generation recessiom

In his 1513 political treatise "The Prince," Italian philosopher and statesman Niccolò Machiavelli wrote that truly great leaders surround themselves with the best and brightest advisers they can find. Indeed, he famously summed up his perspective by saying that “the first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” More than four centuries later, a Republican president named Dwight Eisenhower was rumored to have privately made a similar observation, reportedly saying that "the greatest leaders are the ones smart enough to have people smarter than them around them."

By contrast, according to a journalist with multiple inside sources into President Donald Trump's White House, America's current chief executive has the different philosophy — he surrounds himself with incompetence.

"Speaking on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast, Trump biographer Michael Wolff said, 'This is not a secret,'" reported The Daily Beast's Erkki Forster on Thursday, describing a conversation between Wolff and co-host Joanna Coles. Wolff pointed to Trump's Secretary of Defense, telling Coles that “Pete Hegseth is a... blithering incompetent... yes-man, a suck-up, a man who... knows nothing, and no logic would say he would know enough to run the military-industrial complex."

He added that Hegseth's "primary qualification is that he was... a weekend television co-host. So what in the name of God would he know about running... the United States military... at a moment... in which we are in the middle of a, basically, a revolution in terms of munitions, logistics, and supply.”

Wolff concluded, “Pete Hegseth is in this job because Donald Trump is intimidated by competence. It’s not just that he doesn’t want to be bossed around by people; it’s that he can’t deal with people who know things because—for the obvious reason—because he doesn’t know things.”

This is not the first time Wolff has observed that Trump seems to actively avoid smart people. In August he observed that “he’s filled the administration of the second term with unqualified people, morons of one variety or another, because he can’t have people who are clearly smarter than he is.”

Similarly-famed entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis said earlier in September that Presidential Rule No. 1 should be "don't start a never-ending war in the Middle East. Americans have PTSD from them. Presidential Rule No. 2: it's the economy, always has been. Leadership Rule No. 1: Surround yourself with competent people who tell you uncomfortable truths – not sycophants or loyal incompetents. The sycophants will do you in every time. Never get high on your own supply.”

Status reports that it has uncovered the reason behind Fox News’ firing of veteran entertainer Maria Bartiromo, the business journalist who became a source of right-wing conspiracies.

The Rupert Murdoch-controlled network offered no explanation for her removal, but hours after her dismissal, Status believes it has the answer: Bartiromo, 58, had informed the White House about Fox’s secret instructions to not promote President Donald Trump’s election conspiracies on the air.

Status report that Fox News had instructed senior management to divert coverage of Trump’s primetime address to the nation, wherein he claimed that China had interfered in the 2020 presidential election to benefit Joe Biden. Trump also ravaged the U.S. election system without proof, but neglected to mention Russian interference favoring his own election.

The White House was apparently surprised that its chief propaganda network opted to avoid Trump’s lie-filled address, and mined Bartiromo for an explanation. And it soon dragged the reason out of her. According to Status, Bartiromo even shared the text message that relayed the network’s orders for the White House blackout.

After the network betrayal, Fox managers scrubbed Bartiromo’s presence from the network, with Fox Business Network already taking down her contributor page.

According to the statement, "Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media. In making the announcement, FOX News Media said, 'We thank Maria for her work over the last 12 and a half years and wish her all the best in her next chapter."

Controversial former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin was arrested Thursday by the Bourbon County Sheriff’s Office, according to two dispatchers at the Paris-Bourbon County 911, according to Louisville Public Media.

“Bevin was reportedly arrested while playing an extra on the set of a Christian film production there,” reports LPM. “The former governor had an active bench warrant against him in Jefferson County, where a judge found him in contempt of court for not turning over required financial documents to the court in his divorce and child support case.”

Mediaite reports Bevin has been mired in a dispute over child support payments. In March, Jefferson County Family Court Judge Angela Johnson found Bevin in contempt after she said he ignored her orders to furnish the court with financial records regarding his son Jonah Bevin.

In one hearing, the ex-governor had been ordered to appear in the courtroom, but instead, he joined via Zoom, claiming that he was on his way back to Kentucky after attending a funeral. Bevin did not say where he was dialing in from. That, reports Mediaite, was the second time Bevin appeared in court via Zoom after being ordered to show up in person.

“Your arrest warrant will be issued today,” Johnson told him on March 24. She later issued a written order for his arrest and sentenced him to 60 days in jail unless he posts a $500 cash bond and submits “financial records, bank statements, tax returns and all other documents that would show the receipt of income.”

