<Donald Trump was in typical form on Tuesday evening as he appeared before a throng of supporters in Bedminster, New Jersey, to denounce his latest criminal indictment.

The ex-president delivered a roughly 30-minute address to a crowd of fans who descended upon the golf club to hear him swipe at political rivals and anyone else whose own actions he thought could be used to paint his own as harmless.

It was a rambling speech broken up by an impromptu singing of “Happy Birthday” from Mr Trump’s harmonically-challenged fans, whose rendition of the tune dissolved into a slurred mess by the conclusion.

But it was also revealing in that it previewed the roughshod defence that Mr Trump and his legal team apparently hope to make before a judge, as the former president aimed a shotgun-like spray of similar accusations at nearly every other prominent occupant of the White House of the past decade and a half.

So what can we learn from the former president’s remarks?

Trump didn’t do it. But Obama did, and Biden did, and … Cheney did?

The most interesting part of the ex-president’s remarks was certainly the firehose of accusations he aimed at his predecessors and successor in the White House. While none of the individual points he raised were particularly surprising, what was revealing was to hear them all together, hastily cobbled together in a sort of “everybody does it” defence.

It was a moment that underscored the frustration of Mr Trump and his apparent inability to see why his own situation is so different. The ex-president poured over Joe Biden’s trove of documents at his home and office, Bill Clinton’s possession of tape recordings that included his own personal thoughts on his work, and (of course) Hillary Clinton’s long-maligned private server, used to store emails from her time as secretary of State in violation of federal rules.

But in each case, the former president failed to make one key logical connection: the outright refusal of his team, for months, to return documents including classified materials to federal authorities who were certain that the pile in question was in Mr Trump’s possession. That’s one key factor that every other case failed to include — even in the case of Hillary Clinton, whom Mr Trump faulted for “acid-washing” her server, did not refuse to turn over classified documents once they were discovered. In her case, the documents were revealed to have been classified only after they had already been handed over to the FBI.

His inclusion of a throwaway anecdote about a paper shredder being spotted near former Vice President Dick Cheney’s house was the icing on top: Mr Trump is now resorting to making baseless suggestions of wrongdoing targeting fellow Republicans to save his own skin.

His first explanation for what supposedly happened

One of the few new angles of Donald Trump’s defense emerged during his remarks this evening: an explanation for exactly why the documents were apparently being stored in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.

Calling the photos of his stacked boxes staged, Mr Trump insisted that the boxes were actually a collection of unorganised personal items taken from the White House, which supposedly included clothes, medical records and other objects. They remained stored in such a manner, Mr Trump told his eagerly-nodding crowd, because he is simply a busy man with too much time (and not enough groupies) to unpack those boxes and store the documents properly, even two years after his move from Washington.

Misconceptions about the Presidential Records Act

Citing case law involving Bill Clinton’s retention of recorded tapes from his days in the White House (a case which ended in Mr Clinton’s favour), Mr Trump once again insisted that he, as president, held the sole authority to retain personal documents, notes, and other records instead of returning them to the National Archives.

But he left out a few key details about the case, decided by Judge Amy Berman Jackson, which of course contradict his story.

For one, the records in question must be marked as personal documents at the time of their creation, not retroactively after a president leaves the White House. Secondly, a former litigation director for the Archives told Politifact about the issue, "[n]o prior case has held that a president has absolute discretion to designate official government records — classified or unclassified — as his own personal records."....>

<....The dispute over whether the documents themselves were personal records may be fought over in court at some point. But if reports about their contents are accurate, they included documents critical to US national defence efforts, which would make that argument difficult to make.

A vow to do exactly what he accused Biden of doing

Many Democrats in the age of Trump, battling their foes on social media, often quip that “accusations are admissions” — the idea that Mr Trump, and his allies, often project their own supposed misdeeds when lobbing baseless allegations at others.

There was certainly an argument to be made for that theme playing out in Mr Trump’s speech on Tuesday evening. Directly referencing his prior rantings on Truth Social, he vowed for the first time in public: “The seal is broken by what they’ve done… On November 5, 2024, justice will be done.”

He had previously written, using the same metaphor of a broken seal, that he would appoint a special prosecutor to specifically target the Biden family. That appears to be an official campaign promise now — to weaponise the Department of Justice against Democrats, and ending the agency’s independence from the White House.

Fox tries to crawl back into the good graces of Trump fans

If Donald Trump was hoping to be the talk of the night on Twitter, he may be surprised to learn of his upstaging by none other than Fox News, the network which recently was forced to make a massive settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over its role in spreading Mr Trump’s 2020 conspiracies.

The network was the only of the big three to carry Mr Trump live, but for portions of his remarks displayed a split-screen showing Mr Trump speaking on one side and his opponent, Joe Biden, hosting a White House event on the other half.

That wasn’t the big deal, though: Fox’s producers, apparently feeling the burn of their massive viewership slide in the wake of Tucker Carlson’s firing, chose Tuesday evening as the time to take the gloves off and eject their network completely from of the realm of objective news coverage with a chyron, referring to Biden, declaring “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested”.

The total lack of an ability to present an objective summary of the news aside, it was a clear play for attention that worked to some degree as journalists quickly posted screenshots about the network’s display (and wrote long-winded paragraphs about it, too). A spokesperson for Fox didn’t immediately return a request for comment.>

<It was an overwhelming set of unfavorable circumstances that came together to seal the fate of the Philadelphia Athletics.The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1954. In fact, it was downright bleak. The franchise was beset by problems from all sides. A bad team, sparse crowds, burdensome debt, and internal strife all were set against the backdrop of playing in an old ballpark located in a declining neighborhood with limited parking and bad transportation. Grumblings were being heard from other American League clubs that were dissatisfied with the paltry receipts they were getting from games played in Philadelphia.

It hadn’t always been this way. After their founding in 1901, the Athletics had achieved unparalleled success in Philadelphia baseball. After league titles in 1902 and 1905, the club won four more pennants and three World Series championships from 1910 through 1914. A second dynasty emerged when the A’s won the AL title three years in a row, 1929 through 1931, and the World Series twice (1929–30).[fn]The Athletics’ record of success dwarfs that of Philadelphia’s other major-league team. In 2008, the Phillies won just their second World Series championship after 126 years of playing baseball in the city. In fifty-four years of playing in Philadelphia, the Athletics won five World Series championships. In 2009, the Phillies won their seventh National League pennant. In fifty-four years of playing in Philadelphia, the Athletics won nine American League titles.[/fn] Some baseball historians consider the 1929 team to be the greatest ever to take the field.[fn]Bill Kashatus, Connie Mack’s ’29 Triumph (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999).[/fn]

Woes on the Field …

Glory days became a dim memory, however, as Connie Mack dismantled his second dynasty, selling off star players, and the Philadelphia Athletics descended into the AL’s second division. Last place was where the A’s typically could be found in the standings. The World War II years were a particularly awful time for the club. The 1943 team was so awful, with a record of 49–105, that it finished 49 games out of first and even 20 games behind the club in next to last place.[fn]In this article, data on the Athletics’ won–lost figures and place in the AL standings are taken from, David S. Neft, Richard M. Cohen, and Michael L. Neft, The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball, 23d ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin), 2003.[/fn]

The Athletics showed some signs of resurgence in the late 1940s, finishing above .500 in 1947–49. The 1948 team even contended for the league lead before falling off the pace late in the season. Still, it ended up in fourth place, the club’s only finish in the first division from 1934 through 1951.

