July 28, 2025
Today’s theme seems to be Republican leadership digging into positions that are directly contradicted by facts.
On Sunday, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reported that the price tag for renovating the “free” Boeing 747-8 President Donald J. Trump accepted from Qatar appears to be close to a billion dollars of taxpayer money. The reporters explored a “mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds” from a program to modernize the country’s ground-based nuclear missiles to an unnamed classified project. Air Force officials told them privately that the transfer is for upgrading the plane for use as Air Force One.
Yale historian Joanne Freeman posted: “He’s using our money to buy himself a gift. A billion dollar gift.”
Over the weekend, Trump called for musician Beyoncé to be prosecuted for breaking the law by taking $11 million for endorsing Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in October 2024, and for Harris to be prosecuted for paying that sum. But this simply never happened.
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale explained yesterday that this is a made-up story Trump apparently got from social media. The Harris campaign covered $165,000 of the costs connected to Beyoncé’s appearance, as required by law, but a spokesperson said they did not pay celebrity endorsers (although there is no federal law prohibiting such payments). Dale says there is no evidence for Trump’s $11 million claim.
And then there is the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
On Sunday, Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and repeatedly insisted that it was the Obama administration in 2009 that allowed sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to avoid serious federal charges by agreeing to a “sweetheart plea deal.” But it wasn’t.
As CNN’s Jake Tapper reminded him, the agreement was drafted in 2007 and signed in 2008, under President George W. Bush. Mullin continued to try to rope the Democrats into the story of the deal, but Tapper reiterated: “the point is, the ‘sweetheart deal,’ which was completed in 2008, was under the Bush administration.” Tapper also reminded Mullin that Trump made Alex Acosta, the U.S. attorney who backed the extraordinary leniency for Epstein, his secretary of labor during Trump’s first term.
Today, at a press opportunity in Scotland, where Trump is opening a new golf course on one of his properties, Trump told a reporter that he hasn’t “been overly interested” in the case…it's a hoax that's been built up way beyond proportion. I can say this, those files were run by the worst scum on Earth. They were run by [former FBI director James] Comey, they were run by [former attorney general Merrick] Garland. They were run by [former president Joe] Biden, and all of the people that actually ran the government, including the autopen. Those files were run for four years by those people.” Then he suggested that Democrats have doctored the Epstein files with fake information to smear him.
Far from quieting questions about his involvement with Epstein, this line of argument seems to confirm that he knows there is something bad in the files and is trying to spin it before it might come to light.
Today, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, demanded that the Department of Justice produce all the recordings and transcripts of the July 24 and 25 meetings between DOJ officials and convicted sex trafficker and Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. He also demanded that the DOJ commit that it would not offer either a pardon or to commute Maxwell’s sentence of 20 years in exchange for information she offered.
Today, Vice President J.D. Vance assured an Ohio audience that the Congressional Budget Office was wrong in predicting that the cuts in the budget reconciliation measure the Republicans passed and Trump signed into law on July 4 would push 10 million people off health insurance. “Don’t believe every false media report that you’ve heard,” he said, “because our explicit goal in the Trump administration is to protect people’s healthcare.”
On July 18, health policy tracker KFF reported that health insurers have asked state regulators to approve the highest premium increases in more than five years. Just as Gene Sperling, who directed the National Economic Council under presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, noted in the Washington Post four days ago, insurers point to the end of the enhanced premium tax credits that provided financial assistance for people enrolled in healthcare through the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) as the main culprit in higher prices. The insurers predict that healthcare costs for those who took advantage of the tax credits will go up by more than 75% starting in January 2026. This will drive healthier enrollees out of the market, causing prices to rise for those left in the risk pool.
As Sperling pointed out, while Republicans claimed that the tax cuts that primarily benefited the wealthy and corporations was “current policy” whose extension didn’t count as a tax increase, they did not apply the current policy standard to the enhanced premium tax credits.
Insurers also point to Trump’s tariffs as a cause for higher premiums. They expect those tariffs to send drug prices higher.
Since the 1980s, Republicans have relied on their voters believing the worldview leaders projected, even when the facts told a different story. It is not clear they can continue to rely on that blind loyalty.