LPM reports Jonah is seeking child support from his parents due to the Bevins allegedly “abandoning him in a notoriously abusive Jamaican facility” for troubled youth that was shut down while he was there.

Bevin, a Republican, was elected governor in 2015 and served one term. Despite Kentucky being a conservative state, he narrowly lost his reelection bid to current Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear in 2019. After his firing by Kentucky voters, Bevin marked his departure by handing out over 600 pardons, leading the FBI to begin asking questions about Bevin and how he made his selections for pardons.

It was unclear on Thursday why Bevin was arrested more than five months after the warrant was issued.

President Donald Trump has retained an iron grip on the Republican Party despite the more than two dozen sexual misconduct accusations against him, as well as at least one report of sexual misconduct allegedly facilitated by the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He was even adjudicated to have sexually abused E. Jean Carroll.

Now it appears that at least one other Republican politician is hoping that if Trump could politically get away with his proved and alleged sexual misconduct, he too can be forgiven. Yet a prominent local columnist does not want him to pull this off.

"Maybe we all missed the fine print in State Rep. Fabián Basabe’s 2025 video promise to resign if sexual harassment allegations against him ever proved true. But almost two months after a civil jury in July appeared to do exactly that, Basabe is back to say (essentially): That didn’t count," wrote Miami New Times staffer B. Scott McLendon on Thursday.

He added, "A former legislative aide and a former intern for the Miami Beach-based politician accused him of sexual harassment, battery, and defamation (in a complaint attached below) — accusations a civil jury in Tallahassee found Basabe civilly liable for after trial and ordered him to pay $450,000 in damages. Basabe, however, argues that this verdict fails to trigger his promise to resign."

Basabe has argued that the jury's verdict against him is not proof of guilt, adding that he will appeal it.

"He is technically correct that the verdict wasn’t 'guilty,' and otherwise doesn’t precisely align with his promise to resign if the allegations were proven true," McLendon further wrote. "The problem is that civil juries don’t decide guilt or innocence, nor do they decide whether allegations are true or false."

McLendon then quoted the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which said that “the jury generally is asked to determine whether the defendant is responsible for harming the plaintiff in some way, and then to determine the amount of damages that the defendant will be required to pay.” In short, "the jury found Basabe was liable for sexual harassment, battery, and defamation against the defendants."

The writer concluded, "So was Basabe playing a semantic game from the start by offering a conditional promise he knew couldn’t happen in reality?"

In his editorial for the Miami Herald, Basabe reneged on his vow to resign.

"A recent column in this newspaper called on me to resign, citing a promise I made to my constituents when allegations of misconduct against me first surfaced," the lawmaker said. "The author, Mary Anna Mancuso, is right about one important thing: I made that promise. I said that if these allegations were ever proven true, I would resign and be held accountable. I called it a verbal contract with my community. I meant every word then, and I mean every word today."

He added, "But the legal process continues. Even the column calling for my resignation acknowledges a critical distinction: I was not found guilty. This was a civil case, brought by a former aide and a former intern. There was no criminal prosecution or conviction. A civil jury found me liable for sexual harassment, battery and defamation. I dispute that verdict, continue to deny the allegations and am challenging it through the appellate process."

House Speaker Mike Johnson already knows what the Republican-dominated Supreme Court is in for when Democrats get big-enough control of Congress and the White House, writes Slate’s Alexis Romero. That’s why Johnson tried to pass a new law out of the House to stop it.

“Johnson … led an effort Wednesday to amend the Constitution and cap the number of Supreme Court justices at nine. Since the size of the court is currently set by federal law, not by the Constitution, Johnson said the amendment was necessary to stop Democrats from adding justices to the court,” wrote Romero. “Over the course of 24 hours, Johnson announced his plan to introduce the amendment and had it brought to the House floor, only for it to immediately fail along party lines.”

President Donald Trump has been having a bit of a romp lately with his tailor-made Republican Supreme Court imparting huge new power to the executive and legal immunity for Trump to do as he wills with state agencies, immigration and the very face of Washington DC., and the White House. Romero said “it doesn’t take a brain surgeon (or even a lawyer) to understand why the leader of the House GOP would like to keep in place a Supreme Court with six Republican appointees,” but he added that these kinds of legislative efforts are extremely rare coming from any speaker.

