in Donald Trump’s White House, everything is for sale

you want favors? it’s going to cost you

step right up, kid. welcome to Dear Leader’s Naked Cash Grab. lay your money down, boy-o, and let’s see what you’ve got. ten bucks? here, have a digital trading card. it’s Donny Convict, tarted up as an astronaut! got sixty? looky here, pal — it’s a Patriot Bible, signed by Dear Leader himself. a hundred grand gets you a gold-plated watch that Dear Leader imported from China for six bucks.

wait, are you a corporation, or a plutocrat with a million dollars burning a hole in your pocket? are you ever in luck, my friend — because with that kind of scratch, you can buy yourself the ultimate prize: a piece of Dear Leader himself.

that’s right, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and a bunch of other corporate shitweasels have all ponied up a million bucks to Donny’s inaugural fund — each and every one of them expecting to curry favor with Dear Leader. it’s a fucked-up mob payoff on steroids.

the total haul? over two hundred mil.

Since his victory in November, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s allies have raised well over $200 million for a constellation of groups that will fund his inauguration, his political operation and eventually his presidential library, according to four people involved in the fund-raising.

Bezos and his plutocrat pals aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their twisted little hearts. it’s blatant pay-for-play.

Donations of at least $1 million grant access to the top package of perks related to several days of festivities in the run-up to the inauguration on Jan. 20, including what are touted as “intimate” dinners with Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance, though often with many attendees, as well as black-tie balls after the swearing-in.

“intimate” dinners — where these grateful CEOs will no doubt be going up to Donny with tears in their eyes, saying “sir! sir! certainly my imports will be exempt from tariffs, won’t they? sir! what do you need, another million-dollar donation? sir!”

there’s no way that Donny is going to spend anywhere close to 200 mil on his inauguration — so, where is all that surplus money going to go? come on, do you even have to ask?

remember, Donny pulled this same shit back in 2016 — and when regulators and public interest groups asked where the money went, the only answer they got was a big steaming mug of shut the fuck up.

Nine months after the inauguration, President Donald Trump’s 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) has provided no accounting of the amount of surplus funds left over and very little explanation as to how the committee has managed this surplus.

oh, and all that crappy inaugural merch that Donny’s been selling to the cultists? that’s going straight into his pockets, too.

Official merchandise sales from Donald Trump's inaugural committee may do more than celebrate his second presidency–they could ultimately be used to cover Trump’s personal expenses, including legal fees.

“breaks tradition” is doing a lot of heaving lifting in that headline. you almost have to admire how Forbes crimewashes Donny’s sleight of hand.

here’s the “tradition” Donny’s breaking: merchandise sales aren’t even going to Donny’s sketchy inaugural fund. thank to some fine-print fuckery, that cash is going to one of Donny’ PACs, and from there, straight into his pockets.

In smaller print at the bottom of the page and during checkout, the site discloses that proceeds from these sales go to the Trump National Committee, which allocates 20% to Never Surrender, a leadership PAC formed on Nov. 12 when Trump’s 2024 campaign committee was renamed and restructured, and 80% to the Republican National Committee—completely bypassing the nonprofit inaugural committee.

While campaign contributions cannot legally be used to cover a candidate’s personal expenses, leadership PACs, like Never Surrender, are not bound by such restrictions.

all this financial fuckery is straight out of the Authoritarian’s Playbook. tinpot dictators from Mobutu to Putin have turned their countries into their own personal ATMs, enriching themselves while cutting vital services for their citizens.

why should we expect anything different from the greediest sociopath on the planet?

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Jeff Bezos has really turned himself into Dear Leader’s number one ass-kisser. he’s not content with just censoring both the WaPo’s editorial board and its political cartoonist. nor is he satisfied with merely ‘donating’ a million dollars to some fly-by-night inaugural fund. now he’s going the extra mile.

what in the holy name of Hagiography Jesus is this?

oh boy, just what nobody asked for, a doccy about the unremarkable woman who emigrated to America with a fraudulent visa, washed out as a “model,” and ultimately became Dear Leader’s Slovenian trophy wife — the one who married him for his money, recoils at his touch, never smiles in his presence, and refuses to share his bed.

and of course this abomination is being directed by an ahem problematic sleaze-ball.

The director and producer Brett Ratner, forced out of Hollywood at the peak of the #MeToo movement, will direct a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump for Amazon, the studio confirmed Sunday.

Ratner’s Hollywood career stopped in 2019 when an actress accused him in the Los Angeles Times of forcing himself on her sexually, and other women described inappropriate conduct.

get ready for a lot of these disgraced predators to be magically rehabilitated during Donny’s second reign.

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today marks the fourth anniversary of Donny’s January 6th insurrection. in any fair world, the date would be a national day of shame — but that caterwauling screech-monkey down in Georgia wants to make it a national holiday.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — who’s been the GOP’s fiercest advocate for those imprisoned for storming the Capitol four years ago — floated going a step further and memorializing the day as a national holiday.

hey, you know who else had a failed insurrection that they later turned into a national holiday? I’ll bet you can guess.

ten years prior to seizing power in 1933, Adolf Hitler and his madcap band of merrymakers, the Nazis, tried to overthrow the German government. Adolf failed worse than Donny did — the Nazis never even got inside the building.

On November 8–9, 1923, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led a coalition group in an attempt to overthrow the German government. The plotters hoped to march on Berlin to launch a national revolution. But the insurrection failed miserably. Units of the Munich police force clashed with Nazi stormtroopers as they marched into the city center. The police killed more than a dozen of Hitler’s supporters. This attempted coup d’état came to be known as the Beer Hall Putsch.

the Nazis turned their dead comrades into martyrs for the glorious cause, never shutting the fuck up about the sacrifice these heroes made in the name of the future Third Reich — much in the same way that MAGA has deified Ashlii Babbitt, who caught a bullet when she refused to comply with a cop’s order to stand down.

so naturally, when the Nazis took power in 1933, they proclaimed November 9th to be the Reich Day of Mourning.

Hitler and the Nazi Party leadership cultivated the memory of the putsch. They gave it a special place in the narrative of the Nazi movement, and eventually in that of the German state. After Hitler consolidated power, Nazi Germany celebrated November 9 as Reich Day of Mourning (Reichstrauertag).

weird how everything MAGA does, Hitler and the Nazis did first.

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let’s go out on a high note. this morning, Joe Biden announced a Very Good Thing.

President Joe Biden on Monday announced an executive action that will permanently ban future offshore oil and gas development in parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in a way that could be especially difficult for the incoming Trump administration to undo.

good. the inauguration is just two weeks away. Joe Biden and the Democrats should be using that time to Donny-proof as much of the government — and our natural resources — as they can.

more of this, Joe. please.

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here’s your daily reminder that I can be found on Blue Sky at this link.

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this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.