The A’s were supposed to be contenders in 1950. It was the golden jubilee of the AL and of Connie Mack’s reign as manager. The club adopted the rallying cry “One more pennant for Connie!” In a blockbuster trade before the season, the Athletics sent four marginal players and $100,000 to the St. Louis Browns for star third baseman Bob Dillinger and outfielder Paul Lehner. The franchise also invested in upgrading Shibe Park. It spent $300,000 to install additional box seats and for other park improvements. In addition, the ballpark’s electrical plant was overhauled for $100,000.[fn]Harry T. Paxton, “The Philadelphia A’s Last Stand,” The Saturday Evening Post 226, no. 50 (12 June 1954): 134.[/fn] These were heady sums for an organization known for its lack of funds.

But 1950 turned out to be a bust for the Athletics. The team never was in contention, and Dillinger turned out to be a major disappointment. He was sold to the Pittsburgh Pirates in July for $35,000.[fn]Mark Stang, Athletics Album: A Photo History of the Philadelphia Athletics (Wilmington: Orange Frazer Press, 2006), 172.[/fn] The Athletics ended the year at 52–102, firmly in the cellar— and a full 46 games out of first place. To add insult to injury, the Philadelphia Phillies won the National League pennant in 1950, further solidifying that club’s status as the ascendant baseball team in the city....>

More, much more....

<U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has spent years promoting countless conspiracy theories on topics ranging from COVID-19 to climate change, apparently isn’t sold on House Republicans’ claim that when President Joe Biden was a vice president, he took a $5 million bribe and there are taxes to prove it.

The claims, little more than a conspiracy theory based on a single FBI document used to record unverified statements made by third-parties, have been gobbled up and spewed across far-right media and social media by some of the most extreme Republicans in the House of Representatives, and even a few GOP Senators.

How far out there is Sen. Johnson?

“All told, when it comes to spewing dangerous drivel, Mr. Johnson has displayed a commitment and creativity rarely seen outside of QAnon gatherings or Trump family dinners,” The New York Times’ Michelle Cottle wrote in an opinion piece last year.

So it’s stunning that Sen. Johnson is now apparently walking back the unsubstantiated claims exploding on the right that President Biden took a $5 million bribe when he was President Barack Obama’s Vice President.

The latest twist of “evidence,” according to Republicans, is that there are now “tapes” allegedly proving the Biden bribe conspiracy theory.

But, in a Tuesday interview with a local Wisconsin right-wing talk radio show host, Johnson – whose outrageously wild claims in the past have crowned him the “Senate’s leading conspiracy theorist” a “bagman for Qanon,” and “Putin’s favorite Senator” – said the allegations he and other Republicans have been spreading now must be taken with a grain of salt.

“We don’t even know” if the tapes “exist,” Johnson said. “It’s a claim, it’s an allegation. We don’t know whether they really exist or not.”

Another GOP Senator who has been spreading the bribery conspiracy theory is Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the president pro tempore emeritus of the United States Senate who began serving in public elected office in 1959.

Grassley has been a consistent partner with House Republican Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer on the Biden bribery conspiracy theory, despite having no official Senate function or role that would allow him to pursue an investigation.

Chairman Comer, who has admitted his purpose as that powerful committee’s chief is to attack Biden and help Trump get elected, has repeatedly suggested or implied the FBI document, officially called an FD-1023, is proof (it is not).

“The FBI’s 6/30/20 FD-1023 record stands on its own and contains information from a trusted confidential human source who had conversations with the foreign national who claimed to have bribed Biden,” Comer’s Oversight Committee tweeted over the weekend.

Last month Comer’s Oversight Committee posted a nearly ten-minute video of a press conference with him making various wild allegations about Biden and the Biden family.

Newsweek on Tuesday notes that “The Washington Post reported last week that the allegations contained in the FD-1023 document being sought by Republican lawmakers was reviewed by the FBI under former Attorney General William Barr, only for the agency to conclude the allegations were found not to be supported by facts. The investigation was later dropped, a fact confirmed by several outlets.”

Stunningly, it’s not only Senator Johnson, but Chairman Comer himself on Tuesday, under pressure by a Newsmax host pressing him to either say the tapes are legitimate or say when he will be able to confirm their legitimacy, confessed on live TV: “We don’t know if they’re legit or not.”

Also on Tuesday, even Senator Grassley himself stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate and poured cold water on his previous claims.

“The foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden, allegedly has audio recordings, of his conversation with them,” Grassley declared, relying on the word “allegedly” frequently.

“Seventeen such recordings,” he claimed. “These recordings were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy in case that he got into a tight spot.”

All this comes after Chairman Comer breathlessly claimed he had a star whistleblower witness who could prove his allegations, only to be forced to admit he had “lost” that witness, somehow.

Later it turned out that witnesses who did show up for Comer’s hearing had been paid by a former Trump administration official and current Trump advisor....>

<....Since Comer has been very careful to not reveal who his sources are, some believe them to be among the four Russia-linked individuals the Trump administration’s own Treasury Dept. sanctioned in 2020 “for attempting to influence the U.S. electoral process,” as it announced in a press release.

NCRM has no knowledge of who Comer’s alleged sources are.

The Trump Treasury Dept. in 2020 reported, “From at least late 2019 through mid-2020, [Andrii] Derkach waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election, spurring corruption investigations in both Ukraine and the United States designed to culminate prior to election day. Derkach’s unsubstantiated narratives were pushed in Western media through coverage of press conferences and other news events, including interviews and statements.”

Treasury’s statement adds:

“Between May and July 2020, Derkach released edited audio tapes and other unsupported information with the intent to discredit U.S. officials, and he levied unsubstantiated allegations against U.S. and international political figures. Derkach almost certainly targeted the U.S. voting populace, prominent U.S. persons, and members of the U.S. government, based on his reliance on U.S. platforms, English-language documents and videos, and pro-Russian lobbyists in the United States used to propagate his claims.”

And yet despite all this mountainous lack of substantive evidence or proof, some Republicans are speaking as if it were a proven, indisputable matter of tangible fact that Joe Biden should be impeached, or indicted.

Perhaps one of the loudest voices among the traitor claimers is U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, who just recently won a few pats on the back from liberal politics watchers after she mocked some in her own party.

That’s changed.

On Tuesday, Mace went on Fox News and in a lengthy interview with Maria Bartiromo, discussed the alleged bribery claims and concluded that the 37-criminal felony count indictment against Donald Trump is just a “distraction” from Biden’s actions and an attempt to jail his top political enemy.