But New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie pointed out that “Democrats are getting serious about court reform.” Former Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris also officially advocated for expanding the court from nine to 13 justices because the country already has 13 intermediate courts of appeal and a 13-member Supreme Court would allow each justice to review motions from a lower court one-to-one.

But Johnson wants Congressional Republicans to jettison the power to expand the court before Democrats use it to neutralize the conservative majority that granted Trump immunity from crimes while in the White House and nearly removed Constitutional birthright citizenship.

Romero called it an extreme bid by the Speaker for “constitutional self-castration.”

“But Republican legislators would rather sabotage their own chamber’s constitutional authority than allow Democrats the chance to reform the court,” said Romero. “In opposition to Johnson’s proposal, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark noted that the amendment would strip Congress of ‘yet another constitutional authority that is meant to be controlled by the American people’s representatives.’”

“Think for a second about the moral calculus the GOP is doing,” urged Romero. “We’re talking about a system of congressional authority over the court that has lasted for 250 years. And Republicans are so scared of the electorate voting for judicial reform that they would eliminate a key piece of that century-old authority in the two months before they’re likely voted out of office.”

But the court-reform debate is raging, said Romero, because the nation’s high court is deeply detached from the public. It is a court that “avoids contending with ethics complaints against its own members, while blessing ethical violations in the White House.” Its judges demand the privacy of no cameras in its chambers, while allowing states to “invade the private medical decisions of women across the country,” he said. It’s also a court that “anonymously votes behind closed doors in secret rulings, and does so in support of Trump’s not-so-secret effort to disenfranchise votes by mail.”

“Until all of that changes, court reform will be top of mind and top of discussion, no matter what the Republicans try to do before November,” Romero assured.

President Donald Trump's former lawyer, Ty Cobb, believes that the Republican will not stop fouling up the White House and other major American institutions "until he's gone."

" Trump is like no other president," Cobb told MS NOW host Ari Melber on Thursday when asked about Trump releasing a $250 coin with his face on it. "The norms that previous presidents held close — trying to portray themselves as courageous, virtuous, honest — Trump makes no effort to uphold. In fact, he showboats his corruption and his vanity."

He added, "This is defiance of federal law, and we're going to see more of it. We saw it recently with the Justice Department, which, at Trump's direction, fell into line and tried to extend executive privilege to private communications with private individuals — constitutionally absurd, of course, but done in an effort to insulate Trump and his circle of sycophants from the investigations that are virtually certain if Democrats take the House."

He concluded, "We see it in the vanity projects too: the Arc de Triomphe, which nobody wants except the president; the paving over of the Rose Garden; the gold-plated Oval Office; turning the White House into a project with a new ballroom that nobody thinks we need except Trump. This is going to keep happening constantly, unless and until he's gone. Only then will we have a chance to restore America to the virtuous, aspirational standards that our previous leaders held dear."

Cobb, who has previously described his former client as a "madman," criticized Trump in August for pardoning the rioters who attempted a coup and assaulted police officers during the Jan. 6th insurrection.

“They've pardoned people who assaulted police officers, who almost killed police officers, and not just drug dealers,” Cobb told Melber. “Authoritarian figures around the globe, in prison for bringing tons and tons of propane and other drugs into the United States, have gotten pardons under circumstances that are still under investigation but clearly suggest that money was exchanged.”

Cobb added, “And the administration of the rule of law under Bondi and Blanche — they say they've 'backed the blue.' The only two instances I can see where that has actually happened in this administration are the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, for whom no justice has been forthcoming and no investigation is even underway. So I don't think we have anything to hang our hat on to suggest that justice is coming back.”

Cobb has also warned that American democracy may not survive the 2026 midterm elections, given Trump's determination to meddle in them to guarantee Republicans do not lose.

https://youtu.be/3kNNPcue_Ho

Inside sources in the GOP are seriously peeved that President Donald Trump and his family can't stop concentrating on enriching themselves long enough to get Republicans through the November midterms.

Trump and Republicans are at risk in the upcoming midterm elections, due in no small part to regret from his own supporters, and even many Republicans who continue supporting him feel as if they are "walking the plank" on his behalf. Yet according to a recent report, Trump continues to focus on money-making projects instead of shoring up support from American voters — a fact that is worrying many of his fellow Republican politicians.

