation on Hunter Biden, regularly hosting Republican members of Congress like House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) to promote their overwrought investigations. The sum total of the money Comer tracked from international business sources to “the Bidens and their associates” — itself an inflated figure that includes money going to non-family members — was $20 million, less than the single Pentagon contract Eric’s company received.

Fox hosts who tore their garments over the Bidens typically just ignore the historic effort by President Trump and his family members to cash in on his second term in office. But Bartiromo is taking it one step further by openly celebrating Eric Trump’s business.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

America First? Corrupt Trump Family Business Sold Our National Security

The U.S. makes artificial intelligence chips so special, so advanced, that the Biden administration limited their export for national security reasons. They didn't want them to get into the hands of China or Russia.

But days before Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term, go-betweens for an Abu Dhabi royal signed a secret deal that delivered $187 million into Trump family ventures -- so far, as far as we know.

Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan — nickname, the "spy sheik" — had long been frustrated in his campaign to obtain this highly sensitive AI technology. The fear was that our super chips could be diverted to China.

Under the private arrangement, Tahnoon's $1.3 billion fund paid $500 million for 49 percent of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's crypto enterprise.

A few weeks after Trump returned to power, the United Arab Emirates was given yearly access to about half a million of the most advanced chips. Abu Dhabi is the most powerful of the seven UAE emirates. Tahnoon's brother is the UAE's president.

Zach and Alex Witkoff, both principals in World Liberty, were not left out. They are the sons of Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer whom Trump named U.S. special envoy to the Middle East. The Witkoff family is getting its cut of millions from the deal.

These machinations were complicated and secretive enough to fall under the radar of average Americans. But they amount to an underhanded sale of prized U.S. technology. To wade through the details, read The Wall Street Journal's excellent account of what went on.

Again, these controls were designed to prevent U.S. technology from aiding rival nations in developing military, surveillance and strategic AI expertise.

Another change from the Biden years: Back then, the crypto-based betting platform Polymarket was under a Justice Department probe into money laundering. Now it's made a highly lucrative deal with the New York Stock Exchange's parent company. And its founder, 27-year-old Shayne Coplan, is suddenly a billionaire.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission considered Polymarket an unregistered exchange open to market manipulation. Thus, it limited Polymarket's U.S. bets to derivative trading.

Polymarket doesn't know the identities of most of the people who trade on its platform. It's been tagged for manipulation on all kinds of bets: What would happen in Russia's war on Ukraine? Who would win the Nobel Peace Prize? Not knowing exactly who's involved lets users trade on insider information. Such activity is illegal, but who would the Securities and Exchange Commission know to go after?

Hours before the "surprise" U.S. military operation to take down Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, bets on that happening surged into Polymarket. One unnamed trader made more than $400,000.

Another form of manipulation is "washing." That's when trades are moved back and forth, creating the impression of an active market. A study out of Columbia University found evidence of wash trading in about 25 percent of Polymarket's volume.

Two months before Trump's second inauguration, FBI agents broke the door of Coplan's Manhattan penthouse apartment. They were probing charges that Polymarket was laundering money. Once Trump was in office, the Justice Department halted its investigation. Why the turnaround? Could it possibly be that Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm is a Polymarket investor? (Junior is now listed as one of the company's advisers.) It should be no surprise that Coplan sat with Donald Jr. during the 2024 Republican National Convention. Thus, things are looking up for Polymarket and its founder.

What's good for America does not necessarily track the Trump family's fortunes. Historians someday will gather a compendium of the Trump era's corruption and self-dealing. And future generations will look on with appalled wonder that all this went on under the public's nose.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Yet Another Grift -- Trump Mobile! -- Evaporates Like All Their Family Scams

Back in June, the grifty Trump family launched its Trump-branded cell service and super-luxe Trump T1 smartphone with maximum hype and minimal details. Now, five months later, neither is anywhere to be found.

We were told that the phone would be sleek, gold, made in the United States, and somehow only $499. And you could use your Trump phone on the Trump Mobile service for a mere monthly fee of $47—yes, you know why it’s that number. All you had to do to secure one was put down a $100 deposit—because who wouldn’t want to do that?

NBC News actually tried to buy the phone, dutifully paying the $100 down payment back in August. Since then, the network has waited. And waited. And waited.

According to NBC, it received “no proactive updates” since placing the order. That seems to be just a fancy way to say that the company went radio silent after shaking down the rubes. NBC called the support linefive times between September and November, only to get the runaround about the phone’s release.

In October, the support line said that the phone would ship on Nov. 13—which has come and gone with no Trump phone of any kind, much less a sleek, gold, American-made bargain.

After NBC followed up again, a customer service representative said that the delivery would be at the “beginning of December.”Why the delay? Well, the government shutdown, according to the customer service representative.

Not really beating the accusations that the Trump Organization is inextricably connected with the presidency here. If it’s just a private project of President Donald Trump’s sons, then why would it be affected by the government shutdown?

The details of this excellent—yet somehow nonexistent—phone keep changing. References to the phone being made in the United States are no longer anywhere to be found on the Trump Mobile website. Now, it’s going to be “brought to life right here in the USA. With American hands behind every device” and with an “American-proud design.”

The phone itself is also in a state of flux. The original offering looked like a gold-plated iPhone, but when Trump Mobile started taking preorders in August, it changed to looked like a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, photoshopped with the T1 logo and an American flag. The phone also now appears to be in a Spigen case—because they literally forgot to remove the Spigen logo.

The dimensions of the phone also seem to have changed between June and August. In June, the phone had a 6.78-inch screen. But by August, it changed to a 6.25-inch screen.

The Trump Mobile T1 smartphone as depicted on Trump Mobile websiteScreenshot from trumpmobile.com

But surely Trump Mobile is going gangbusters, right? Even if you can’t show your patriotism with an ugly Trump-branded phone, you can at least prove you’re a real American by using Trump Mobile cell service, right?

Wrong.

First of all, it’s not actually Trump Mobile’s network. It’s just a licensing deal, with the Trump family slapping its name on Liberty Mobile Wireless, which operates a mobile virtual network operator on the T-Mobile network. An MVNO is a carrier that buys bandwidth on large networks like Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T. So if you’re using Trump Mobile, you’re actually just using Liberty Mobile, which is actually just operating on T-Mobile.

And good luck finding out if Trump Mobile actually exists. News reports touting its existence are all from June, when the Trump sons first made their launch. Since then, the only development seems to have been the company deleting its coverage map because it failed to label the Gulf of Mexico “Gulf of America.”

Definitely focusing on what matters to bring this thing to market.

The Trump phone will join Trump University and the Trump video phone as a way to steal from MAGA’s most loyal suckers. It was bad enough when Trump did this as a private citizen—but it’s extremely gross watching him get away with it as president.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Lara Trump Blasted For Claiming Presidency Made 'Good-Hearted' Father-In-Law Poorer

On Fox, Bartiromo Celebrates Eric Trump's Company Winning $24M Pentagon Contract

America First? Corrupt Trump Family Business Sold Our National Security

Yet Another Grift -- Trump Mobile! -- Evaporates Like All Their Family Scams

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