“Make no mistake,” Mace falsely declared on Twitter the same day, “at today’s arraignment you are watching a sitting President use his DOJ to put his top political rival in jail.”

Another of the loudest voices insisting that the Biden conspiracy theory is true: U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee.

Even Wednesday, a day after the conspiracy theory leaders walked back and poured cold water on their allegations, Sen. Blackburn had no problem appearing on Fox News to promote the highly-questionable claims — this time couching it in terms of “feelings” and “ifs.”

The Intercept’s D.C. Bureau Chief Ryan Grim, in a lengthy explainer he published on Substack, concludes, “even if everything in the document is true, there is still an interpretation that would stop short of implicating Joe Biden: Hunter Biden could have been lying in order to extract more money from Burisma.”>

<Former President Donald Trump blamed “mutants,” among others, for his indictment over the retention of government documents on Wednesday.

“REALLY BIG FUNDRAISING, EVEN GREATER POLLS, SINCE THE RADICAL LEFT INDICTMENT HOAX WAS INITIATED BY THE MISFITS, MUTANTS, MARXISTS, & COMMUNISTS! THANK YOU,” wrote Trump in a Truth Social post on Wednesday.

During a speech following his Miami court appearance on Tuesday, Trump made similar comments blaming “thugs, misfits, and Marxists” for his indictment — though not mutants:

It’s a political persecution like something straight out of a fascist or communist nation. This day will go down in infamy and Joe Biden will forever be remembered as not only the most corrupt president in the history of our country, but perhaps even more importantly the president who together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits, and Marxists tried to destroy American democracy.

It is unclear what Trump meant with his reference to “mutants” on Wednesday.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a “mutant” is “an organism that is different from others of its type because of a permanent change in its genes,” though the word can also be used to refer to “an unpleasant and frightening thing.”

In 2021, Fox News Primetime host Tammy Bruce warned viewers about part-human, part-monkey mutants which were allegedly being developed by scientists in China.

Trump has been charged with 37 criminal counts over his retention of government documents and could face up to 536 years in prison if found guilty and given the maximum sentence for each count. During his appearance in court on Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty.>

<Donald Trump should get "significant home confinement" because he might trade top-secret government info for food or stamps in prison, according to the former president's previous lawyer.

Michael Cohen, who recently issued a warning to Trump's co-defendant and valet Walt Nauta and suggested Trump "may have to have a public defender" because he doesn't listen to counsel, appeared on CNN on Wednesday to discuss recent developments in the documents case.

Cohen was asked in an interview with the host if he thinks Trump might face the penalty of jail time. He said he thinks Trump "actually knows that jail in and of itself is probably unlikely."

Cohen said he doesn't want Trump behind bars, but that if a sentence is warranted, it should be "a very significant home confinement."

As for the reason for that, he said he thinks Trump might sell out the nation for "a bag of tuna" or "a book of stamps" given the chance.

"And I say that because understand Donald Trump, despite the fact that he's dumb, he still spent four years getting classified debriefings. And the information that's in his head he's willing to sell out for a bag of tuna or for, you know, a book of stamps to anybody that's there," Cohen said, noting such an outcome would "pose a grave security risk to our country."

"And I would certainly prefer the safety of Americans to over, you know, Donald Trump behind bars. As much as I'd like to see that, I would rather see America safe than sorry.">

<Former Republican Party chairman Michael Steele doesn't think much will change in the GOP now that Donald Trump has been indicted, and he said Wednesday that his acolytes are stuck with him as he is after quadrupling down on the former president.

A report from NBC News revealed that, behind the scenes, Republicans recognize that Trump's indictment for stolen documents is really bad for them.

"The GOP consternation that they could still end up with a nominee who has been convicted of federal crimes came through on a call Tuesday among roughly 15 seasoned Republican operatives (none of whom are on a presidential campaign currently)," said the report. "The concern was widespread: Trump’s latest indictment could cause further pain for Republicans at the ballot box."

It's against that backdrop the Steele appeared on MSNBC and mocked former Vice President Mike Pence, who Steele said appears so "pained" to have to answer questions about his former running mate.

"There's more that's going to come," he warned. "Mike Pence and Marco Rubio and Tim Scott are going to have to account for here. Spare me this sort of pained expression of how difficult this is for you, boo. This is on the man. You back the man up. So this question about a movement is just reductive. It has always been about Trump. The party has doubled down, tripled down, and quadrupled down on Trump. Now all of y'all — all of us, because I'm a member of the party — we're going to court today. We're going to have to work through this as the country watches and decides whether or not they want to give any of us a bite at the White House apple."

At another point in the NBC piece, it cites a major donor to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) urging the candidate to be brave enough to attack Trump. DeSantis is refusing. The donor said that those he talks to want actual policy discussions, not petty battles and name-calling.

Steele said it makes sense because Republicans are now in a place where they have to extricate themselves from the world they've created.

"You look around and go, you know, this is too much," he said. "But apparently, it's not. I think that's the part that — I don't know if everyone appreciates, that this is where Republicans want to be. They want someone who is crass and crude and rude. He is their retribution. They don't want the Morning In America that Tim Scott is offering. And I know in the establishment, everybody is rallying around the idea of, this could be the breakaway. No! Ron DeSantis is talking about we want to have a civil discourse about policy — small policy differences. That ain't happening. Do you know who Donald Trump is? When have you ever heard Donald Trump engage in any civil discourse about anything?"

He said that he legitimately wonders what the Republican officials expect to happen when all Trump has done is deliver what the GOP base wants.

"I really want to disabuse of the American people, and especially the media, of this idea that this is somehow we're going to return to normal here and that somehow Donald Trump is going to behave now that he is under indictment," Steele cautioned. "This guy went to a fundraiser after he was arraigned, for heaven's sakes! People were like, lining up, kicking out people who were asking questions about, how do you feel about going to jail? We need to be realistic about the danger that is in front of us."

It's part of the problem that the GOP continues to refuse to acknowledge, he said. At such a late date he thinks the idea of trying to remove Trump from the conversation is absurd. It isn't as if Trump will help Tim Scott win or give his lists to DeSantis."

"In what world does that happen?" Steele asked.>

<A lawyer representing Donald Trump in multiple cases is facing legal troubles of his own, New York Law Journal reports.

Todd Blanche and his former law firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, are being sued for malpractice by twin brothers Adam Kaplan and Daniel Kaplan, who allege Blanche and Cadwalader forged their signatures on a retainer agreement and “severely” overbilled them while they were the subject of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission probe.

The Kaplan brothers also reportedly allege their former attorneys are now refusing to turn over their case file to their new lawyers.

People Magazine reports that “Blanche's move to represent Trump came as the politician reportedly struggled to assemble a team of respected defense lawyers, the Washington Post reported in April. Retaining counsel for his arraignment on Tuesday appeared just as challenging, a trust legal source tells PEOPLE.”>

<Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) wasn’t having any “nonsense” from Rep. Lauren Boebert as the Colorado Republican went after a House Oversight Committee witness on Wednesday.