"If voters experience Republican government as expensive groceries and gasoline, higher input costs and endless stories about rich people, special access and government extravagance, it becomes more difficult to persuade them that Washington Republicans are the tribunes of the forgotten man and woman," The Daily Mail's Mark Halperin reported on Thursday. "Even White House denizens that I speak to are hoping the President and his family would decide – just for a few months – that they are already rich enough and cool it with the self-promotional ventures."

Earlier in the same article, Halperin detailed Republicans' political plight.

"For much of this year, the Republican strategists have focused more on what they hoped to happen in the run-up to the midterm elections rather than what was actually happening," Halperin wrote. "They had hoped that Donald Trump's poll numbers would improve, that voters would begin to appreciate tax cuts, that tariffs would start looking shrewd rather than disruptive and that economic conditions would improve for most Americans."

He continued, "The most optimistic hoped that the Iran situation would settle down or even be successfully concluded and that gas prices would then drop. Nearly all thought that they could effectively scare voters about the rise of Democratic Socialists and that the President and the White House would get their midterm messaging straight. Almost 60 days from the vote in November, most of that hasn't happened."

Halperin also pointed out that "political forecaster Charlie Cook, who has been doing this longer and better than nearly anyone alive, put numbers on the GOP challenge this week. His most likely scenario has Republicans losing 26 to 35 House seats and four or five Senate seats, which means Democrats would take control of both chambers of Congress."

One ominous possibility is that Trump is indifferent to voter perceptions of him because he plans on rigging the midterms. That may be why he is demanding voter data from all over the country, even though elections are constitutionally administered by the states.

“The administration's demand that every state turn over its voter rolls has culminated in the most recent executive order Trump issued, where one of the buckets orders two executive branch agencies to compile these massive databases called the state citizenship lists,” Pooja Chaudhuri, Senior Counsel/Deputy Legal Director at Democracy Defenders Fund, told AlterNet in June. “Under the terms of the executive order, those lists have to be made available to the states 60 days before the election. We've seen states like Texas and Missouri use federal government lists — they've used the SAVE database — in order to verify whether people are citizens, and have wrongly purged and wrongly targeted people who are US citizens. The administration now creating these massive lists before every federal election is going to create not just massive chaos, but also, again, a chilling effect on voters.”

Chaudhuri also said it is “a very realistic concern" that voters could show up at the polls to find they have been scrubbed from the rolls.

President Donald Trump has lost more than 20 cases in lower courts in his attempt to force states to share sensitive voter data with him, which experts overwhelmingly agree he plans on using to stop Democrats from voting against him in the upcoming midterm elections. Now Trump has taken his desire to do this to the Supreme Court, arguing for a second time that he should be allowed to order the Postal Service to not deliver mail-in ballots in states that do not share this information with him.

"The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to step in for a second time to allow new mail-in voting rules to be implemented ahead of the midterms," reported Politico's Josh Gerstein on Thursday. "The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal Thursday seeking an immediate block on a temporary restraining order a federal judge in Boston issued last week against a regulation that would require states to submit lists of mail-in voters to the Postal Service, which will be able to refuse delivery of ballots to voters not in the database."

Gerstein added, "Last week, the justices voted, 6-3, to overturn a broader injunction the same judge issued against key provisions in an executive order President Donald Trump signed in March."

Speaking on MS NOW on Thursday, Democracy Docket founder and lawyer Marc Elias argued that Trump plans on doing this to stop thousands of people from voting.

"They want to target populations that are Democrats," Elias said. "But in order to do that, they need to... So then Donald Trump issued an executive order saying, "All right, I'm going to condition the ability of states to send out mail-in ballots to voters on these states doing a couple of things." Number one, they need to [unclear — possibly "actually verify" or "cross-check"] these ballots. But second, if a state seeks to send a ballot to someone who's not on that list, not only does that ballot not go out, but none of the other ballots in that same batch will go out either."

Speaking to AlterNet in June, another voting expert argued that Trump's attempts to federalize elections could be illegal.

“I think some of these attempts to federalize, to nationalize elections are clearly illegal,” Dan Vicuña, Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause, told AlterNet. “You've seen some of that overreach already struck down — attempts to order independent agencies to force a strict voter ID requirement on people. That has been rejected. Common Cause is in court challenging the latest executive order to turn the United States Postal Service into some election administration agency and to create a further bureaucratic layer to make it more difficult to vote by mail. In terms of the president's authority to order around USPS, it's illegal. In terms of USPS's authority to become some sort of national election administration agency, it far exceeds the legal authority that Congress gave to the postal service. The statute describing what kind of work the postal service would do is about postal service work — processing mail and selling stamps. It has nothing to do with election administration.”

