He said it wouldn’t cost taxpayers a single dime! He never said it wouldn’t cost them 500,000,000,000 dimes! (That’s $50,000 billion, which seems to be what it is costing all of us, so far.) On today’s BradCast, it’s back to the ballroom…and the slush fund and the IRS immunity, among the rest of the unprecedented grift and corruption being carried out before our eyes by a sitting U.S. President. Also, more on last week’s election results and Trump’s embarrassing hissy-fit about them. [Audio to full show follows this summary.]
FIRST UP… As of last night after we got off air, AP called Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman to win the second slot in November’s L.A. Mayoral general election. If the numbers hold up as counting continues in California (calls by media have no official or legal meaning) the progressive Democrat will face her former ally, incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass. The two women edged out Republican former reality TV celebrity Spencer Pratt. He was favored by Donald Trump (which almost certainly hurt him) and spent the first few days after last week’s election in second place, as L.A. County — the largest, by far, in the nation — and the rest of the state took their usual time in carefully tallying late arriving mail-in ballots. (See yesterday’s show for details on the hilarious fit that Trump threw on national television after being called out for having no evidence to support his false claims that either California’s elections or the 2020 Presidential race were “crooked”, “rigged”, and stolen by Democrats.)
Meanwhile, in the CA Governor’s race, as of airtime, current third place candidate, progressive Democratic billionaire activist Tom Steyer, picked up two points amid the ongoing tallies since yesterday’s show, on second place Trump-endorsed Republican Fox “News” host Steve Hilton for this November’s general election run-off. Former state Attorney General and Biden HHS Director Xavier Becerra had already been called last week as the winner of the top slot. As we detail today, while Steyer has been gaining on Hilton, it remained unclear as of airtime whether there were enough uncounted votes for him to overtake Hilton statewide, as Raman did to take second place from Pratt in Los Angeles. As I’m writing this summary tonight, it appears that AP and others have now called the second slot for Hilton. (But, again, media calls have no legal meaning. Counting will continue. All CA Counties must tally, canvass, audit and certify results by July 2.)
If the Democratic Party is stealing the elections in California, they’re doing a lousy job of it. The Party establishment would much prefer to have one Democrat face a Republican in both of those races this Fall, in the very Democratic state and exceptionally Democratic city of Los Angeles. In the Mayoral race, they will now have two Dems running against each other, reopening the ongoing party battle between progressives and more establishment-minded Democrats.
Also, in a promised follow-up to a story cited by a Republican caller on yesterday’s show, I’ve got a few additional details on a reported fire in a Vote-by-Mail ballot drop-box in downtown L.A. just before last week’s Election Day. Tune in for details.
THEN… Donald Trump promised, after demolishing the East Wing of the White House without notice last October, that his $200 $250 $300 $400 million ballroom wouldn’t cost taxpayers anything. That it was all being financed by generous patriotic private donors who simply wanted to give a friendly gift to the United States.
As it turns out, while those donors were granted anonymity by the White House, 27 corporate donors so far identified have received more than $50 billion in new and increased government contracts over the last six months. In addition to corporate donors such as Lockheed Martin, Palantir, Amazon, NextEra Energy, Microsoft, Google and many others, there are still unidentified companies as well private individuals and family foundations who are attempting to curry favor by donating to Trump’s pet project, according to a new report issued last week by the indispensable government watchdog Public Citizen.
Co-president of Public Citizen, ROBERT WEISSMAN, joins us on today’s show to discuss the nonprofit’s bombshell new report, and to follow up his last appearance on the show regarding the nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund that Trump and his personal criminal defense attorney and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche declared into existence several weeks ago, along with unprecedented personal immunity from IRS audits or fines, similarly declared into existence the very next day.
“It is not just the appearance of a conflict of interest, it is a fact of conflict of interest, no matter what,” Weissman tells me today, regarding the billions of dollars in thank you gifts doled out to the corporate funders of Trump’s ballroom. “They are greasing the palms and they’re getting back 500 or a thousand times what they are putting in.”
Give a few million, profit billions in return.
The White House has dismissed Public Citizen’s “Ballroom Billions” report, charging in response: “The same critics who are alleging fake conflicts of interests, would also complain if American taxpayers were footing the bill for these long-overdue renovations.”
Says Weismann in response today: “The idea that Americans are saving money, that it’s not costing us, is preposterous. The cost to us in contracts that maybe wouldn’t have been given, or that are bigger than they should be, or that aren’t adequately going to be overseen so there’s waste built in — it’s not just the contracts. It’s other favorable treatment that these companies are going to expect and almost for sure will receive, in part due to the contributions they made, costing far more to the American people than the small amounts they are contributing.”
Indeed, the Public Citizen report details dozens of federal enforcement actions being faced by the corporate donors, or that have seen them suspended by the Trump Administration in recent months since ponying up for the ballroom.
Weissman says many of them are facing “anti-trust cases, claims of employment law violations, discrimination on the job, union-busting, pollution claims, and others, and they are hoping to see those claims magically go away.”
As to the $1.8 billion slush fund the Department of Justice claims is now dead after some tepid of opposition from Republicans in Congress — even if Blanche told Congress last week he would not put that in writing — Weissman warns “we can’t assume it’s dead.”
Moreover, he asserts, “even if the slush fund is completely killed, there is still the other part of the deal, which Todd Blanche said is still in place — which is a legal commitment by the way — by the IRS not to audit Trump, his family or his businesses for anything that ever occurred up to the time they signed the deal.” That, Weismann explains, is worth potentially “hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes they may be able to escape paying.”
It is “all totally illegal,” charges Weissman. The question is, however, while there are several lawsuits attempting to stop construction of the ballroom, it is far less clear who, if anyone, would have legal standing to sue to stop the unprecedented IRS immunity scheme declared into existence by Trump and Blanche.
Much more on all of that, and what can be done about it, with Weissman today.
FINALLY… Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the flesh-eating New World screwworm has made its way back into the U.S. for the first time since eradication in the 1960s, while the Administration was DOGE-ing in the other direction; while Trump continues to burn hundreds of millions of your dollars into subsides for the dirty, dying, unprofitable coal industry, rather than clean, cheap renewable energy; and as his attempt to allow the fossil fuel industry to exploit the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge up in Alaska falls flat, even with the oil industry…