Boebert, in remarks to New York University law professor Sally Katzen during a hearing on government regulations, stopped the witness short during one of her answers while bringing up the value of her house in another instance.

“Excuse me, I really take that as a personal ... my home,” Katzen said.

“Do you disagree that this was an overreach?” asked Boebert, who returned to her question.

“I disagree that you’re casting aspersions on me or my ... ,” Katzen replied before Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) asked for committee members to respect “civility and decorum.”

Crockett went on to acknowledge that the committee runs her “pressure” up before speaking to Katzen.

“First of all, let me apologize because that was uncalled for, so let me do what she would never do, which is to be an adult in this room or in this chamber,” Crockett said.

“I’m also going to start with some nonsense that she was trying to spew and, unlike Ms. Boebert, I am legally trained and I’ve passed a few bar exams and I also legislated before I got here ...”

Crockett, in a tweet on Wednesday, wrote that she “proceeds to clap back” when far-right Republicans say “something stupid.”

“Lauren Boebert was beyond disrespectful & as granny would say, she was ‘loud’ & ‘wrong’ today,” she wrote.>

<CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju spoke with some of Donald Trump’s most diehard supporters in Congress on Wednesday about the 37 criminal count indictment against the former president.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told Raju that as a result of the indictment the “FBI, whole Justice Department needs to be looked at.”

“Defunding? Defunding the FBI,” Raju pressed.

“Parts of it. Jack Smith ought to come in. I think he will. And this is just the beginning of a long investigation,” Norman concluded, referring to the House GOP’s vow to investigate the indictment.

Raju then showed a clip of him speaking to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). “Do you think those records were secure at Mar a Lago?” Raju asked.

“Yeah, they were secure. I mean, he said they had to go in there and they had to bring a locksmith to open some of the locks,” Tuberville replied.

“Some were in the bathroom, though,” Raju noted, referring to a photo in the indictment showing boxes in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.

“Well, I don’t know about that now. I don’t know about that,” Tuberville replied.

Some Republican leaders, like Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), defended Trump allegedly storing U.S. military secrets at Mar-a-Lago in the bathroom because “a bathroom door locks.” McCarthy’s statement raised some eyebrows as many an observer noted bathroom doors usually lock from the inside – territory Tuberville was wise to avoid.>

<When Donald Trump responded to his latest indictment by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if he’s reelected to “go after” President Joe Biden and his family, he signaled that a second Trump term would fully jettison the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”

Trump’s message was that the Justice Department charged him only because he is Biden’s political opponent, so he would invert that supposed politicization. In reality, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, two Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents and the financial dealings of his son, Hunter Biden.

But by suggesting the current prosecutors investigating the Bidens were not “real,” Trump appeared to be promising his supporters that he would appoint an ally who would bring charges against his political enemies regardless of the facts.

The naked politics infusing Trump’s headline-generating threat underscored something significant. In his first term, Trump gradually ramped up pressure on the Justice Department, eroding its traditional independence from White House political control. He is now unabashedly saying he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power.

Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the FBI, overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm — which many Republicans view as a facade — that the department should operate independently from the president.

Two of the most important figures in this effort work at the same Washington-based organization, the Center for Renewing America: Jeffrey B. Clark and Russell T. Vought. During the Trump presidency, Vought served as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Clark, who oversaw the Justice Department’s civil and environmental divisions, was the only senior official at the department who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election....>

<Donald Trump could pay a heavy price for his classified documents scandal and other allegations - a defeat at the polls. And none of this had to happen:

Democrats think Donald Trump is a criminal. Many Republicans think he is innocent and a victim of political persecution. But what do Independents believe? This moderate voting bloc could swing away from Trump should he win the Republican nomination in a race that he is currently leading comfortably. The former president has already been indicted twice – the first for a hush money scheme in New York and the second for mishandling classified documents in violation of the Espionage Act among other charges.

More Indictments Could Be Forthcoming

Trump could still be indicted for his actions leading up to and during the January 6 insurrection.

He is also at risk of being arrested for his efforts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Independents could look past the falsifying business records case regarding his payments to silence an adult video star who he allegedly had an extramarital affair with. And perhaps they could determine that the classified documents saga is not that serious. But one or two more indictments could seal the deal on his fate and result in him losing a general election bid against President Joe Biden.

Republicans Are Rallying Around Trump

Since the indictment for the classified documents Trump has received a bump from Republican voters. According to a June 13th Morning Consult poll. Fifty-nine percent of GOP voters support the former president. That is an improvement of four points when the poll was taken before the indictment. Trump and Biden are tied at 42 percent in a hypothetical matchup. In a Reuters poll released June 13, 81 percent of Republicans think that “politics is driving” the classified documents case.

How Do Moderates Feel About the Latest Charges?

An ABC News/ Ipsos poll questioned Independents about the latest indictment. It found that “Among Independents, 45 percent said Trump should have been charged, a third said he should not have been, and 22 percent said they didn't know. Overall, 57 percent of Independents in this poll had an unfavorable view of Trump and, again, a majority of Independents were also more likely to count the charges as serious.”

This is bad news for Trump and proves he could pay a high price for his alleged misteps [sic]. In the same poll, 44 percent of Independents said Trump should end his campaign. Swing voters appear to be concerned about the charges, although 22 percent in the above survey still don’t know how they feel about his legal situation. This element of voters could come out against Trump should there be more indictments.

Perception of Accusations Breaks Down By Party Lines

So, it appears that a significant number of Republicans tend to believe the charges are specious, Democrats believe he is guilty, and some Independents have come out against the president. This has resulted in low overall opinion approval ratings for Trump. According to a FiveThirtyEight polling average, Trump only garners the support of around 40 percent of Americans. Meanwhile, in a similar aggregation average, 41 percent of Americans approve of Biden.

This race is neck and neck should Trump be the nominee. But how will Independents vote should there be a rematch between Trump and Biden? Those uncommitted Independents are likely to break toward Biden should Trump be indicted again. That is just too much legal jeopardy for moderates to take. Trump could survive with only two indictments, but three or four would likely send moderates to the exits.

But no-one in the current field can play the victim card as well as Trump. He also has the ability to compartmentalize the legal woes and adjust his campaigning without missing a beat. After being arraigned and pleading innocent to all charges on June 13, he visited a Cuban restaurant in Miami and hobnobbed with voters, taking photos and appearing to be unaffected by his legal situation. This seeming confidence is what Republicans love about Trump, but this carefree attitude may hurt him with Independents who believe that he is not taking the charges seriously.

However, I don’t see how he could win the general without the support of Independents. They don’t appear to like Biden that much, but having an accused criminal or even a convicted one could affect their voting decision. That means moderates could pull the lever for Biden should Trump face more legal charges, even though Biden is going through his own investigation for perceived corruption and bribery allegations.