President Donald Trump is trying to make it harder for Americans to vote, yet a judge he appointed — Justice Brett Kavanaugh — just denied an attempt by MAGA voters in a key swing state as that voter attempts to put a referendum on the ballot requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship.

"Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Thursday refused to order Michigan officials to put a measure on the November ballot over whether to require proof of citizenship to vote in the state," MS NOW's Jordan Rubin reported on Thursday. "A group behind the measure sought an emergency order from the Supreme Court ahead of a Friday deadline. Americans for Citizen Voting | Michigan’s urgent application went to Kavanaugh because he is the justice assigned to field emergency requests from the Michigan region. When justices receive such applications, they can decide the matters themselves or refer them to their colleagues for a full court decision."

He added, "The Trump appointee denied it himself on Thursday. As typical for such orders, the denial was unexplained."

In the filing by the Michigan MAGA voters, they argued that "because the public interest in direct democracy is not abstract — decades of empirical research confirm that the initiative process functions as a meaningful, majoritarian check on unresponsive government — the balance of harms and the public interest favor an injunction preserving, rather than foreclosing, the voters' opportunity to decide this measure for themselves."

Kavanaugh, despite seeming to side with voters' interests in this case, has generally sided with Trump as he attempts to sow chaos and distrust in American elections, as well as possibly rig the midterms for himself. Most notably, he sided with Trump indirectly by allowing his attempts to restrict mail-in voting to go forward despite lower courts pointing out that the provisions blatantly violate the Constitution's requirement that the states alone monitor elections.

"[Judge Indira] Talwani previously blocked an executive order that President Donald Trump issued in March, which ordered the US Postal Service (USPS) to impose a byzantine array of new regulations on voting by mail, but the Supreme Court reinstated the order on Monday," reported Vox's Ian Millhiser at the time.

Millhiser added, "Talwani’s new order sets up a new legal fight that is almost certain to return to the justices, and it is unclear whether this Court, with its 6-3 Republican majority, will allow Trump to make sweeping and unilateral changes to how the United States conducts its elections so close to an actual Election Day. That said, while Talwani’s new order in League of Women Voters v. Trump is brief, it is well-crafted to persuade at least some members of the Court’s Republican majority to break with the leader of their political party."

Fox News reports The White House is “rolling out a new website Thursday that will feature classic arcade-style games with a MAGA twist.”

A promotional video for the game site obtained by Fox News Digital shows MAGA remakes of 8-bit favorites, including Flappy Bird, Snake, Duck Hunt and other classics originals, an even more classic touch of Trump.

The MAGA version of Snake, for instance, features Border Czar Tom Homan—in all his cash-grabbing pinkness—leading a line of brown people in orange jumpsuits while he chases other “illegal immigrants” on the grid

“In another game, reminiscent of Duck Hunt, the user employs a net to catch gold bars and money, illustrative of putting money into a Trump Account,” reports Fox. “The Washington Monument is depicted in the background of that game.”

Visitors to the site can endure a rip of classic SEGA intro music while playing Trump’s distorted version of “Flappy Bird,” which involves navigating a bald eagle through columns and obstacles on what looks vaguely like the National Mall on a sunny day. And they can use a Tetris-like pixel scheme to build Trump’s southern border wall to curtail the flow of illegal immigration into the U.S.

Fox reports the site is also a jab at Democrat policies, and what the White House describes as the political left's "dark" vision for the future of the country, which obviously does not involve leading brown people around in a train line.

"The President continues to rack up victory after victory on behalf of the American public, while opponents of his agenda are defending their record of raising taxes and empowering criminal illegal aliens," an official told Fox News Digital. "This is an effort to further contrast between a culture of fun and winning and the dark socialist vision Democrats have for America."

“Us: Can you work to lower the price of gas and groceries, or at least work to slow the rate of inflation?" one heckler groused on X, in response to the Fox news post. “Them: Best I can do is this 👇..."

"There are NO WORDS to adequately describe how much I despise this incompetent administration," snapped another account claiming to be "ExGOP" on X.

In a fourth game, the user can play a boxker, punching candy and other unhealthy foods away. That game, according to Fox, features a graphic with the words "Seed Oils" with a red line through it “in a nod to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his Make America Healthy Again initiative.”