Jason Hancock of the Missouri Independent reported today that Missouri Republican lawmakers have inspired a backlash by resisting or overturning measures approved by voters to end puppy mills, expand Medicaid, legalize marijuana, create nonpartisan redistricting, expand paid sick leave, and amend the state constitution to protect abortion rights. Now a bipartisan group of organizations is trying to stop the Republican supermajority from ignoring or overturning the will of voters.
In response, some Republican lawmakers have claimed that out-of-state money swayed the votes on the measures they dislike, and are trying to change the process of initiating voter-led petitions, further silencing the voters. Others disagree. Veteran Republican consultant James Harris, who is from the state, told Hancock: “The legislature doesn’t really seem to understand, they’ve kicked the hornet’s nest. We may be about to cross the Rubicon…where the legislature loses a lot of its power.”
In North Carolina today, popular former governor Roy Cooper announced he is running for the North Carolina Senate seat currently held by Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican who announced his retirement after Trump turned on him for opposing the budget reconciliation measure that threatened healthcare in his state. When he was governor, Cooper expanded Medicaid to more than 650,000 North Carolinians.
Cooper’s announcement message focused on shoring up the middle class, meeting today’s moment by calling out billionaires. “[F]or too many Americans, the middle class feels like a distant dream,” he said, while “the biggest corporations and the richest Americans have grabbed unimaginable wealth at your expense. It's time for that to change.”
Cooper told of growing up in North Carolina, raising his family, teaching Sunday school, and helping small businesses as a lawyer. “When you made me your attorney general, I prosecuted criminals and took on scammers, big banks, and drug companies,” he said. “When you made me your governor, we balanced the state budget every year and worked with Republicans to raise teacher pay, recruit thousands of better paying jobs, and expand Medicaid…. I never really wanted to go to Washington,” he said. “I just wanted to serve the people of North Carolina right here, where I've lived all my life.”
“But,” he continued, “these are not ordinary times. Politicians in D.C. are running up our debt, ripping away our health care, disrespecting our veterans, cutting help for the poor and even putting Medicare and Social Security at risk just to give tax breaks to billionaires. That's wrong, and I've had enough. I've thought on it and prayed about it, and I've decided, I want to serve as your next United States Senator.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the Senate, called Cooper “far-left.”
Meanwhile, in South Carolina, a key architect of Project 2025 will challenge Senator Lindsey Graham for the Republican nomination for Graham’s Senate seat. “This is a battle for the future of MAGA,” Paul Dans said. “This is really the turning point election that asks whether MAGA will sink back into the swamp and be subsumed, or whether this great movement will continue to grow, and the waters of the swamp retreat in Washington, and swamp critters like Lindsey are left to bake in the Palmetto sun.”
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Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/us/politics/air-force-one-trump-cost.html
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/27/politics/trump-beyonce-prosecute-fact-check
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/27/business/trump-scotland-business-crypto
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/us/politics/ghislaine-maxwell-epstein-interview-durbin.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/24/republican-bill-health-care-taxes/
X:
bulwarkonline/status/1949460410127561035
Bluesky:
asharangappa.bsky.social/post/3luzwoz4uws2r
atrupar.com/post/3luzujzoszy2v
acyn.bsky.social/post/3luzqxeyr6b2c
As a former government employee who once swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, I wasn’t allowed to accept any gifts in excess of $15, or anything more substantial when meeting a contractor than a donut and a cup of coffee (they didn’t count the swizzle stick). No free sandwich, no lunch, no patè de foie gras, no booze --- zip. Easy to remember.
It’s been several years now, but I can’t recall we were ever allowed the occasional exception in the form of a gold-plated 747-800, courtesy of the Qatari Government, which we were then allowed to renovate for $900 million, all billed to Uncle Sam.
We all know Trump is hiding some most damaging information on himself on the Epstein case.
Heather's riffs here on Republicans most recent rafts of lies and gaslighting only underscore how frightened they all are of voters -- including their till-now-easily-molded-MAGA -- realizing the truths regarding food for little children, seniors getting health care, rural hospitals closing, and idiocy tariff prices rising, gouging working class people as we head to Nov. 2026 elections.
They have to lie and gaslight, as their dear criminal leader knows only criminality. And trying even more obviously to hide the truths.
But, it gets even more interesting, as the general levels of incompetence bring all even more chaos, contradictions, and underlining of the total mediocrity glazing all.