<While the UK and US, each embroiled in democracy’s perverse consequences, struggle to thwart Putin’s mad ambitions in Ukraine, their respective China strategies face forceful challenge from Beijing. Xi Jinping is pushing brinkmanship to the edge in the Taiwan Straits and doubling down, as in Honduras, on its global efforts to isolate Taiwan.

Meanwhile, leading Western technology companies, alarmed by geopolitical uncertainty and facing hostile data “legislation,” are marching out of China in droves. Microsoft has already taken LinkedIn out and is moving an expert AI team to Canada to avoid local pressure on them.

Sub-par performance by the best-known Chinese stocks are compelling some seasoned Western asset managers to cut their exposure. Where is this debacle leading, and where might it end?

Risk has been defined as exposure to hostile intentions and capabilities. This dictum omits one vital issue: whether the party at risk is aware of what is going on. Arguably much of the “free” world is either ignorant, or in denial, about Xi Jinping’s policy drivers, intentions and capabilities.

This in itself is acutely risky. A tipping point in China Risk is rapidly approaching, and with it an opportunity to turn this to the West’s advantage.

Xi Jinping is forging ahead with plans for a revisionist New Era in which China becomes the sole super-power in an authoritarian, post-democratic world order. His immediate tactics include expedient alliances with other enemies of the West to defeat sanctions and other preemptive counter-measures short of military conflict.

He is striving to exploit Western political and economic division and disarray, not least through his tacit support for Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. His spuriously neutral Ukraine peace initiative lacks substance – indeed, this may be deliberate – but it symbolises his ultimate aspiration to global authority.

However, Xi is still a long way from achieving this. Though propaganda trumpets China’s triumph over the Covid virus and prospects for renewed growth, part of Xi’s aggressive haste stems from the realisation that the Chinese Communist Party state remains riddled with vulnerabilities.

China rapidly globalised its economic influence by exploiting the West’s illusion that, once admitted to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), it would engage in trade according to WTO rules and norms. But from the outset it denied foreign businesses free and fair access to its domestic market and used massive state subsidies to capture market dominance for its own products and systems across the world.

From 2018, the US has led a de facto trade war against this, while remaining uncomfortably tied to the Chinese economy by enduring debt and supply-chain dependencies.

Subsequent geopolitical and economic tensions have progressively worsened due to China’s human rights abuses, political interference, cyber espionage and IP theft, mistrust and sourcing disruption caused by the pandemic, alignment with Russia, and threats to Taiwan.

This has led to an accelerating exodus of major Western companies from China to more reliable regional bases in South-East Asia, India and Bangladesh. The low cost of factory labour in China, formerly a major draw for FDI, no longer applies. Factory wages in South China are now around three times higher than in equivalent South Asian industries....>

<....The Chinese economy has long been struggling under Xi Jinping’s Marxist ideological chokehold. Covid lockdown early in the pandemic was a kneejerk CCP crisis management response to potential social disturbance. Imposed disastrously late, it slowed transmission but failed to boost immunity.

“Zero Covid” proved powerless against the omicron variant but was not abandoned until the export-led national economy had been badly damaged by needlessly-prolonged coercive lockdowns.

Unsurprisingly, promised recovery has not been realised. Exports are depressed and the property market is in disarray, with more and more major players being delisted on the Shanghai stock exchange. The tech sector remains traumatised by Xi’s politically-motivated crackdown in 2021, which has wiped out many jobs for educated young workers at a time of serious youth unemployment.

Debt remains toxic, demographics are intractable (despite a huge surge in mortality among the under-immunised elderly soon after Zero Covid rules were abruptly relaxed). Environmental stresses, particularly water security, are worsening.

Seemingly ignoring these headwinds, Xi Jinping’s model for economic resurgence is a distinctly ideological formula called the Dual Cycle economy. The idea is to stimulate domestic technical innovation and production, leveraging this to give China a lead in global markets for cutting-edge technologies, while concurrently driving down dependency on technical cooperation with the West.

This construct ties in existing nationalist, anti-market measures and a protectionist, sanction-proofing subtext, sitting badly with claims that China is now open to the world for “business as usual”. Recent use of arbitrary data-protection legislation to seize records, detain staff and freeze important ESG and other compliance work done by foreign consultancies in Shanghai and elsewhere also undermines this claim.

Xi is hoarding gold, securing energy supplies and building up China’s military capabilities, in particular those used to threaten Taiwan. To argue that he will not, for some time at least, invade Taiwan for fear of the economic consequences misses the real point.

Xi would prefer to annex Taiwan without a fight, but he needs to be able to flex enough military muscle to undermine US support to the point that the Taiwanese lose faith in it and accept the inevitable. But this will not pay for itself, and scaring off FDI won’t fill any coffers.

Xi shows little capacity to tackle the fundamental unsustainability of the Chinese economy. Failure to do so could sweep away his dreams of a revisionist New Era. There has been much talk lately of “de-risking” from China. This is a two-way process; it should entail renewed, concerted economic pressure, including enhanced sanctions, against a regime that is already far more of a global threat than Russia.

As an Indian commentator has observed, the imperative is to reinforce national power and work in step with China’s sole global “balancer,” the US. The “Atlantic Declaration” is welcome; now it needs to grow some teeth.>

<Union Square in San Francisco has traditionally been the crown jewel of the city’s bustling shopping scene, the place where tourists from nearby hotels would flock to Apple’s flagship location and luxury destinations like Bloomingdales and Saks Fifth Avenue. The square’s Christmas tree and skating rink were the West Coast’s answer to Rockefeller Center in New York.

However, strip away the spectacle and the real place to be, at least by industry standards, was the Westfield San Francisco Centre. The mall was the epitome of first class management. Everything from the movie theater and restaurants to a mix of specialty apparel and high end department stores screamed competence and quality.

Which makes Westfield’s recent decision to abandon the mall all the more shocking. Normally, a mall on the down side would gradually deteriorate: escalators would no longer work, the floors would get brown and grimy, and the only retailers left on the directory would be McDonald's and stores that hawked fake gold jewelry.

But step into San Francisco Centre today and the place still looks like a palace. So what happened?

The Problem With Department Stores

As usual, when it comes to city downtown areas of late, pundits point to rising crime and quality of life issues: organized groups of thieves, random shoplifting, the homeless, drug users, mentally ill.

But that’s always been life for retailers along Market Street in San Francisco. Blaming Westfield’s decision solely on crime may be politically convenient but masks the true reasons why all traditional malls, including downtown locations, are struggling.

Let’s start with the fundamental business model for traditional malls, the idea that a department store serves as the anchor tenant for the property. Such an anchor signs a long term lease and pays for most of the property’s operating costs. Plus that anchor serves as a welcome sign for other smaller retailers to sign up.

But department stores, which have long prided themselves as the purveyors of affordable American fashion, have been struggling for decades now, as consumers flock to Target Corporation (TGT) - Get Free Report and H&M for cheap chic and to Amazon Inc. (AMZN) - Get Free Report for price. Coresight Research estimates Amazon alone sold $50.6 billion in clothing, footwear and apparel accessories in the United states last year.

What’s fairly new is the struggles of luxury department stores like Nordstrom Inc. (JWN) - Get Free Report, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Ave.

Traditionally, luxury retailers have been immune to economic downturns because its core customers — people with lots of money — tend to spend money regardless of things like inflation.

But things have changed since the pandemic, and Nordstorm in particular has floundered of late. The company predicts annual revenue this year will fall 4% to 6%. Nordstorm has completely pulled out of Canada and the only stores it plans to open are the lower-priced and smaller format Nordstrom Rack.

In fact, many traditional mall retailers, including Foot Locker Inc. (FL) - Get Free Report and Barnes & Noble (BNED) - Get Free Report are going smaller, experimenting with formats that take up much less space in places like suburban lifestyle centers.

Broken Business Model

Department stores take up a lot of space in malls, which means the property is too heavily reliant on them to succeed. For example, Nordstrom occupied 312,000 square feet in San Francisco Centre, more than a quarter of the property’s total space. Without Nordstrom, the mall’s occupancy rate plummets to 55% leased versus the average 93% for Westfield properties.

So it’s no accident that Westfield decided to abandon San Francisco Centre after Nordstrom recently said it plans to close in August after 35 years.

Given Nordstrom’s high end reputation, Westfield perhaps miscalculated that San Francisco Centre would avoid the fates of malls that depended on middling department stores like JCPenney and Sears as anchors. But a luxury department store is still a department store and the format is really struggling right now.

There’s no doubt that factors like crime and inflation play a role with San Francisco Centre’s struggles. But the underlying model of the traditional mall, in which it depends on a diminished format to anchor the property, is essentially broken.>

<It’s being called a “rare bit of good legal news” for Donald Trump, who’s facing several other criminal investigations and trials.

A two-year old investigation by the Westchester County, New York District Attorney has officially been closed, according to Business Insider the first to report. The case involved accusations Trump had reported the value of his property as tremendously less than its actual value, for tax purposes. The District Attorney, a well-known Democrat, announced the investigation had been closed.

“Part of why I’m saying anything at all is that I think it’s really important, more important than ever in our country, to make sure that people understand that we have independent prosecutors, we have a justice system that operates independent of politics,” District Attorney Mimi Rocah, told CBS News. Rocah, a former federal prosecutor, was an MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst and frequent commentator before running for elected office. “I can stand here and proudly say that I’m one of those prosecutors, and I look at every subject of any investigation, every organization that’s a subject of an investigation, the same way.”

The details of the case are intricate.

“The company and town were for years at odds over its annual tax bill,” CBS News reports. “The club claimed its property was worth as much as 90% less than the town’s valuation. In July 2021, the town and the company agreed to a compromise in which Ossining refunded the club about $875,000 and cut the property assessment by close to 30%.”

No reason was reported for why the town decided to compromise in Trump’s favor.

“At Mr. Trump’s golf course in Westchester, the valuation for 2011 assumed new members would pay an initiation fee of nearly $200,000 for each of the 67 unsold memberships, even though many new members in that year paid no initiation fee at all,” Insider reports the lawsuit stated. “In some instances, Mr. Trump specifically directed club employees to reduce or eliminate the initiation fees to boost membership numbers.”

The case buttresses an ongoing criminal case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

But on Thursday, instead of celebrating, Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform and lashed out in an all-caps rant (transcribed below).

“After going through a criminal investigation for two years by the District Attorneys office in Westchester County, New York, it was just announced that the case has been dropped, and no charges will be filed,” Trump wrote. “This was the honorable thing to do in that I did nothing wrong, but where and when do I get my reputation back? When will the other fake cases against me be dropped? Election interference!!!”>

Suh, suh, Ah'll tell yew what: yew never <had> a reputation.

<In the prosecutor Jack Smith's recent indictment of former President Donald Trump, not only has Mar-a-Lago come under scrutiny but also his residence in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he is believed to have shown some of these documents to political allies.

Analysts suspect that these infractions are Special Counsel Jack Smith’s backup plan should the existing charges not have the desired effect.

These incidents are not merely a case of improper retention of confidential information but also intentional communication of classified data.

The indictment alleges that Trump shared a map with a political ally and revealed a secret military plan for attacking Iran to a writer and publisher.

Special counsel Smith is expected to focus on these allegations - potentially presenting a significant challenge to the former president - should the presiding judge Aileen Cannon show leniency.

The decision to charge Trump with illegal retention of classified documents instead of dissemination has up until this point perplexed experts, given that the latter offense poses a greater potential security threat.

Analysts speculate that Smith may be considering dissemination charges but faces legal complexities in bringing them forward in Florida, where the initial indictment was made.

The latter has led to the possibility of separate charges being filed exclusively in New Jersey, specifically on Trump's actions in Bedminster.

Furthermore, the Miami indictment omits crucial details surrounding Trump's activities in Bedminster, suggesting that more revelations may emerge from the prosecutors.

Alternatively, Smith could ultimately decide against pursuing a separate indictment for dissemination, as it may be perceived as excessive, per The Atlantic.

However, if Judge Aileen Cannon - known for her past rulings favoring Trump - continues to exhibit a similar stance, Smith may seek an alternative venue to ensure accountability.

Currently, any predictions regarding the case’s outcome remain speculative, as uncertainties and legal considerations continue to shape the proceedings.>

<A friend of Donald Trump Jr. is fighting a court battle to keep the son of the former president out of case documents – including transcriptions of offensive emails Trump Jr. allegedly sent, according to a report.

Gentry Beach, who attended the University of Pennsylvania with Trump Jr. in the 1990s and served as a groomsman at his wedding, has been suing his former employer Touradji Capital Management for nearly 15 years, but the emails only recently came to light during a retrial, reported the Wall Street Journal.

“Tomorrow night we’re having jews for dinner," Beach said in one email sent to Trump Jr. from Beach's account between 2005 and 2008. "That’s kosher, right?”

In another exchange, after Beach moved to upper Manhattan, Trump Jr. referred to the area as Harlem.

“I hear the theme song of the Jeffersons playing in the background,” he wrote.

Trump Jr. was identified as the sender when that email exchange was read in court, and in another exchange he complained about Mexicans coming to the U.S.

“Encourage the Mexicans to come to the US and give them another excuse to not learn English,” Trump Jr. wrote. “When I have to speak to my grandchildren in Spanish, at least I know I will have you to thank.”

Beach responded by saying he would send his son to the border with weapons.

“We’re going to stop this wetback issue dead in its tracks,” Beach wrote.

The hedge fund lawyers said Beach and Trump Jr. were among a group of Penn alumni on the group emails, which also included former Republican National Committee co-chair Tom Hicks Jr., who court records show made an antisemitic comment about a Jewish real-estate broker who sent pornographic images to one group of the email recipients.

“The only legitimate purpose for peppering the record with references to the public figure’s name is to prejudice the jury pool for the retrial and to increase risk of reputational harm to Plaintiffs, perhaps to generate settlement leverage,” said Beach's lawyers in a filing last month seeking to have Trump Jr.'s name redacted in court records involving the emails.

The hedge fund is using the emails as a new legal defense, arguing the messages showed Beach was disloyal to his employer and exposed the company to reputational harm because they could have been seen by financial regulators and potential clients.

“Many of these investors, such as pension funds and publicly traded corporations, are rigorously focused on the integrity of the investment professionals that manage their assets,” Touradji lawyers wrote in a January filing.>

<The College Board has rejected changing a high school Advanced Placement psychology course's lessons on gender and sexual orientation, in a direct challenge to Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration that could reignite conflict between the education giant and the presidential hopeful.

Florida school districts had raised questions about an AP Psychology “learning objective” that covers gender and sexual orientation, the College Board acknowledged Thursday, after the DeSantis administration expanded restrictions and regulations on classroom instruction in April.

But the college admissions nonprofit suggested it would hold its ground after a separate scrap with DeSantis entangled its planned African American Studies course in political controversy this spring. It is unclear whether Florida will now block the AP psychology course from classrooms, the College Board told educators.

“Please know that we will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics,” the board said Thursday in a letter about the psychology course to Florida’s education department. “Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for success in the discipline.”

The latest fracas between Florida and the College Board stems from a recently revamped state rule that expands legislation — panned as the “Don’t Say Gay” law by its critics — to restrict classroom instruction on sexual orientation or sexual identity to all K-12 students, instead of targeting only lessons for children in kindergarten through grade 3.

On May 19, Florida’s education department pressed the College Board to review all of its courses to determine if any “need modification to ensure compliance” with Florida laws and regulations by this week. “Some courses may contain content or topics prohibited by State Board of Education rule and Florida law,” the state wrote to the board in a letter obtained by POLITICO.

The College Board retorted that its psychology lessons should remain unchanged, signaling a shift in how it will address Florida’s legal demands following this year’s battle over its proposed African American Studies course.

“The learning objective within AP Psychology that covers gender and sexual orientation has specifically been raised by some Florida districts relative to these recent regulations,” the board wrote to Florida officials. “That learning objective must remain a required topic, just as it has been in Florida since the launch of AP Psychology more than 30 years ago.”

Cassie Palelis, press secretary for the Florida Department of Education, said Thursday that the College Board is responsible for ensuring that their submitted materials comply with Florida law.

“We applaud the College Board for standing up to the state of Florida and its unconscionable demand to censor an educational curriculum and test that were designed by college faculty and experienced AP teachers who ensure that the course and exam reflect the state of the science and college-level expectations,” American Psychological Association CEO Arthur Evans Jr. said in a statement.

Florida’s objections to the AP African American studies course angered many Black leaders nationwide, leading some to accuse DeSantis of stoking a cultural fight to boost his presidential aspirations. Hundreds of people, including Black lawmakers and clergy, demonstrated against the DeSantis administration in February and civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump threatened a lawsuit over the governor’s rejection of the course.

“We don’t know if the state of Florida will ban this course," the College Board said of AP Psychology in a message to educators and schools. “To AP teachers in Florida, we are heartbroken by the possibility of Florida students being denied the opportunity to participate in this or any other AP course."

The College Board also had a message for all educators: “Please know we will not modify any of the 40 AP courses — from art to history to science — in response to regulations that would censor college-level standards for credit, placement, and career readiness,” the board said. “We are resolute in this position, in part, because of what we learned from our mistakes in the recent rollout of AP African American Studies.

<The worst inflation in 40 years has been quite the ride for consumers over the last two years, and recently, it's even helped the unthinkable become increasingly mainstream. Some economists are asking: Are consumers actually getting ripped off? This once fringe economic hypothesis has captured headlines more and more this year amid persistent inflation, even if it usually goes by another name. After years of being labeled a conspiracy theory, some economists believe that "greedflation" or, to put it the way an early prognosticator defined it: “profit-led inflation,” is to blame for at least part of the recent rise in consumer prices.

The theory that corporations used the war and pandemic as an excuse to hike their profit margins, for a time supported only by progressive economists, has gained backing from the likes of Lael Brainard, a former Fed vice chair and the current director of Joe Biden's National Economic Council, and Albert Edwards, a global strategist at the French investment bank Société Générale.

Inflation has been the financial story of the decade so far. When fiscal and monetary stimulus mixed with crippled supply chains at the start of the pandemic, it led to a supply-demand imbalance that kicked off the first major inflationary episode since the 1980s. And after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began last February, an energy price shock only added to the pain for consumers. As measured by the consumer price index, year-over-year inflation in the U.S. rose to a four decade high of 9.1% by last June. Those were the first two inflation waves, says Paul Donovan, UBS Global Wealth Management’s chief economist, and now we're in the third, and that's where we get to rising corporate profits.

Inflation has slowed with the help of consistent Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, but not all the way to the central bank’s 2% target. Donovan argues that greedflation, or what he calls “profit-led inflation,” can explain at least some of that phenomenon.

Three ‘waves’ of inflation

Donovan said Thursday that the three distinct “inflation waves” that hit the economy over the past few years were all caused by “very different things.”

“The first wave, which was about consumer durable goods, that was demand-led,” he explained in an interview with Yahoo Finance Thursday, pointing to the surge in demand caused by monetary and fiscal stimulus that came during pandemic lockdowns in the form of things like stimulus checks and near-zero interest rates.

The good news is, this first wave of inflation is over, according to Donovan, with durable goods prices falling in the U.S. in “outright deflation.” And the second wave of inflation, which was caused by the energy shock that came from the war in Ukraine, is fading, too, the economist said. Natural gas and oil prices surged after Russia invaded Ukraine, owing to the country’s status as a major energy exporter, but have since dropped dramatically.

“The third wave of inflation, the one we’re getting now, is this unusual profit-led inflation story,” Donovan went on to explain. “This occurs where firms towards the end of the supply chain, so that’s consumer facing companies or near consumer facing companies, increase margins and pretend it’s all due to costs and other factors. They sneak in a margin increase.”....>

<....Donovan was one of the first on Wall Street to argue that “profit-led” inflation has been a serious thorn in the side of the Fed as it tries to return price stability to the economy back in March. And on Thursday, he pointed to evidence for his view in the “rise in retail profits as a share of GDP.” Retail profits surged 86% between the first quarter of 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2022, according to Fed data, while GDP rose roughly 20% over the same period. That’s all consumer-facing greedflation.

“That’s one instance where we’re seeing this expansion of margin under the cover of, ‘Oh, it’s a general inflation problem, we can’t help it.’ But actually they’re expanding margin and basically persuading consumers to accept that,” he said.

Will social media end greedflation?

“Profit-led inflation” is likely to blame for some of the inflation the U.S. economy has experienced over the past few years, according to Donovan, but the good news is “it doesn’t last forever.”

“At some point either governments or consumers realize that this is going on. And they say, ‘hold on, that’s not fair’ ... That’s exactly the point that we’re now starting to get to now,” he said, warning that companies who continue raising prices to boost margins will damage their brands’ reputations, because they will be seen to be “cheating or unfairly treating the consumer.”

Donovan pointed to the recent moves by French finance minister Bruno Le Maire, who secured a pledge from 75 major food companies to lower prices in the country last week after threatening financial sanctions. Le Maire has previously cited these firms’ “undue” profits amid falling commodity prices—the United Nations' index of world food commodity prices hit a two-year low this month. Donovan noted that the Spanish and British governments are putting ”similar pressures” on corporations as well.

“So we’re starting to get to a point where this profit-led inflation is really coming under pressure. And those margins in the retail sectors, and near the retail sector, are going to start being squeezed,” he said.

Donovan went on to discuss how social media played a critical role in both the rise of profit-led inflation, and argued it will again feature in its coming downfall. With images of the war of Ukraine and stories about rising inflation front and center on social media feeds over the past few years, corporations had “excuses” or “cover” to raise prices without consumers pushing back. But now social media is working against them.

It can be damaging to brand reputations “if you’re being accused of profiteering, of excess margin, in a time when people are really suffering,” Donovan said, pointing to consistent greedflation stories amid falling real wage growth across the developed world for the past two years.

“So I think that social media can help inflame profit-led inflation by creating excuses that companies can use, but it can also work, by threatening brand values, to cause companies to rethink some of their pricing strategies,” he concluded.>

<Jon Stewart pointed out where former President Donald Trump is in a “two-tiered justice system” after Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) shared his take on the 37-count federal indictment of Trump last week.

Youngkin, in the wake of the indictment connected to Trump’s handling of classified documents, wrote on Twitter that such a system led to selective prosecution of some people while “others are not” prosecuted, claiming that parents in Virginia have also been the target of “politically motivated actions.”

Other Republicans have offered similar arguments of selective prosecution including 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, former Vice President and 2024 candidate Mike Pence and Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) following the indictment.

“The Problem with Jon Stewart” host retweeted a clip from his show’s account that noted he agrees with the idea of a “two-tiered justice system” before schooling the Republican governor on Trump’s place within it.

“Trump has used privilege and wealth to protect himself from legal accountability at every turn,” said Stewart in a clip initially shared in April following the arraignment of Trump on charges linked to hush money payments.

“He has lived his entire adult life in the space twixt, illegal and unethical. He’s in the tier where you get the platinum arraignment package – no cuffs, no mugshot, all-you-can-eat fingerprint ink.”

Stewart went on to question if regular people surround themselves with a “meat shield of henchmen to go to prison in their place,” a nod to Trump associates sentenced to time in prison.

The former “Daily Show” host later analyzed the New York State attorney general’s civil lawsuit against Trump’s now-defunct charitable organization, a lawsuit he was ordered to settle for $2 million.

“Yes. It’s all selective prosecution and when you’re in the good tier, you can do whatever you want and you’re probably going to be fine,” said Stewart.

“In fact, you might even be elected president – twice.”>

<In a sign that top corporate executives are finally grasping that investors aren’t on board with their walk on the woke side, there’s been a measurable drop in the number of references to green and social initiatives on earnings calls over the past few quarters.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean corporate America’s forays into social activism have slowed; it only means they know better than to agitate the shareholders to whom they have a fiduciary duty.

The Wall Street Journal published a graph showing the number of mentions of “‘ESG,’ ‘DEI,’ ‘environmental, social and governance,’ ‘diversity, equity and inclusion,’ or ‘sustainability’” by executives of United States-listed corporations on earnings calls over the past five years. In the first quarter of 2018, there were 170 mentions. The number grew steadily over the next couple of years. But following the death of George Floyd in May 2020 and the civil unrest that followed, the number of mentions surged, reaching a peak of 942 in the first quarter of 2022.

Over the past year, however, the number has fallen sharply. For the second quarter of 2023, it stands at 575. Safe to say, corporate financial officers have noticed that not all investors are willing to sacrifice profits for the sake of ESG initiatives.

But make no mistake: Companies don’t plan to abandon their activist programs. They just won’t be touting their activities quite as loudly.

The Journal cites electronic-signature firm DocuSign, whose CFO boasted on a March 2022 earnings call that “the company achieved carbon-neutral status during the year ended that January.” There has been no mention of climate or social initiatives on any of the company’s earnings calls since then. When asked for an explanation by the Journal, a company spokeswoman “didn’t comment on why executives haven’t discussed such topics on recent earnings calls, but said the company continues to make investments in its environmental, social, and governance programs and regularly updates investors and customers on its initiatives.”

I’m sure they do.

Last August, corporate advisory firm KPMG polled U.S. CEOs about the impact of ESG on their companies’ profitability. The survey concluded that 45% “agree[d] that ESG programs improve financial performance.” This reflects “an increase from 37%” over the previous year.

Having worked for years as a financial consultant, I find these conclusions to be rather dubious. I point to the subjective nature of the survey, which does not look at financial results, but merely asks CEOs for their personal opinions....>

<....According to KPMG, “When asked where CEOs see corporate purpose having the greatest impact over the next 3 years, driving financial performance is in the top spot with 73%. CEOs increasingly understand that businesses embracing ESG are best able to secure talent, strengthen employee value proposition (EVP), attract loyal customers and raise capital. ESG has gone from a nice-to-have to integral to long-term financial success.”

Clearly, many would agree with KPMG’s findings.

A week after Bud Light made the disastrous decision to partner with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote the sale of a product that has appealed to working-class, ordinary Americans for generations, Rolling Stone published an article titled, “Companies That Get ‘Woke’ Aren’t Going Broke — They’re More Profitable Than Ever.”

The author predicted that sales of Bud Light, and the stock price of Anheuser-Busch, would quickly recover. But two months later, Bud Light sales are still down nearly 25%, and Anheuser-Busch stock is down 15%.

The article reminds readers of “the Keurig kerfuffle of 2017.” Remember it? Neither do I.

According to Rolling Stone, after several women accused Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual misconduct, Fox News host Sean Hannity asked viewers not to rush to judgment. In response, Keurig pulled its ads from his show. “Hannity’s fans called for a boycott and started smashing their Keurigs for social media.” And now, six years later, the company is doing better than ever.

Rolling Stone also cites the uproar following United Airlines’ 2021 announcement that 50% of their new pilot trainees would be “women and/or people of color.” Imagine prioritizing a person’s sex or skin color, rather than their skill, when hiring airline pilots. Crazy, huh?

At any rate, when it comes to beer brands, mass retailers, or passing on an overpriced vacation to a Disney theme park, customers have a lot of choices. And the boycotts are clearly having an effect on these companies’ bottom lines.

But if we know anything about the Left, it’s that they are thoroughly committed to advancing their agenda, regardless of how unpopular and unreasonable it might be. So it looks like woke capitalism is here to stay.

But corporate executives, while still unwilling to part ways with it, are at least acknowledging that it’s problematic. And rather than openly boasting about these initiatives, they are handling them far more discreetly.>